At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, due to the debauchery of Emperor Huan and Emperor Ling, eunuchs and consorts monopolized the power, and disasters continued. Liu Hong (156- 189), the spiritual emperor, can be regarded as a real Hu eater, regardless of economic weakness, empty granary and special hobby for food containers.
According to historical records, Emperor Ling was timid and didn't like crowding round. He loved Khufu, Zhang Hu, Hu Chuang, Zuo Hu, Fan Hu, Hu Zan, Hu Di and Hu Dance, and all the nobles in Beijing learned from him, which became the trend for a while. Emperor Ling also likes to drive four white donkeys to the west garden of the imperial garden for a ride and eat. There are also some restaurants in Xiyuan. The harem chooses women as shopkeepers, while the spiritual emperor puts on the clothes of businessmen and pretends to be businessmen at a distance. When I arrived at the store, "I chose what women eat and drink, because I had a good time eating together." The spirit emperor is also a romantic son of heaven.
The favorite Hu foods of Lingdi and the nobles in Beijing are mainly Hu cakes and Hu rice, and their cooking methods are completely preserved in Qi Shu and other books.
Hu cake, according to the explanation of its name, refers to a big cake, or refers to a cake covered with flax and baked in an oven. In the Tang Dynasty, Bai Juyi wrote a poem about Hu pancakes, including two sentences: "Hu pancakes are like Kyoto, and the surface is crisp and oily, which seems to refer to oil cakes." In any case, the production method should be the invention of nomadic people in the north or people in the western regions, which was not available in the Han Dynasty.
Fan Hu is also a kind of pastry food, not rice. Cut the sour melon seeds into strips, then roll them in the cake with the roasted fat, roll them tightly and cut them into two-inch long sections, and dip them in vinegar celery when eating. Hu cake and Hu rice are popular mainly because they taste better than traditional steamed cakes, especially unfermented steamed cakes, and cannot be compared with Hu cake and Hu rice.
The meat in Hu cuisine first advocated "Qiang cooking and roasting" and has a unique cooking method. Qiang and Yi refer to ethnic minorities in ancient northwest China, while cooking and baking refer to specific skills. Qiang cooking is to cook deer head meat, choose the best deer head to cook and wash, and cut the skin into two-fingered pieces. Then boil the chopped pork into thick soup, add a handful of scallion and some ginger, orange peel, pepper, vinegar, salt, lobster sauce and so on. Dip the deer head meat in this broth to eat. Roast whole sheep, roast whole pigs, and cut them with a knife when eating, which was originally the usual way for nomadic people to eat. Take the whole roast pig as an example. Take the suckling little pig, wash its fur, make a small incision under the abdomen, take out the five internal organs, fill the abdomen with hair, put it on with an oak stick, and roast it over a long distance with slow fire. Turn the pig while roasting, and roast it all around. When roasting, you should repeatedly daub filtered sake, and constantly daub fresh lard or clean sesame oil, so that the roasted piglets, like amber and real gold, will melt in your mouth immediately, like ice and snow, with more juice and meat, which has a special flavor than the meat cooked by other methods.
In Hu Shi's meat, there is also a kind of "Hu pao meat", and the cooking method is also very unique. One-year-old tender sheep is cut into thin slices immediately after slaughter, and the mutton plate oil is also cut into thin slices, and seasoned with lobster sauce, salt, chopped green onion, ginger, pepper and pepper. Wash the lamb belly, turn it over, pour the cut meat and oil into the lamb belly and sew it up. Dig a hole in the ground, heat it with fire, remove ash and fire, put the belly of lamb into the hot hole and cover it with charcoal fire. If you continue to light the fire on it, it can be cooked in just one meal, and it is delicious.
Hu cuisine, which the son of heaven loves, is also the dream of many dignitaries. Hu cuisine outside this area refers not only to delicious food made by Hu people's unique cooking methods, but also to delicious food made from raw materials originating in foreign countries. Especially those condiments with special flavor, such as garlic, celery, pepper, coriander, etc., their introduction has created conditions for cooking authentic lake dishes. For example, there is another kind of "Hu Tang", the juice cooked for mutton, which is named after being seasoned with onion, coriander and pomegranate. Of course, the introduction of condiments from the western regions also enriched the dietary life of the people in the Central Plains and directly promoted the development of cooking in the Han Dynasty and beyond.
Lake cuisine not only stimulated the appetite of emperors and dignitaries, but also caused unprecedented food and cultural exchanges. Taoist imperial diet and eating classics.
The emperor enjoys delicious food, which is called eating. The delicious food cooked for the emperor is called imperial meal, and the recipe for recording this imperial meal is the menu. In most cases, the imperial cuisine is the most exquisite and excellent, and the cooking level displayed by the imperial cuisine is naturally exquisite.
You live in the position of the son of heaven, and you can't eat more abundantly. This is a decree made by the Zhou Dynasty. Zhou's drinks are divided into six categories: rice, drink, meal, stew, Jane and sauce. The names of imperial drinks listed in Book of Rites Neize include eight kinds of rice, twenty dishes, six kinds of drinks, two kinds of wine and two kinds of stew. In fact, there are as many as 120 pieces of The Son of Heaven, which are countless. Sometimes add "ordinary", fruit spices, everything.
Most of the imperial meals in the past dynasties should be extremely rich, but there are few imperial meals before the Qing Dynasty in the classics. Louis in Qing Dynasty copied 53 kinds of dishes in The Book of Songs, which is very valuable information.
Xie satirized the emperor's love of food, and his "Food Record" was actually a list of imperial meals. From this list of imperial meals, we can know what Emperor Yang Di ate. The following are some rare products mentioned in Xie Yan's Book of Songs, but not all of them are more than 50 kinds:
It is difficult to read this menu, and now people can't fully understand its ingredients and cooking methods. Some of them are even confusing, but there is no doubt that they are all delicious, but they may never reproduce the taste of the year.
The imperial meal list is only a relatively complete reservation in the Qing Dynasty. In the archives of the Qing Dynasty, there are a large number of royal meal lists, which indicate not only the variety of each meal, but also the meal time, the name of the chef, and which dishes and tableware are used. It is very detailed.
The places where emperors eat on weekdays are not fixed, mostly in places where they often live, such as bedrooms and palaces. Eat twice a day in the morning and evening. Breakfast is from Shi Mao, around six or seven o'clock, which should be said to be earlier. Dinner is at the end of the afternoon, actually it is lunch. I ate dinner too early, but it was not easy when it was dark, so I had to go in late again. The emperor usually eats alone, and no one can sit at the same table with him unless specially allowed. Rich food, the emperor can't eat it all by himself. The rest of the food is distributed to ministers, concubines, princes, princesses, and leftover food from concubines, and then to maids and eunuchs.
In the 12th year of Qianlong (1747), on the first day of October, we had dinner together. The description on the dinner list was: Long live China Justice, Ming Dow Dongnuange had dinner together, with foreign lacquer flowers on the table. Shredded bird's nest with chicken, shredded mushroom, shredded cabbage, Nao Ping 'an fruit, red tide bowl. Continue to eight fresh, bird's nest duck, tobacco museum, cabbage, chicken wings, stomach, mushrooms. Combining these two products, Zhang Anguan did it. Fat chicken, cabbage and Five Blessingg big enamel bowl. There are four kinds of copper enamel bowls, one is hanging basket, the other is plain clothes, the other is duck in the dining room, and the other is shredded pheasant to refresh and wash vegetables. Followed by fried shredded deer with leeks, No.4 Huangwan, and shredded deer enshrined in the ancestral hall. Roasted pheasant, shredded chicken in the pot, dried mutton, a dish, a sacrifice of pork and mutton, and a silver plate. A product of glutinous bait powder, an elephant eye chess cake, a small steamed bread, and a yellow board. Folding milk skin, silver bowl. Bake a sacrificial cake, silver plate. Buttered bean noodles, silver bowls. A taste of honey juice, Zi Long cuisine. Lala Yipin, No.2 Golden Bowl; There are also bean paste and enamel sunflower boxes. A side dish, a side dish, a side dish, a side dish, a side dish, a side dish, a side dish, a side dish, a side dish, a side dish, a side dish, a side dish, a side dish, a side dish, a side dish, Spoon ribs and towels are presented safely. Send the japonica rice into the bowl as usual, enamel bowl and gold bowl cover; One product of goat egg powder soup, one product of radish soup and one product of wild chicken soup.
No matter how much the concubines, princes, princesses and Fujin of Empress Dowager Cixi eat, the meals are always so rich every day. The materials needed for eating are all prepared according to the inedible parts, which is an amazing waste.
Cixi has three meals a day. Before dinner, the kitchen put the dishes into lunch boxes and put them on the porch. The utensils for serving are wooden light yellow lunch boxes painted with blue dragons and pearls. The vegetable container is attached with an iron base with hot water in it and covered with a cotton pad to keep it warm for a period of time. When delivering meals, the little eunuchs of the disciples in the dining room all wore blue robes. White sleeves on the wrist, waiting in line under the porch for orders. Ordered to eat, the little eunuchs carried the lunch box on their right shoulders and went in in turn. The chamberlain's eunuch took the lunch box and put the food on the table. Li Xian, the manager, tried it with silver chopsticks to avoid poisoning. When eating, the eunuch will send the food when the queen mother looks at it.