This dinner was held in the bud cage of Bao Li Hotel, with four tables and the theme of Cantonese cuisine. Thanks to David Yip and Song Ming Chen, we tasted 1 1 delicious food. I'm not familiar with Cantonese food. The following narrative is mainly based on the menu and the information I found on the Internet. There must be something funny. Please correct me. Thanks to Delacroix Yu for providing food photos.
The first course is barbecued pork with ice. Ice meat is fat pork cured with sugar and soju. After curing, its color is like ice, smooth and transparent, so it is called "ice meat". The entrance is not greasy, and barbecued pork tastes better. It is worth mentioning that this dish also uses a special kind of south milk, which is made of taro instead of soybeans. Mr. Mohs verified this special method in his "Sufu and south milk Examination". This dish was served for less than five minutes, and it was quickly divided up by you and me.
The second course is a cup of wild tremella and white gourd. As you can see in the picture, the snow ear is packed in a big cup made of wax gourd (the carving of wax gourd skin is a detail, don't care). In fact, according to the raw materials, this dish should be called "wild snow ear wax gourd cup with frog legs, Yao Zhu, fresh lotus" There are lotus seeds in the soup and lotus leaves outside the cup. "Fresh lotus" is worthy of the name. Tremella, also known as tremella, is a common edible fungus. At present, wild tremella is becoming more and more scarce. It is generally believed that Luzhou is the best, and Tongjiang in Sichuan is not far behind. When I first saw the name of the dish, I thought it was a beet similar to rock sugar, tremella and lotus seed soup, but after tasting it, I found it was very salty. Winter melon cup is a famous traditional soup in Guangdong. Because soup is steamed in stew and boiled in water, it is called double boiling in English. The boiled soup tastes like wax gourd, sweet and fragrant, which is really wonderful.
On the third road, sweet-scented osmanthus cold dishes and golden eggs came. Preserved vegetables are pickled dried radish, which chaozhou people called "preserved vegetables". Radish is called "vegetable head" in Minnan dialect, and the original meaning of preserved vegetables is dried meat, so the translation of preserved vegetables is dried radish. Fresh radishes are dried, pickled and stored to make pickled vegetables, in which drying and pickling are repeated alternately until radishes are dry and flat. Only when it has been stored for more than ten years can it be called old preserved vegetables. This time, I ate 20-year-old preserved vegetables that Teacher Ye got from my friend's mother. Although I probably don't have a special taste because of my bland taste, Chinese food is a very rare thing. 20-year-old preserved vegetables are almost the same as 18-year-old daughter Hong, which has a sense of history and is enough for people to cherish. Preserved egg is a home-cooked dish, which is popular in Taiwan Province Province, Fujian Province and Chaoshan area of Guangdong Province. When this dish was served, the eggs and pickled vegetables had been cut and mixed together, so we wrapped them in raw vegetable leaves and ate them. The hot and tender eggs of preserved vegetables are felt together with fresh and crisp raw vegetable leaves, and the taste is excellent.
The fourth course is stewed fish with salted shrimp. There are three kinds of shrimp in the market: saltwater shrimp, freshwater river shrimp, and the rarest shrimp in the sea. Salt and fresh water are mixed at the mouth of the sea. It is generally believed that the aquatic products there are the most fertile, and the shrimps produced are naturally extraordinary. The shrimp in this dish is this kind of salty freshwater shrimp. Fish rot is another famous Cantonese dish. Ho Chi Minh visited China many times in 1960s. As can be seen from the menu hosted by China, one of the four dishes and one soup on Wednesday night was "Grilled Fish with Mushrooms". I think minced fish is a kind of fish balls, but the production method is quite special (take the fish and mix it until gelatinized, add starch eggs, squeeze it into balls and fry it). It tastes similar to tofu, so it's called fish curd. Traditional fish curd is made of shad, but the chef of this dish, Song Ming Chen, uses Ikan Parang, which is the western saury. Judging from the introduction of the menu, he has also restored the traditional practice of this dish that has long been lost, but I don't know how to do it. Ten pieces of rotten fish each of us has one. I felt lost when I didn't taste it, so I had to take broccoli and shrimp to make up for my loss.
The fifth lane is the legendary famous dish: crab yellow Jiangnan Baihua chicken. This dish comes from Jiang Kongyin, a famous gourmet who enjoys the reputation of "the first person in Cantonese cuisine". Because he was the last top scholar in the imperial examination in the late Qing Dynasty, he was once admitted to imperial academy, so he was also called Jiang Taishi. Jiang Taishi studied delicacies and created many new dishes, such as the famous Long Hudou, whose real name was Taishi Snake Soup invented by him. Jiangnan Baihua Chicken is also one of them. From the photos, this dish is not very photogenic, but under the plain appearance, it is an ingenious idea. This dish is to bone the whole chicken, brew shrimp glue under the chicken, then put it back in the shape of a chicken and steam it. After steaming, the chicken skin is not scattered, and the chicken is fragrant and smooth, blending with the taste of shrimp glue below. The cooking method of this dish is more complicated, which requires a higher skill of the chef, so it is rare. I was lucky enough to have a taste this time, and I was very surprised.
The sixth is Cantonese dim sum: fried horseshoe cake. Horseshoe, also known as water chestnut, is a perennial aquatic herb. We refer to and eat its bulbs. Fried horseshoe cake is made of horseshoe powder, horseshoe meat particles, coconut juice and so on, which is cooked and fried. The fried skin of water chestnut cake is crisp and soft, and the soft and waxy cake body is embedded with sweet and crisp horseshoe meat. Take a bite, many of them are textured, smooth and sweet.
The seventh course is steamed white Sudan with salt. Salt is the ancestor of all tastes. I've heard of sea salt, lake salt, well salt and rock salt, but it's the first time I've heard of basin salt. After some searching, I realized that this was a by-product of soy sauce. Soy sauce is fermented from soybeans, and there are often crystals at the bottom of the crock used for soy sauce fermentation. Scraped out is a pot of salt flavored with black beans. Pot salt is considered as the essence of soy sauce. The pot of salt used in this dish was given by the boss of a soy sauce factory in Zhaoqing, where David has been. That family is said to have made soy sauce for 33 generations, using a secret recipe that has been circulated for thousands of years. White Sudan is the second most expensive wild river fish in Malaysia, second only to unforgettable, and its meat is tender and sweet. It's a pity that there are flowers, chickens and pearls in front. This white Sudan is beautiful, but it lacks that amazing feeling.
The eighth course is a classic Cantonese dish, old duck in casserole. Chenpi is a traditional spice and seasoning with a long history, which is produced best by Guangdong News Agency. Xinhui tangerine peel is made from the peel of local red orange, which has a history of 700 years and has always enjoyed a high reputation. As the name implies, dried tangerine peel, like wine, is more fragrant and more expensive as it ages. In the market, 50 grams of dried tangerine peel more than 20 years old can be easily sold for more than 150 dollars. This dish is dried tangerine peel for 50 years, and the ingredients are rare. What's more, the duck meat is fat and thin, neither firewood nor greasy, and the surrounding dried tangerine peel is fragrant and soft. This is the dish I eat the most at the dinner table. It's so delicious that I can't bear to stop. The roast goose and red bean paste in famous shops in Hong Kong are so delicious because Xinhui Chenpi is added to them.
The ninth is Yunzi, a gift of Yunsi tofu. Li Yunzi is the egg of a raccoon, which is a small crab that grows on the edge of a field. It is called Li Yunzi because its claws are like archers. The Analects of Confucius Yang Huo said, "Li Yunyi, jade and silk clouds are beautiful". Li Yunzi is a unique ingredient in southern China, which is rare and precious. Only 5 kilograms of Li Yunzi can make 50 grams of Li Yunzi. However, it may be that the dishes in front are too strong, or that the gifts distributed to each of us have vanished into the soup. It's a pity that I couldn't taste the soft and fresh fragrance of the gift cloud.
The tenth method is to use soy sauce paste to get new roasted rice. Niigata rice refers to Yueguang rice in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, which is a famous brand among Yueguang rice, because it comes from the fish marsh area and is called "Yue Guang in the fish marsh". Niigata is the origin of Yueguang rice: Yueguang rice means the light of Yuezhou, which is the ancient name of Niigata. David also took great pains for this bowl of rice: first of all, the rice is not cooked, but steamed with mineral water; Secondly, the lard of bibimbap is specially extracted from 150 degree plate oil, which avoids the burnt smell; Finally, pour a little soy sauce-the processed product of soy sauce baking. Such famous rice and such fine cooking certainly didn't disappoint us: the granules were full, and the viscosity, elasticity, luster and flavor were outstanding. I can't remember the last time I ate such delicious rice. I just hope we can't add any more rice. Everyone is so small.
The last dessert is the old sucrose rice cake. The sugar used in this snack comes from a village in Hainan Island, which is famous for its rich sugarcane. Every new year, the village will make sugar cane into brown sugar, and make rice cakes with this handmade brown sugar as sacrifices to the kitchen god. David receives brown sugar gifts from villagers every year, and this time he takes them out to feast our eyes.
The eleven dishes of this banquet can be said to have a history and a story. At that time, it satisfied my appetite, and now this kind of combing makes me feel the entertainment of my heart and brain. These dishes or ingredients are rare, or the preparation method is very special. It is a good opportunity to taste such Cantonese food in Singapore. Snow ear, dried tangerine peel and Li Yunzi are less and less popular because of the deterioration of the environment; A gourmet family like Master Jiang disappeared with the death of his granddaughter Jiang last year. Of course, these are embarrassing, but now a little boy like me can actually taste such authentic Cantonese food, thus enjoying the profound traditional food culture, which shows that beautiful things will never disappear. As David often said, "Remember the heritage of ancestors when eating, and extend skills to accumulate the happiness of future generations". As long as there is respect for ingredients and persistent pursuit of food, the broken inheritance can be revived, and the declining culture may not be able to reproduce its glory, even in Shine on You.