Text | Blue Superman sun
In order to take care of some viewers, some foods that are too heavy have been filtered out.
For a long time, China people have enjoyed a worldwide reputation for eating this food. Not only foreigners, but also ourselves boast that Chinese cuisine is famous all over the world, and at the same time, we will reluctantly admit that our recipes are indeed a little dark. All kinds of bugs, special-shaped ingredients, and visceral water all appear on the dining table; All kinds of fermented and heavy-flavored foods can make foreigners stunned; There are many ways to eat. So much so that there is a self-deprecating quip that "planes flying in the sky don't eat, four-legged tables don't eat, and ships swimming in the water don't eat". Undoubtedly, this makes many people who advocate Chinese cuisine unable to argue.
But don't feel inferior about it. Due to personal taste, social development, geographical climate, production conditions and many other factors, diets around the world are often strange and heretical. Perhaps sweet bean curd and salty zongzi alone can make many people very disgusted, and fish, tea and bean juice can make many people feel afraid. But these are just the tip of the iceberg. Moreover, this is not only the patent of China people, as long as conditions permit, people all over the world can put the food on the wings of imagination.
Local "special" recipes big PK
When it comes to dark cooking, many people think of bugs first. All kinds of bugs are ubiquitous in recipes all over the world, leaving a deep impression on many people. There is a record in Zhou Li Tian Guan that Zhou Tianzi ate ant sauce. Today, there are dozens of insect dishes, such as fried silkworm chrysalis in Northeast and Jiangnan areas of China, fried grasshoppers in North China, rice worms and bamboo bees in Guangdong and Guangxi cuisine, fried bamboo worms and fried flying ants in Yunnan ...
? Yunnan quanchong feast
In Southeast Asia, the habit of eating insects is even more serious: Kaoshan Road in Bangkok brings together hundreds of kinds of insect delicacies, including water cockroaches, spiders and other heavy-flavored foods; Vietnamese cuisine can use coconut worms soaked in fish sauce; Cambodia's mountainous areas are even darker: pull out the wings of water cockroaches, squeeze out the yellow sticky substances inside and eat them directly.
? Bug-frying booth in Kau Shan Road, Bangkok
In Africa, Ugandans like to eat ant eggs mixed with salt, while people in West Africa eat termites. Indians in South America regard the larvae of fireflies, moths and wasps as their regular food, and locals often add termites and grasshoppers to their staple food. Eating locusts in West Asia and North Africa has a long history; Aristotle even praised the smell of cicadas and beetles in his works; The ancient Romans were lucky enough to eat the pupa of the moth only at the most luxurious banquet.
Leviticus 1 1:22 Among them are locusts, grasshoppers, crickets and their like; Grasshoppers and their classes. You can all eat these.
Animals don't want to get into the water. Liver and tendons are almost universally recognized delicacies. People in China have a long history of eating animals in the water, and pig intestines and stomach, heart and lung, rare meat, head meat and esophagus are all important sources of meat. The Germans also poured blood, heart and lungs into pig intestines to make sausages; The famous Scottish dish "Haggis" is a lamb belly wrapped in liver and skin; The foie gras, kidney and thymus in French restaurants are also high-class delicacies.
However, many people accept that the heavy taste of "no" is still widespread. There are many people who can't accept eating intestines and kidneys. Many parts of the world have the habit of eating animal genitals; Guangdong, Guangxi and Southeast Asia will roast or marinate pig's eyes, and Arab regions will serve a plate of raw sheep's eyes when welcoming distinguished guests; Sichuan has a famous "brain flower"; Common hairy eggs in rural areas of China; The famous Japanese "burning Bai Zi" refers to the seminal vesicle of puffer fish ...
? Roasted pig's eyes in bilibili's latest documentary "A String of Life"
Fermented food is also the hardest hit area of dark food. Maybe you can accept traditional Chinese foods such as bean curd and dried vegetables, and pickles such as sauerkraut and sour radish. But other things are not necessarily the case. Many fermented bean products in the east, such as natto, bean juice, stinky tofu or hairy tofu; As well as cheese in western countries, it is often a dairy product that stinks, spots and even maggots after fermentation. There are pickled fish in China's southern minorities, Southeast Asia and Japan, and it is often difficult for unfamiliar people to accept its taste.
The heavier taste appears in northern Europe, where dried sharks in Iceland and canned herring in Sweden are notorious. Another local food is even more frightening: seabirds are caught and killed in spring, put into seals' stomachs, and naturally fermented deep underground. In winter, birds that have turned sour are taken out, and feathers are pulled out and eaten directly.
Why do you eat so dark?
It is impossible to list all the dark dishes in the world. We have only listed a small part of the situation. From the previous article, we can see that foods that are generally regarded as heavy-flavored are either because of special ingredients (insects, water and other unacceptable ingredients), or because of unique cooking, eating methods or processing methods (such as fermentation), or both.
Special ingredients are an important reason for dark cooking, which is probably related to social and environmental conditions.
For example, eating insects is a common habit in the ancient world. In the hunting era, the uncertainty of prey acquisition is extremely high, and the capture of insects can make up for the lack of meat and help the group survive. In the early agricultural society, the grain yield was not high, and the domestication of livestock could not provide enough animal protein for people. In order to meet the survival needs, the habit of eating insects still existed.
However, after the stable output of grain and meat, the demand for insects is getting smaller and smaller, and eventually they are no longer widely used as food. Insects themselves are ugly in appearance, easy to be contaminated with unclean things, and harmful to human beings and farmland, and naturally they are given a sense of disgust such as "barbarism" and "filth". In other words, it is after people don't eat worms that they have an aversion to them. It's not because you hate bugs that you don't eat them.
However, in a few areas of the earth that are not suitable for farming or have unstable agricultural development, the food is abundant and the habit of eating insects is preserved, which is often inversely proportional to the local farming and hunting level. Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America and other regions have a large number of tropical grasslands, deserts and rain forests. Hunting for agriculture and animal husbandry is extremely difficult, and the output is unstable. However, a large number of insects and mice are easily available, which is the high incidence area for eating insects, mice and snakes. In China, North China, West Asia and North Africa, Mexico and the southwest of the United States, locusts often harm crops, resulting in reduced production and even no grain harvest. Naturally, they have become food substitutes in disaster years, which has also led to the local taste habit.
? Distribution map of insect-eating species in the world. The darker the color, the more insect-eating species there are.
Insects are like this, and so are other ingredients. Eating other special ingredients such as internal organs is also due to the meat demand of early people. In ancient Europe and China, due to technical conditions, meat production was very limited. There is no waste of internal organs, and all of them are used. The purpose of specially treated foods such as fermentation is often to preserve food for long-term consumption. However, it is also common to collect wild vegetables and hunt game to survive hunger when the green and yellow are not connected. With the development of the times, it is acceptable to eat viscera and wild vegetables even if life has improved. People in China eat Toona sinensis, magnolia buds, elm, Artemisia selengensis, Oenanthe javanica and even Houttuynia cordata, while people in North Korea eat bracken, while people in East Asia eat konjac, and Europe has also eaten wild chicory, green onions and shepherd's purse for a long time.
But today, with the popularity of online media, new dark dishes have appeared. Different from the dark dishes produced by the development of certain social conditions, they are generally the product of the enthusiasm of up owners, aiming at making people unable to eat and entertaining the audience. It can be said that these things are really "sour across the screen".
? Dark cooking video in the network
Don't get carried away by prejudice.
Except for those video articles specially used for funny entertainment, the so-called dark cuisine in people's mouth today is a relative concept, which is often only popular in a certain region, a certain historical period or a certain group, and people without this environment often can't understand it. It is also common to measure the habits of others by one's own standards.
? The dispute between Zongzi and bean curd, whether to eat dog meat and other issues, is enough to trigger a split between the north and the south of China.
? Bird's nest, preserved eggs, drunken shrimp, etc. have been repeatedly listed in the "disgusting food" selection of foreign media such as CNN and BBC.
? Many forum websites representing the network subculture are the high incidence areas of prejudice.
In this era of high information exchange, food customs are also communicating. Prejudice also arises, but food is equal. Please respect people who don't eat a certain food and respect people who eat it.
Today's material life is extremely rich, and there has been a real "different opinions". It is no longer universal to look at diet from local and historical perspectives. All the ingredients in the world are circulating, and global food customs are also widely exchanged. There are many kinds of food, such as what is delicious and what is healthy. Personalized choice is the standard of eating today.