Wen Yun Hai

"Jiangnan is good, Jiangnan is beautiful, and Jiangnan is what I remember most". Since ancient times, the Jiangnan area in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River has been a poetic existence. Needless to say, it has beautiful scenery and a land of plenty, and its food culture is also memorable. Among the traditional "four major cuisines" in China, Huaiyang Cuisine, which combines the essence of Yangzhou, Zhenjiang, Huai 'an and other places in the south of the Yangtze River, occupies a place. Jiangnan cuisine pays attention to fresh and tender ingredients, fine production, light flavor, and is famous for its exquisiteness, elegance and indifferent balance. Moreover, the origin of many Jiangnan cuisines is legendary, or related to historical figures, or can involve an interesting story.

If there is a book about Jiangnan's food culture, it should be as elegant and poetic as Jiangnan's beautiful scenery. British food writer Fuxia Dunlop visited Hangzhou, Suzhou, Ningbo, Shaoxing and other ancient cities in the south of the Yangtze River for several years after Shark's Fin and Pepper, and deeply visited the local food culture. With exquisite brushwork, she wrote a land of fish and rice: China people's elegant food culture, which introduced the food culture in the south of the Yangtze River, showing the delicious Jiangnan on the tip of her tongue.

domestic readers may wonder, isn't a China cookbook written by foreigners playing with a big knife in front of Guan Gong?

Open the book and read the table of contents first. The book can be divided into three parts. Firstly, the history, ingredients, seasoning and food culture of Jiangnan cuisine are briefly introduced. Then, according to the types of ingredients, from appetizers to "hard dishes" such as meat dishes, eggs, fish and seafood, to main and auxiliary foods such as rice, pasta, snacks and drinks, the classic dishes in Jiangnan cuisine are introduced in turn, with complete categories and everything. Finally, there is a separate chapter, which introduces the basic cooking knowledge such as ingredients, condiments, cookware and kitchenware, and techniques. It can be seen that the author has really made great efforts to study Jiangnan cuisine, and tried to introduce Jiangnan cuisine in an all-round way by the way of knowing the cows.

Let's get to the point and look at the "hard dishes" section, and you can see many well-known representative dishes in Jiangnan. For example, Shanghai braised pork, Dongpo pork, stewed lion head, sweet and sour tenderloin, beggar chicken, babao gourd duck, Longjing shrimp, and so on. For each dish, the author gives a detailed description of the legend or source, taste, ingredients and ingredients, practices and steps, cooking skills, etc. It is not difficult to see the author's attitude towards China cuisine. Just reading the characters in the book has no sense of contradiction with domestic recipes, but it adds a sense of on-site experience of tasting food, just like a gourmet's perspective. Moreover, the author explains the origin of each classic dish, which adds some humanistic color to the book.

Generally speaking, Fu Xia, as a foreigner, expressed her understanding of Jiangnan food culture in her book, and displayed the Jiangnan recipes she collected and learned intensively, which can provide us with a new perspective to examine our traditional food culture. As Hu Zhongying, a master chef in China and the head of hangzhou dishes, commented, the China cuisine recorded by Fu Xia is "lively, interesting, accurate and true, and properly handled". In Hu's view, Fu Xia is a "real disseminator of Chinese food culture".

In fact, not only for foreign readers, but also for Chinese people, this book is a window to learn about Jiangnan food culture. Not to mention, we can use this book as a recipe for learning to cook Jiangnan cuisine. Imagine, after visiting Jiangnan with family and friends, looking for a Jiangnan restaurant, ordering some signature dishes, and introducing the legendary stories and cooking techniques behind the signature dishes, wouldn't it be a happy thing for everyone to come casually?