China's cooking is full of flowers and unique flavor, and its important point is that various styles and characteristics compete for each other and blend together. Different geographical environment, different climatic conditions and different living habits have all caused the flavor differences and differences in cooking. Zhang Hua of the Jin Dynasty said in the Natural History: "People in the southeast eat aquatic products, while people in the northwest eat land animals." "Those who eat aquatic products, turtles, clams, snails and clams think it is delicious, and they don't feel its fishy; For those who eat land animals, raccoons, rabbits, rats and finches think it's rare, but they don't think it's delicious. "

Since ancient times, people in the Yellow River valley and the Yangtze River valley in our country have obvious differences in their eating habits. The eating life of "south rice and north" has always been the habitual eating style of our people. At this point, China's cooking production, whether in the selection of materials, taste, or in the preparation method, style, have formed their own different strong local characteristics. Generally speaking, it can be divided into two types: "southern flavor" and "northern flavor"

1. Staple food: natural environment difference-south rice north

Since ancient times, the north is rich in wheat and the south is rich in rice. Wheat producers, flour is the staple food, and people in the north are good at cooking pasta, and there is a saying that "one side eats all kinds". In the production of pasta, steaming, frying, frying, roasting, roasting, stewing, stewing, marinating, cold salad, etc., can be made at will, so don't spare the flavor.

since ancient times, the working people in the north have developed a large number of crop varieties adapted to the soil and water in the north through long-term directional cultivation in the long-standing family activities, such as wheat, corn, sorghum, naked oats, buckwheat, etc., which provided rich staple food raw materials for the production of northern pasta. Therefore, people in the north are rich in various foods with flour and miscellaneous grains as the main raw materials. The daily food of northerners is flower rolls, noodles, sugar packets and cakes. Its pasta is not only exquisite in production technology, but also smooth and tender in taste. It is called the pulled noodles, Daoxiao Noodles noodles, knife noodles and fish noodles of the four northern pasta, and is loved by people of all ethnic groups in the north. Not only do they eat pasta every day, but almost every family can cook it.

To the south of the Yangtze River and Huaihe River, the Jingjiang River faces the lake and is rich in rice and aquatic products. For a long time, the working people here have mostly taken rice as their staple food, and rice noodles, cakes, dumplings, fried piles and other flavor foods are all made of rice. Southerners believe that pasta can only be used as a snack. The food they make changes with the seasons and the customs of the masses. Such as all kinds of glutinous rice balls, square cakes, pull cakes, muffins, rice cakes, radish cakes, glutinous rice cakes, fried sugar rings, etc., are the favorite of local people.

in terms of folk festivals, there are also great differences in eating reunion dinners on New Year's Eve. You can't live in jiaozi without pasta in the north. Jiaozi, shaped like an ingot, sounds the same as "making friends". Eating on New Year's Eve has the double auspicious meaning of making money and making friends at a younger age. In the south, rice cakes and fish are necessary for keeping old. Rice cakes are made by mixing japonica rice and glutinous rice into powder, which means "high year after year", and fish contains the double meaning of "more than one year after year" and evil spirits and disasters.

2. Cooking: the social environment is different-one side is fine in the south and the other side is thick in the north

. The influence of the natural climate between the north and the south makes the social environment between the north and the south different. On the whole, the diet in the south is more delicate, while the diet in the north is more rough. There are zonal changes in biodiversity. The temperature drops in the north, and the number of biological species decreases. As the temperature rises in the south, the number of biological species increases. Where there are abundant biological species, there are also abundant food types. The winter in northern China is long, and the people mainly live on Chinese cabbage and radish stored in winter. One of the top ten monsters in Northeast China is "pickled sauerkraut in a big jar and a small jar". Pickled sauerkraut is a good way to store Chinese cabbage. The south is evergreen, and there is no "dead winter". Rich food raw materials are the foundation of meticulous work. Differences in economic life, cultural life and personality between North and South also have a great influence on diet.

I often hear a big word in the northeast. Manchu folk song: "carry a long bow, ride a big horse, and hang a big wine gourd on your waist." The environment is big forests, grasslands, big oil fields and big factories. They are called big girls, big boys and big men. What is related to eating is green onions, big sauces, big cakes, big steamed buns, Chinese cabbage, eating meat with big mouths and drinking in big bowls. "There are 211 grams of steamed bread, half a meter of fried dough sticks, potatoes as big as a baby's head and vermicelli as thick as chopsticks. The menu in the restaurant is very large. Not only the plate is big, but also the quantity is sufficient. The same dish, Harbin can be more than three times as big as the south. " When people from the northeast come to Jiangnan, they don't like the small bowls and saucers there, and they don't have enough to eat. Stewing is a common cooking method in Northeast China. Everything is stewed, without complicated procedures, color and shape, which is worry-free and labor-saving. Even the soup and meat are eaten together, and they are dripping with joy.

The sea bowls commonly used by farmers in Shaanxi have a capacity of 2 liters and are shaped like half a basketball. Chaozhou people's teacup for drinking Kung Fu tea is as thin as paper, as white as jade, and as loud as a chime, with a capacity of only 4 ml, and is shaped like half a table tennis ball. The difference between the two is 51 times. The diet in the south is meticulous, and the meat is cut thin and thin, and the yards are neat. Dim sum sketches in the southeast area are exquisite and street snacks with various colors. In Jiangsu, eel can cook more than 111 different dishes; A swordfish can be made into a swordfish banquet. "Suiyuan Food List" notes: "If you make steamed bread as big as walnuts, you should eat it in a steamer. You can clip a pair per card. Yangzhou things are also. Yangzhou has the best fermentation, and the hand is not full of half an inch, and the relaxation is high. Small wonton is as small as longan, and it is served with chicken soup. "

3. Taste: differences in cultural environment-sweet in the south and salty in the north

There have been differences in different taste characteristics in different parts of China since ancient times. Judging from the cooking history of China, there are only two earliest local cuisines, namely Southern Cuisine and Northern Cuisine. The food raw materials reflected in The Book of Songs are mainly pigs, cattle and sheep, and only a few aquatic products, such as carp and bream, represent the northern flavor from Qin Jin in the west to Qilu in the east and the Yellow River basin. However, the food raw materials reflected in "Songs of the South Evocation" are mostly aquatic products and poultry, which have the southern flavor of the Yangtze River basin. This is the obvious dividing line. The difference between the north and the south is not limited to raw materials, but also people's dietary tastes are quite different. Qian Yong in the Qing Dynasty said in "Lu Yuan Cong Hua": "The north is fond of being strong, while the south is fond of being light." There are several versions of Taste Song circulating all over China. For example, "the south tastes sweet and the north tastes salty, and the east dishes are spicy and the west dishes are sour." Spicy taste is widely accepted, and spicy taste is unique to Sichuan. The few are crispy and stimulating, and the old are rotten and tender. Autumn and winter are thick, and spring and summer are light. "

Sweet in the south and salty in the north is a natural feature of Chinese people's diet, which mainly reflects the influence of the environment on people's diet taste. The humidity in the south is high, the evaporation of human body is relatively small, there is no need to supplement too much salt, and sugarcane is abundant, so southerners love sweets. The north is dry, and the evaporation of human body is large, so it needs to be supplemented with more salt, and it likes salty taste. In addition, the climate in the north is cold, and people are used to eating salty and oily dishes. When the climate in the south is hot, people tend to eat lightly; Sichuan, Hunan, Yunnan and Guizhou are rainy and humid, so people can only eat spicy food to drive away wind and damp. These are all the physical requirements that are prompted by natural conditions. Only in this way can we achieve physical balance and ensure health.

Shanxi people love sour taste. The water in the Loess Plateau contains a lot of calcium, and acetic acid can help calcium precipitate and prevent stones in the body. Shanxi people love sauerkraut, especially Yanbei. "Everything is sour, and radish and cabbage are reduced, including poplar leaves and elm money. Someone came to propose marriage to the girl, and the mother asked first, how many sauerkraut jars are there in that family? There are many acid tanks, indicating that the family is thick. "

4. Custom: Differences in ethnic environment-Nannuo Beinai

Judging from the diets of many ethnic minorities in China, the influence of regional environment and climatic conditions and the differences in lifestyles in specific environments have made different ethnic groups in China form different styles and characteristics in their diets. Although the diets of different ethnic groups are very different, on the whole, there is a * * * dividing line between the distribution of ethnic groups, that is, the distribution of ethnic groups with milk food as the main food and ethnic groups with rice as the main food. From northeast to southwest, there seems to be a diagonal line separating them, while from the Korean region in northeast to Yunnan and southern Tibet, it just happens to form a crescent. The ethnic groups that mainly eat milk are basically distributed in the north, while the ethnic groups that mainly eat rice (glutinous rice in ancient times) are basically distributed in the south. "Milk in the north" and "glutinous rice in the south" can summarize the dietary characteristics of ethnic minorities in China. In the border area of these two regions, there is a way to cook Gu Mi's "milk porridge" in milk [6].

The typical animal husbandry nationalities in China today are mainly Kazak and Mongolian in pastoral areas. In ancient literature, it was said that the dietary characteristics of nomadic people such as Kazak and Mongolian are "no food", that is, there is not a grain in the diet. Nowadays, milk and meat still account for a heavy proportion in the diet of these two ethnic groups. The varieties of milk food eaten by northern ethnic groups are rich and colorful. Milk food is divided into two categories: food and drink. Milk foods include milk skin, cheese, cream, white oil, milk tofu, milk cake, milk fruit, milk cake, yogurt bumps, milk porridge and so on. Milk drinks include yogurt, milk tea, butter tea, koumiss, milk wine (milk wine) and so on.

There are also Ewenki, Daur, Tu, Yugur, Tajik, Tibetan, Russian, Uyghur, tatar people and Kirgiz who drink milk in China. The main food consumed by these ethnic groups is milk, followed by horse milk and camel milk.

in southern China, the ethnic groups whose staple food is rice are: Korea, She, Zhuang, Maonan, Mulao, Miao, Yao, Li, Yi, Hani, Lahu, Jinuo, Jingpo, Achang, Bai, Qiang, Wa, De 'ang, Dai, Brown, etc. Except the Korean nationality, all the other nationalities here are located in the south of the Yangtze River. Considering that the rice culture on the Korean peninsula spread from the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, this is also the development of the "Nannuo" diet. Among these ethnic groups, Zhuang, Buyi, Dong and Dai are the most representative. These ethnic groups belong to Baiyue in history, and Baiyue distribution area is the area where wild rice was discovered and cultivated rice originated in China. Representative foods include rice cakes, all kinds of glutinous rice, two-in-one rice, glutinous rice cake and so on.