Wen | edamame, source | WeChat WeChat official account "Sanjiangfood" (ID: sanjiangfood), reproduced by Observer.com with authorization.
"Sichuan, Shandong, Guangdong, Huaiyang, Fujian, Zhejiang, Hunan and Huizhou" are eight famous cuisines in China, and they are also the representatives of Chinese food. Even in areas outside the eight major cuisines, many people can blurt out some representative dishes, such as pot-stewed meat in the northeast, fish in sour soup in Guizhou, and hand-cooked meat in the northwest ... However, when it comes to Henan, many people can't take it.
In this era when the whole people call themselves "foodies", Henan cuisine rarely attracts people's attention, and there are few representative dishes. A few years ago, "China on the Tip of the Tongue" was a hit, involving Henan cuisine, which was understated in many places. In addition to the baked noodles of the Yellow River carp, it also told a story about a Henan mother who was accompanying her in Shanghai to learn to braise in soy sauce. After that episode was broadcast, it also triggered a big debate on the practice of braised pork on the Internet.
In fact, no matter whether you ask foreigners or locals what the typical local food is in Henan, most people will answer "Huimian Noodles". But in the eyes of local gourmets and chefs, this is a naked humiliation of Henan cuisine. Huimian Noodles is just a snack, how can it represent Henan cuisine? Only those big dishes, famous dishes and hard dishes can count. What is embarrassing is that few people can name a few famous dishes of Henan cuisine.
speaking of it, the history of Henan cuisine is not only pale, but also has infinite scenery. Needless to say, in the first half of last century, the status of Henan cuisine was comparable to that of Shandong cuisine, and the earliest restaurant chain in China was Houdefu. Why did Henan cuisine lose its living soil in just a few decades?
Luoyang water mat originated in the Tang Dynasty. It consists of 24 dishes, including eight cold snacks, four big dishes, eight Chinese dishes and four table-pressing dishes.
the peony swallowtail is a certain role, and the finished product is like a white peony flower with dazzling color, floating on the noodle soup.
how is Henan cuisine formed?
The development of cooking in China is often inseparable from the development of history, and Henan cuisine is no exception. As early as 4, years ago in the Xia Dynasty, Qi Wang, the founder of the People's Republic of China, hosted a state banquet in Yuzhou, Henan Province, which was called "Diaotai Pavilion" in history. In Shang Dynasty, Yi Yin put forward "Harmony of Five Flavors" and "Delicious with Soup", which were the earliest cooking theories related to Henan cuisine.
Several capitals in Henan history have also promoted the development of Henan cuisine, such as "Eight Treasures of the Zhou Dynasty" recorded in historical books and "Luoyang Water Seats" customized by Wu Zetian in the Tang Dynasty. By the Song Dynasty, the capital Bianliang was the largest consumer city in China, and the restaurants, restaurants, restaurants and tea shops depicted in Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival were all over the streets. There are hundreds of dishes in the "Seventy-two Shops" recorded in "Dream of Tokyo" and the shops in the shops, and Henan cuisine has reached its peak.
Later, when the Song Dynasty moved south, the influence of Henan cuisine declined, but it still had a great influence on Jiangnan cooking. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Henan cuisine declined, but it still had a place in the competition of major cuisines. In the Ming Dynasty, Brahma Lu Cong Lu recorded: "Shanxi, Shandong, Sichuan, Yunnan, Henan, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other provinces, food has its own taste, and food has its own specialty."
In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, Yuan Shikai came to power, and Henan cuisine also ushered in a glorious era.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, only Shandong cuisine was the most popular in Beijing, and the limelight completely suppressed other cuisines. According to China Cooking,
Surrounded by Shandong cuisine, there is a restaurant in Henan that fights its way out. This restaurant is Houdefu. Chen Liantang, the founder of Houdefu, is from Qixian County, Henan Province, and his parents are beggars. Chen Liantang came to Beijing as a teenager and worked in a restaurant. Later, she learned to cook and was good at cooking. In 192, a tobacco shop in Dashilan, Beijing closed, where Chen Liantang founded Houdefu, which specializes in Henan cuisine.
in the first few years, Houdefu's business was not good. However, with the collapse of the imperial system, the rise of a person changed the fate of Hou Defu, and this is Yuan Shikai, a native of Xiangcheng, Henan.
Yuan Shikai likes eating fish and fishing. When he lived in seclusion in Huanshang Village, he claimed to be an old man in Huanshang and built a fish pond to raise fish himself. Yuan Shikai's favorite fish is the Yellow River carp in Heigangkou, north of Kaifeng, which he thinks cannot be compared with other fish. Yuan Shikai likes to eat soft-slip carp baked noodles, also known as soft-slip carp baked noodles, which is a famous Henan dish now, made of sweet and sour soft juice, also known as sweet and sour fish baked noodles or soft-slip Yellow River carp baked noodles.
Speaking of the dish of baked noodles with carp, it's actually not complicated to make. The main ingredient is Yellow River carp. Because the water in the Yellow River is quick and cold, the meat quality of the Yellow River carp is "fresh, white and tender". Then, a baked noodles with sweet and sour sauce for fish is combined with baked noodles, and a baked noodle with carp is finished. And eating this dish is more exquisite. You must use a spoon to hold fish and sauce, and chopsticks to sandwich the noodles, and at the same time send them to your mouth to be perfect.
As for how Yuan Shikai, who lives in Beijing, ate fresh Yellow River carp, there are two historical accounts. The first is that local officials in Henan province fill boxes with uncondensed lard, and the live fish just caught are put into this lard. With the condensation of oil, the fish suffocate and die, and they are completely isolated from the outside air. The second theory is that local officials put spring water in vats, put the fish in vats and transport them to Beijing by train.
another record says that when Feng Guozhang was president of Beiyang, he ordered people to pick up fish from Zhongnanhai and sell them at a high price, including fish released by Yuan Shikai and paid tribute from Henan. Therefore, on the whole, the second statement is more credible.
With the rise of Yuan Shikai, Houdefu, a restaurant in Henan, has become a gathering place for dignitaries, and Houdefu's business has suddenly improved. In 1916, Yuan Shikai proclaimed himself emperor, and Hou Defu borrowed the signboard of "Henan people" to create public opinion. For a time, Hou Defu's business grew bigger and bigger, with abundant funds and famous chefs, and became a famous restaurant in Beijing at that time.
Houdefu, a century-old Henan restaurant, was located in Inner Street of Deshengmen, Beijing.
In Liang Shiqiu's works, Henan cuisine can be compared with Shandong cuisine, which was in its heyday.
Yuan Shikai declared the abolition of the imperial system 83 days after he proclaimed himself emperor, and then he died of illness. Houdefu, who was famous by borrowing Yuan Shikai's publicity, was not greatly affected, because Houdefu's skills were indeed ranked first in Beijing at that time.
Liang Shiqiu is an out-and-out gourmet. He can almost tell which hutong in Beijing has any famous food and which restaurant has any flavor dishes. In his book "Ya She Tan Chi", he described many masterpieces of Beijing cuisine, including roast duck from Quanjude and Cheap Square. Roasted mutton in Zhengyanglou, Barbecue Bay and Barbecue Season; Houdefu's iron pot eggs, tile fish and walnut waist; Crystal shrimp, soup packets and sweet soup walnut cheese in Yuhuatai; Zhimeizhai's pot roast chicken, fried wonton, crispy and fried belly; Hibiscus chicken slices, mullet thread, roasted winter bamboo shoots with shrimp seeds and steamed duck liver with distiller's grains in Dongxing Building; Zhongxintang's fried shrimp, salted shrimp and so on.
Most of these restaurants are Shandong cuisine, which was the mainstream of Beijing at that time. Hou Defu was the only one in Henan Restaurant. In Liang Shiqiu's works, Hou Defu is comparable to those of Shandong cuisine restaurants, and Hou Defu's famous dishes: Yellow River carp baked noodles, fried walnut loin, iron pot eggs, tiled fish, two cooked fish, etc., have made people's mouths water.
The tile fish is the thick yellow river carp or silver carp, and the best part of it is taken. Knife is also exquisite, not only to peel the fish fillet and cut it moderately thick, but also to avoid cutting the fishbone into too many pieces. The sliced fish fillets are not covered with batter, but with protein powder. Warm oil into the pot, fry until yellow, and then add rock sugar with the best lotus root starch to make sweet and sour juice. Add a spoonful of hot oil while it is hot, pour it on the fried fish pieces, and finally sprinkle with Jiang Mo, and serve.
The famous fried walnut loin is made by selecting the best pork loin, cutting it into small rectangular pieces with vertical and horizontal surfaces, marking the lines with a vertical knife and cross knife, and then frying it in an oil pan. At this time, the oil should be hot but not boiling, fried until it turns yellow, the waist piece shrinks into a circle, and the knife edge opens into a walnut shape, hence the name walnut waist. Deep-fried golden walnut waist is eaten with pepper and salt while it is hot. It is crisp and tender for a while, neither soft nor hard, and the pepper is full of fragrance.
In the 15th year of the Republic of China (1926), Beijing Morning Post wrote:
Not only that, Hou Defu opened more than a dozen semicolons at the height of the Republic of China. Shops have expanded to Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Harbin, Xi 'an, Qingdao, Chongqing, Nanjing, Changchun, Chengdu, Hongkong, Taiwan Province and Japan.
nowadays, when it comes to Henan cuisine, the first thing that comes to many people's minds is Huimian Noodles, Henan.
In recent twenty or thirty years, even native Henan people don't know about Henan cuisine.
There are reports in Henan media that Zhou Enlai personally decided to use Henan cuisine as the national banquet in founding ceremony in 1949. However, the three craftsmen did not find other information to confirm this incident.
Since the 198s, there have been more and more restaurants in the streets of China. Sichuan cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, Western cuisine, Japanese cuisine ... all kinds of dishes have become popular, but Henan cuisine has always been silent. Houdefu, as a signboard of Henan cuisine, was renamed Henan Restaurant during the Cultural Revolution. In 1988, it resumed its old name and changed its location several times in the next 2 years. Finally, in October 21, Houdefu closed down due to poor economic benefits.
as early as 1999, the government of Henan province proposed "revitalizing Henan cuisine", and since then, there will be related activities every few years. However, to this day, even Henan people do not know much about Henan cuisine.
Daokou roast chicken is also a famous food in Henan, which is as famous as Beijing roast duck and Jinhua ham, and is known as "the best chicken in the world"
Why is Henan cuisine so famous?
it's only a short hundred years since Henan cuisine became popular and deserted. what happened in the end that made Henan cuisine fall out of favor?
Hou Ruixuan, the first head chef of Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing and a national treasure chef, is a native of Henan and a master of Henan cuisine. His disciple, China cooking master Li Zhishun, once opened a hotel in Zhengzhou, dealing in authentic traditional Henan cuisine. Li Zhishun is well-known in the industry for sticking to the traditional techniques of Henan cuisine. He insists on hanging soup every day in his shop. Hanging soup is an indispensable part of Henan cuisine, but the cost is high, time-consuming and labor-consuming, and it is too high and too few. Eventually, the hotel closed, and Li Zhishun found another place. Some people commented that "a master can't open a shop, and he will die when he opens a shop, which has always been the case." Similar to Henan cuisine is Shandong cuisine, because there is a high demand for ingredients and soup, and in this fast-paced era, Shandong cuisine is no longer the glory of the Republic of China.
At the same time, Henan cuisine is also influenced by external factors. In the 195s and 196s, various political movements continued, the economy was depressed, and the supply of materials was tight, which was a big blow to Henan cuisine, which paid attention to raw materials and ingredients. At that time, many dishes could not be cooked. Lv Changhai, a China culinary master, once said in an interview:
Wang Xuetai said in the History of Chinese Cuisine Culture:
Most of the eight cuisines originated in economically developed areas in the past century. Although Sichuan cuisine was born in inland provinces, it is still supported by developed cities such as Chengdu and Chongqing. On the other hand, from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, Henan has been plagued by war and is not an economically developed province. After 1949, Kaifeng, once the core city of Henan cuisine, gradually declined, and Zhengzhou, the new provincial capital, was not a regional central city for a long time, so the influence of Henan cuisine gradually declined.
the most fundamental thing is taste, just like the popularity of pepper, which has various internal and external reasons, but the basis is the attraction of pepper itself to people. The famous Henan cuisine teacher summed up the characteristics of Henan cuisine and said that Henan cuisine has five flavors and moderate quality and taste. "Medium" means that Henan cuisine is not sweet, salty, spicy or sour, but seeks between sweet, salty, sour and spicy, flat and light. "Harmony" refers to the integration of the east, the west, the north and the south, in order to unify, to dissolve the sweet, salty, sour and spicy, and to seek blindly, but to seek harmony.
However, in the last two or three decades, all the attractive foods have a strong regional or extreme flavor, whether it is spicy in Sichuan or delicious seafood and aquatic products. The taste of Henan cuisine is in the middle, but it makes itself have no characteristics, can't leave a deep impression on diners, and becomes an awkward existence.