One night in the middle of the night, Song Renzong was hungry.

He wanted to eat roasted mutton, but he didn't want to order the imperial chef to cook it, lest it become a common practice that would harm future generations. He would rather stay hungry until dawn.

Song Renzong was a foodie, but he practiced thrift.

Life in the palace was very strict. Even Song Renzong's Empress Cao had to personally ask the minister's wife for the ingredients if she wanted to make a dish of braised white fish that the emperor loved to eat.

At a palace banquet, the imperial chef prepared twenty-eight crabs. Before Song Renzong even touched his chopsticks, he said, "I haven't tasted it yet. How much are these crabs?" The left and right replied, one thousand dollars.

Song Renzong was quite dissatisfied and said, "I have warned you many times not to be extravagant and wasteful. I can't bear to spend two thousand and eighty yuan with one chopstick." He put this dish aside and did not eat it as a warning.

The Song Dynasty was a prosperous age of food, and the development of Chinese food has entered the "heyday".

From temples to markets, there are dozens of cooking methods such as frying, boiling, boiling, stir-frying, roasting, roasting, stewing, sautéing, sautéing, steaming, soaking and so on.

The familiar saying "firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea" comes from "Mengliang Lu" of the Song Dynasty.

In "Tokyo Menghualu", which can be called a guide to traveling through the Song Dynasty, it even describes the grand scene of Bianliang, Tokyo, where "treasures from all over the world are collected and returned to the market; the peculiar smells of Huihuan District are all found in the kitchen".

Three or two branches of peach blossoms outside the bamboo, warm ducks on the spring river, foretelling that the literati of the Song Dynasty had the potential to be chefs. Mei Yaochen, Ouyang Xiu, Huang Tingjian of the Northern Song Dynasty and Lu You, Fan Chengda, Yang Wanli of the Southern Song Dynasty were all famous "foodies"

, often writing dietary life into poems.

Among them was Su Shi, a gourmet who dared to admit that he was a "Gourmet". He commented on almond milk, clams, crabs, wine and other delicacies in an "Ode to Lao Gourmet".

"The sky is high", I get excited when I talk about food.

In "Dongpo Zhilin", there are also many records of his research on food.

This Jinshi during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Song Dynasty traveled all over the country in his life. He was not only good at discovering delicious food, but also spoke for delicious food. There are N kinds of dishes named after Su Dongpo, such as Dongpo elbow, Dongpo black carp, Dongpo crisp, Dongpo

Meat etc.

If we talk about the ultimate in food aesthetics in Song poetry, we have to mention Su Shi's song "Huanxisha·Dry rain and slanting wind make the morning cold": The drizzle and slanting wind make the morning cold, and the light smoke and sparse willows make the sunny beach beautiful.

The journey into Huai Qingluo is gradually long.

Snow foam and milk flowers float on the afternoon cup, and polygonum antler and artemisia bamboo shoots are served on the spring plate.

The taste of the world is pure joy.

In the seventh year of Yuanfeng (1084), the spring was cold and cold. Su Shi and his friends traveled to Nanshan and had a picnic in the mountains and forests.

In the Song Dynasty, there was a custom of giving spring dishes at the beginning of spring, that is, serving vegetables, fruits, cakes, etc. to relatives and friends.

The fruits and vegetables such as polygonum antler and artemisia bamboo shoots on the spring plate are crisp and delicious. The boiling water creates milky white foam like snowflakes in the tea set. When the foam subsides, you will have a cup of spring tea that is refreshing to the heart and spleen.

The sentence "The taste of the world is pure joy" expresses the pure and indifferent realm of life.

Su Shi often took pleasure in tasting tea and drinking wine. He claimed that "I feel sleepy even though I am tired after a long journey, and when I am thirsty, I miss tea."

He believes that the soul of making tea lies in water, with water from rain and snow being the best, followed by sweet and cold water from wells and springs. The key lies in the temperature, and the subtlety lies in the utensils.

He also has a poem called "Shui Tiao Ge Tou" that describes the process of tea picking, tea making, tea ordering and tea tasting, which is quite interesting: After several rains, there was a thunder the night before.

Flags and guns are fighting in Jianxi, and spring scenery takes the lead.

Take the sparrow tongue from the branches, pound it with dew and smoke, and form purple clouds.

The gold is crushed lightly, and the green dust flies up.

The old dragon group, the true phoenix marrow, points to the future.

In the rabbit hair cup, the taste returns to your tongue instantly.

Awakening Qingzhou to engage in work, fighting off millions of Sandman, unable to dream of the balcony.

The breeze blows from my armpits, and I want to go to Penglai.

Even if the world is full of hardships, you can still enjoy yourself by just saying "have tea".

Su Shi was relegated for most of his life and suffered all the hardships of wandering, but he always had an optimistic attitude towards life. One of the reasons may be that he was accompanied by delicious food.

Political opponents couldn't bear to see Su Shi enjoying himself in hardship, and they demoted him continuously, from Chibiji in Huangzhou to the banks of the West Lake, from the seaside of Lingnan to Hainan Island in the ends of the earth. But no matter where he went, Su Shi was always surrounded by delicious food.