Mengmeng Bashu Rain·Chengdu Trip·Chengdu·Food in Chengdu
The food culture of Chengdu, the land of abundance, has a long history, which is closely related to its rich products and long culture. Chengdu's local flavor can be said to be the most prominent representative of Sichuan's local flavor, which is mainly divided into several categories such as Sichuan cuisine, famous snacks, nourishing medicinal foods and famous wines.
"One dish, one style, one hundred dishes and one hundred flavors"
Sichuan cuisine with unique flavor is one of the four famous cuisines in the country. Its main characteristics are: "The taste is rich and colorful, the seasoning changes exquisitely, both freshness and richness are emphasized, and the good use of spicy food is good." Sichuan cuisine attaches great importance to seasoning. The five basic flavors of "salty, sweet, numbing, spicy, and sour" are the most important in Sichuan cuisine. But it has evolved into dozens of flavors and thousands of flavors such as salty, fish flavor, lychee, homemade, spicy, salty spicy, sesame paste, ginger juice, garlic paste, red oil, strange flavor, five spice, tangerine peel, etc., so people Sichuan cuisine is praised as "one dish, one style, one hundred dishes and one hundred flavors". The reputation of "Taste in Sichuan" has also spread like wildfire.
Zuo Si of the Jin Dynasty's "Ode to the Capital of Shu" once described Sichuan cuisine as "sitting in the middle of a golden barrier, with dishes on four sides, with clear wine and fresh wine with purple scales." Su Shi, a famous writer in the Northern Song Dynasty, loved the food of his hometown. He was not only a connoisseur of Sichuan food, but also cooked Sichuan food himself. He created the flavored Sichuan dishes "Dongpo elbow" and "Dongpo fish" and summed up the cooking secret: "Slow fire , with less water, it will be beautiful when the fire is sufficient." Su Shi said in "Dongpo Zhilin": "When I was in Dongpo, I often cooked fish to entertain guests. . During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Li Tiaoyuan, a talented scholar from Sichuan (Jinshi of the Qianlong Emperor, a litterateur and opera theorist in the Qing Dynasty), summarized the functions of pickling, crisping, boiling, fermenting, fumigating, steaming, winding, and drunkenness in "Hanhai Xingyuan Lu" More than 30 cooking methods have further enriched the traditional cooking techniques of Sichuan cuisine.
Sichuan cuisine has a wide range of ingredients, mainly poultry, fish, fresh vegetables, and delicacies from the mountains and wild game are included in the delicacies. Since the development of Sichuan cuisine, it has more than 3,000 varieties and more than 300 famous dishes. Among the most famous dishes are: boiled beef, Mapo tofu, Dengying beef, Kung Pao chicken, twice-cooked pork, camphor tea duck, crispy rice and other delicacies.
Sichuan cuisine can be divided into high-end banquets, ordinary banquets, popular casual meals, and home-cooked dishes. High-end banquets mostly use delicacies from the mountains and seas, accompanied by seasonal vegetables. The soup is often more important than the vegetables, and the vegetarian food is more important than the meat. Representative dishes include braised bear paws, steamed river dumplings, dry-roasted shark fins, boiled cabbage, rock sugar white fungus soup, chicken and vegetables, etc.; ordinary dishes The banquet is also known as the "nine bowls" among the people. It is mainly steamed, grilled, stir-fried and stir-fried. The representative dishes include steamed pork with rice flour, salty roasted white pork, sweet roasted white pork, roasted assorted vegetables, steamed elbow, crispy meat soup, shredded leek yellow pork, palace. Baoji diced chicken, white oil liver slices, etc. are characterized by their delicious flavor, simplicity and affordability; popular light meals generally emphasize both soups and vegetables, as well as meat and vegetables, which can better fully represent the characteristics of Sichuan cuisine. They are quick to prepare, can be ordered at the table, and are economical and convenient. The main dishes include Kung Pao chicken, boiled pork slices, fish-flavored pork slices, roasted goose, watercress fish, etc.; the home-cooked flavor is easy to use, simple to operate, and rich in local flavor. Representative dishes include twice-cooked pork, white meat with garlic paste, continuous pot soup, and sesame seeds. Po tofu, minced meat kimchi, etc.
Chengdu’s famous Sichuan restaurants include Furong Restaurant, Rongyuan Garden, Jingcheng Garden, Yaohua Restaurant, Chengdu Restaurant, etc., and more upscale ones include Jinjiang Hotel, Minshan Hotel, Chengdu Hotel, Tibet Hotel, etc. Foreign-related hotels. Generally, tourists can invite three or five friends to order and dine in small street restaurants, and they can still appreciate the flavor of Sichuan cuisine.
Chengdu snacks
There are no less than 200 kinds of famous snacks in Chengdu, which are typical representatives of Sichuan famous snacks. Chengdu's famous snacks can be regarded as a kind of traditional Sichuan "fast food". Lai Tangyuan, Guo Tangyuan, Long Chaoshou, Zhong Dumplings, Husband and Wife Fei Slices, Dandan Noodles, Guyuehu Sanhe Ni, Xiaolong Beef, Egg Baked Cake, Dongzikou Liang Noodles, Hot and Sour Noodles, Pearl Yuanzi, "Three Cannons", etc. Far and near. Most of these famous snacks have their own origins.
During the Anti-Japanese War, Guo Chaohua and his wife from Santai County, Sichuan Province, who came to Chengdu to study art, set up a stall selling beef offal in Changshun Street in the city. The production technology was unique, and the "Fei Slices" they sold were thin, translucent and delicious. tasty. Since they were the only two people setting up the stall at that time, people nicknamed it "Couple's Fei Pie". Later, they simply used "Husband and Wife Fei Pian" as their signboard. Nowadays, the Couple's Beef Shop located near the Municipal Working People's Cultural Palace has dozens of employees. In fact, "couple's lung slices" are not real lung slices, but made from beef heart, tongue, tripe, scalp and beef.
In the late Qing Dynasty, young farmer Lai Yuanxin came to Chengdu from Ziyang County, Sichuan to seek refuge with his uncle who sold Tang Yuan. Later, he walked alone in the streets selling soup yuan. His Tang Yuan was made with exquisite materials and fine workmanship, and the skin was thin and sweet. His business became prosperous day by day, and he was able to marry a wife and open a shop. With "Lai Tang Yuan" as his sign, he became his own brand. Famous snack bars like Zhong Shui Dumplings, Dongzikou Liang Noodles, etc. that use their surname or address as a sign in front of their business items to express "genuine products at reasonable prices, one of a kind".
Dandan noodles come from Chengdu people’s economic snack for midnight snacks. In the past, every evening, noodle sellers would pick up a pair of noodles and sell them along the street. The front of the noodle basket is equipped with a wooden cabinet for holding chopsticks, bowls, sauna jars, etc., and the back is equipped with a coke oven and a bellows, so that small bowls of shredded chicken and bean curd noodles, clear soup noodles with miscellaneous sauce, plain noodles, sweet noodles, etc. can be supplied anytime and anywhere. This is where the name "Dan Dan Noodles" comes from. Dandan noodles is a general term and does not specifically refer to the small bowl of crispy noodles.
The emergence of egg baked cake can be described as "unintentional planting of willows and willows".
It is said that during the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, the old man Shi and his family lived in poverty on Wenmiao Street. One windy and snowy day, an old couple gathered around a drying cage (a kind of heating appliance in Sichuan) to keep warm. Their five-year-old son broke an egg into a bowl, mixed in some fermented flour and brown sugar, and stirred it with chopsticks. Neighbor friends held an "Auntie Feast" (a children's game in Sichuan). The teacher's wife was very angry and beat her with her hands. The old teacher quickly comforted his wife and children. He placed the copper pot on the baking cage, blew on the charcoal fire, poured in a spoonful of egg juice mixed by his son, and accidentally baked an egg cake. My son burst into tears and laughed after tasting it. After that, he tried making some and distributed them to his neighbors, and everyone praised them. With the help of his neighbors, Shi Laohan's egg bakery shop opened and its reputation spread far and wide. An old scholar from Shishi Academy personally inscribed a couplet: "The fragrance of eggs stored in the teeth will enhance the splendor of beautiful articles; the sweet wine left in the mouth, the dragon and phoenix giant statues will produce strange flowers."
Chengdu Medicinal Diet
During the Warring States Period, the famous doctor Bian Que first advocated "food therapy first and then drug therapy". Our country has had the theory of "medicine and food having the same origin" since ancient times. Sichuan has made unique contributions to the development of medicated diet in my country. Yan Gui, a famous doctor in the Tang Dynasty and a native of Yanting, Sichuan, wrote ten volumes of "Food Law", which is an early treatise on dietary therapy in my country; during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Chen Shiliang, a master of the Jiange medical field, wrote ten volumes of "Food Nature and Materia Medica", which is now highly praised by Japanese scholars. "Qi Materia Medica" compiled by Tian Xi, a Hongya person in the Song Dynasty, was an early monograph in my country that introduced various kinds of koji wine and medicinal wine for treating diseases. Sichuan is also one of the main producing areas of Chinese herbal medicines in my country. The output of bulk mainstream commercial medicinal materials accounts for one-third of the country's total, and it is a famous "hometown of medicinal materials". In ancient times, Sichuan people used rich medicated diet theories, sourced local materials, and appropriately combined medicines and food to cook delicious medicated diets that had the effects of preventing and curing diseases and prolonging life. Therefore, Sichuan became the hometown of medicated diets. Traditional medicated foods are divided into several categories: porridge, dishes, soups, ointments, medicinal wine, etc.
Chengdu Tongrentang is the first restaurant in China to set up a restaurant to sell medicinal food as a specialized business item. Tongrentang Medicinal Food Restaurant changes with the seasons, paying attention to the deficiency and excess of yin and yang, distinguishing cold, hot and warm, with spring focusing on "rising and tonic", summer focusing on "clearing and tonic", autumn focusing on "leveling tonic", and winter focusing on "warming and tonic". The varieties of cakes, dishes, drinks and so on are gradually improving. The restaurant also has a tonic medicine counter and provides consultation services. In recent years, the Baicao Garden Restaurant of Chengdu Minshan Hotel has also become famous for its authentic medicinal cuisine. Tourists from Japan, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Southeast Asia often visit these two restaurants.
"Fine wine in Chengdu is good for old age"
Li Shangyin, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, recited a famous line at the farewell banquet when the shogunate of Dongchuan Jiedushi was transferred to Xichuan Tui Prison: "Wine is good for old age in Chengdu" "Old man, he is still Zhuo Wenjun" ("Du Gongbu left the banquet in Shu"). Although it is a euphemistic and ironic sentence, it also truly depicts the beauty of Chengdu wine through allusions from Shu that can accompany people throughout their lives. . With thousands of miles of fertile wilderness, no shortage of food, excellent water quality, and a mild climate, Chengdu is well-deserved as the “Land of Wine and Brewing.” In 1977 and 1978, the wine-making and banquet tiles fired in the eighth year of Yongping (65 AD) of the Eastern Han Dynasty were unearthed near Chengdu, reflecting the flourishing wine-making and drinking styles in Chengdu during the Eastern Han Dynasty. During the Three Kingdoms period, Liu Bei ordered a ban on alcohol in Chengdu to curb the trend of drinking among the people, so as to enrich the country and strengthen the army. The poet Zhang Ji of the Tang Dynasty once described the scene of restaurants in Chengdu like forests, singing and dancing in the poem "There are many restaurants beside the bridge thousands of miles away, who do tourists like to stay at?" ("Chengdu Song"); the poet Lu Youhan of the Southern Song Dynasty visited Shuzhou (now Chongqing, Chengdu) County), he saw that Chengdu had a lot of fine wine, and had to identify the flags of restaurants to buy wine every day. He sighed: "Yizhou Guanlou has a sea of ??wine. I came to explain the flag and buy it every day." ("Drunken Book Upstairs") < /p>
Chengdu has produced famous wines since ancient times, and now the winemaking industry is very developed. Quanxing Daqu produced by Chengdu Winery ranks among the "Chinese Famous Wines" list. The Wenjun wine produced in Qionglai County, Zhuo Wenjun's hometown, is also a nationally renowned high-quality wine. According to legend, during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Shanxi people opened wineries in Chengdu according to the "Fenjiu" brewing method. Later, brewing workers based on Chengdu's climate, water quality, soil quality, raw materials, and cellar age conditions, adapted measures to local conditions, and created a set of wines through long-term practice and exploration. The unique brewing process was named "Quanxing Laohao" in the fourth year of Daoguang reign (1824).