Cao Xueqin, who was born in Zhong Ming's catering family, used a lot of space to describe a complete catering system of Dream of Red Mansions. Speaking of eating in Rongning, it can be said to be rich and luxurious. How to understand the rise and fall of families and the changes of characters through the description of food in novels? So today, please invite Mr. Hu and these audience friends to discuss with us.
First of all, we need to interpret the relationship between food culture and human beings. Everyone knows that human beings will eat after birth, so eating and human beings were born at the same time, but in primitive times, human beings ate raw things.
Like cavemen in Beijing, Beijingers already know how to cook food with fire, which is a great revolution of human food culture, that is, to promote human food culture to civilization by using torches.
We can see that in the process of human development, the diet has gradually changed from coarse to fine, from low to high, from food and clothing to the pursuit of delicious food and delicacies, which means that the human diet civilization has gradually developed.
When Mr. Cao Xueqin wrote A Dream of Red Mansions, he described such a grand food pedigree, which should be A Dream of Red Mansions. Let's summarize it from several aspects:
First of all, what is the biggest feeling of the diet in A Dream of Red Mansions? It is rich. Among China's classical novels, no novel is as rich as A Dream of Red Mansions.
A Dream of Red Mansions pays attention to this wealthy family, which is "the hometown of food and the home of poetry and propriety in Ding Shi". That kind of wealth and power means that it must pay attention to its diet. One pressure is that you keep eating. There are more than 65,438+080 kinds of dishes and pasta in your diet, including staple food and vegetables.
Secondly, there is another feature: the diet in A Dream of Red Mansions is nourishing, dietotherapy and nourishing, that is, keeping in good health, that is, combining medicine and food in ancient China well, that is, paying attention to keeping in good health and health, which is the second feature of the diet in A Dream of Red Mansions.
The third dietary feature of A Dream of Red Mansions is that every dietary activity is combined with game activities. After you see a large-scale food activity, almost all activities have game activities, such as couplets, guessing games, delivering packages and so on. So there is another dish that we have seen for us, including water, land and air, as well as Chinese and foreign, north and south, Manchu and Han, that is to say, ancient and modern.
I remember that eggplant owl is the dish that the Jia family invited granny Liu. Jia's diet is very rich, which can be seen. His way of eating is very exaggerated, but his cooking skills are relatively well-founded, so it is not that kind of fiction. There is also the second half of the book, that is, the part where twelve women eat roast venison, which is also called Li Xuehongmei.
When I ate venison in Xue Lu Temple, I found that my classmates remembered it clearly. Eggplant is unforgettable because it is too expensive. Then pigeon eggs, which really showed its value, followed by venison. Because eating it, everyone is very relaxed and happy.
At the banquet, it should also be a secret banquet, not a Ming banquet, as mentioned in A Dream of Red Mansions. He didn't write it clearly. He writes about family gatherings and small banquets, especially when writing about personal eating habits. Every dish has a name, such as wormwood stalk, shredded chicken wormwood stalk, fried bean sprouts, spiced kohlrabi, steamed taro and so on.
But he avoided the grand banquet. How can you write with so many people? Where to start writing, avoid it, but be detailed. He pays special attention to everyone's personal eating activities, so he writes very carefully. From the beginning, through this Zhou Rui family, I began to say that Jia Fu bought two or three baskets of crabs. The second is this eggplant, eggplant, which was originally a story that Wang Xifeng wanted to play tricks on Granny Liu. In Luoyang, she will eat a dish called Peony Banquet, which is made by cutting shredded radish as thin as hair, steaming it for nine times and stewing it in chicken soup. This is a dish that Wu Zetian once ate. One version says that this eggplant must be steamed nine times. Some chefs or some food researchers think this is impossible. How can I steam it dry nine times? In fact, after I ate the peony banquet in Henan, I knew it was possible and possible. This eggplant from the peasant family has become a very rich and noble dish when it arrives at Jiafu, a famous family.
Some people say that A Dream of Red Mansions is not only a masterpiece with great Gao Wenxue value, but also a unique diet spectrum. Cao Xueqin described Jia's food and drink life in detail with more pen and ink, involving nearly 100 kinds of snacks, drinks, soups, staple foods and dishes. Not inferior to a middle-class restaurant now. Here is a brief introduction to some representative weight loss methods.
One: Dim Sum
Small flour fruit is a traditional snack that northerners like to eat. The manufacturing method is relatively simple. Dough is made into various shapes such as animals, flowers and fruits, and then fried. In the forty-first chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions, I wrote: "I brought two small boxes. After opening it, there are two kinds in each box ..... that is all kinds of small noodles fried with cream. "
Chestnut powder cake is a traditional snack with local characteristics in Jiangnan area. It is made of lotus root starch of West Lake and fresh chestnut powder baked with sugar, sprinkled with osmanthus and steamed in a cage. The thirty-seventh chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions wrote: "Aroma brought two small boxes of silk." ..... A plate of steamed new chestnut powder cake with sweet-scented osmanthus sugar. "
Cream Crispy Roll This is a typical traditional crispy cake that people like to eat, also known as "pine nuts". It is made of butter and flour, stuffed with pine nuts and baked. I wrote in the sixty-second story of A Dream of Red Mansions: "I saw a box sent by the Liu family, and Xiaoyan opened it ... and a plate of four cream puffs."
Two: drinks
Rose Brine This is a drink made of roses, and its quality is extremely high. In the 34th chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions, I wrote, "I only took the sweet-stained rose gravy and ate it. After eating half a bowl, catkins are tired of eating, not sweet. "
Poria cocos cream This is a nourishing drink made of fungi. In the sixty-fourth chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions, I wrote: "Yesterday, an official from eastern Guangdong visited the church and sent two small baskets of poria cocos cream."
Third: soup
Jianlian jujube soup Jianlian is produced in Jianning, Fujian, and has high nutritional value. The soup stewed with red dates and rock sugar tastes delicious and is called a tonic. I wrote in the fifty-second chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions: "My little girl brought a bowl of Jianlian jujube soup with a small tea tray, and Baoyu took two sips."
Ham soup with fresh bamboo shoots is a delicious soup with fresh bamboo shoots as the main ingredient. It is made by cutting ham into small pieces and stewing it with fresh bamboo shoots and rock sugar. It has the effects of invigorating kidney, nourishing stomach, promoting fluid production, stimulating appetite, strengthening body constitution and strengthening bones. I wrote in the fifty-eighth chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions: "I saw a bowl of ham and fresh bamboo shoot soup in the box and quickly put it in front of Baoyu."
The fire meat cabbage soup is made of fresh and tender Chinese cabbage with ham slices, fresh minced meat, mushrooms and so on. Stewed with chicken soup, it is delicious. In the eighty-seventh episode of A Dream of Red Mansions, Zijuan said, "Just now I asked Xueyan to tell the kitchen to cook a bowl of turkey cabbage soup for the girl."
Four: dishes
Steamed mutton with milk is a famous dish with sheep fetus as the main material, which has high nourishing and dietetic effects. The forty-ninth chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions wrote: "It's very easy to wait until the food is served. The first course is steamed mutton with milk."
Trough quail has a long history of eating quail in China, especially in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, trough quail became a popular game and became a famous game. The fiftieth chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions wrote: "(Jia Mu) asked what was on that plate, and everyone quickly held it over and said it was a bad quail."
Fried wolfberry buds with oil and salt This is a light and delicious vegetarian dish popular in Jiangnan. It is made of medlar buds and winter bamboo shoots as main raw materials and quickly stir-fried with fire. The fiftieth time in A Dream of Red Mansions wrote: "The day before yesterday, Miss San and Miss Bao accidentally discussed and asked for fried wolfberry buds with oil and salt."
In addition, there are many beautiful dishes, such as Little jiaozi, yam cakes, goose skin soup, bird's nest soup, stewed elbow with ham, wind-cured civet cats, eggplant turtles and so on. It makes readers drool, and at the same time lets us see the splendid food culture of that era.