Due to the differences between Chinese and western philosophies, westerners attach importance to science in diet, which means emphasizing nutrition. Therefore, nutrition is the highest standard in western diet. Eating is like fueling a biological machine. We pay special attention to the nutritional components of food, whether the contents of protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and various inorganic elements are properly matched, whether the heat supply is just right, and whether these nutritional components can be fully absorbed by consumers and whether there are other side effects. These problems are put forward by the university in cooking, and the color, aroma and taste of dishes are second-class requirements. Even in France, a leading western food country, although its food culture is similar to ours in many aspects, in terms of nutrition, the two sides have already pulled away.
China's cooking technique "Harmony of Five Flavors" aims at the pursuit of delicacy. In the process of processing, hot frying and long-term slow fire attack will destroy the nutritional components of dishes. Although French cooking also pursues exquisiteness, at the same time, it never forgets the premise of "nutrition". They don't want to give up nutrition and pursue delicious food. Especially in the 1960s, modern cooking thought especially emphasized health preservation and weight loss, so it pursued lightness and less oil, emphasized the use of fresh raw materials, and emphasized the preservation of original nutrients and original flavor in the cooking process, so vegetables were basically eaten raw. Therefore, it is common for western diets to attach importance to nutrition.
To be fair, talking about nutrition also touches the biggest weakness of China's diet. Although we pay attention to diet therapy, food supplement and food support, and keep healthy and strong through diet, our cooking skills are in pursuit of prison? Hey? Hey? How much is the charge? What are you talking about? Small =? The next night? ∑∑∑∑∑∑? Thinking about leaves and pine trees? Hey? I'm afraid I am a poor animal, but I don't know what I am doing. What's left? Hey? Kao Rong souhui? Tired? What happened to Guangdong?
We have always regarded the pursuit of food as the primary purpose of eating. There is a folk saying: "Food is the most important thing for the people, and taste is the first thing to eat". Although people always say "delicious" when praising food, it is because our sensory organs "eyes, nose and mouth" are arranged in this order. People's inner feelings about "color, fragrance and taste" have always been "taste".
Because people in China attach great importance to taste, some dishes in China are just taste carriers, such as sea cucumber, fish lips, shark's fin, bear's paw and hump, which are recognized as valuable dishes. Their main ingredient is animal glue similar to cheap skin, which is not delicious in itself. We have to feed it with fresh soup, and then feed it to people when we are full. Isn't this the authentic taste carrier?
China people attach importance to taste, which is also reflected in their daily conversations, such as family banquets. As soon as the main course is served, the host will often humbly say, "The food is not well cooked, and it may not be to your taste." He would never say, "The nutritional value of vegetables is not high, and the calories are not enough."
Western cooking pays attention to nutrition and ignores taste, at least not to enjoy taste as the primary purpose. They eat cold drinks and add ice cubes to chilled wine. Once the taste nerves all over the surface of the tongue are frozen, they will lose their taste sensitivity greatly and gradually become unable to distinguish taste. Bloody steak, big white fish, big white meat, raw vegetables, boiled beans and potatoes, although they have "taste", are not in the "way", which all reflect westerners' neglect of taste. Their refusal to use monosodium glutamate is enough to prove that this generation belongs to people who don't know the taste. They are not guests who know the taste!
Based on the emphasis on nutrition, westerners eat more vegetables, not only tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce, but also cabbages, onions and broccoli. Therefore, their "salad" is like a plate of rabbit feed, which makes it difficult for us to accept. Modern China people also talk about nutrition and health care, knowing that once vegetables are heated, vitamins will be destroyed, so we advocate cooking with strong fire. Although this also reduces the vitamin content, it will not be completely lost, but it tastes much better than rabbit feed. Therefore, modern cooking in China aims at the best balance between nutrition and taste, which of course belongs to the "golden mean".
Norm and arbitrariness
Westerners emphasize science and nutrition in diet, so the whole cooking process is carried out in strict accordance with scientific norms. From new york to San Francisco, the taste of steak is the same, and the only side dishes of steak are tomatoes, potatoes and lettuce. In addition, standardized cooking requires that the amount of seasoning added is accurate to grams and the cooking time is accurate to seconds. In addition, the article "Eating in the Netherlands" published in the first issue of Overseas Digest 1995 also describes: "The Dutch kitchen is equipped with a balance, a liquid measuring cup, a timer and a graduated pot, and dozens of evenly sized seasoning bottles are arranged on the seasoning rack, just like a chemical laboratory."
Cooking in China is completely different, not only the major cuisines have their own flavors and characteristics, but also the collocation of side dishes and seasonings used in the same cuisine will be different according to the chef's personal characteristics. Even if the same chef cooks the same dish, although he has his own method, it will be adjusted according to different seasons, occasions and diners' identities (for example, the flavor is strong in winter and light in summer, the wedding banquet must be brightly colored, and the funeral banquet should be red; Poor people should kill their greed with thick oil and juice, and gourmets should have fresh and unique meals. In addition, due to the change of the chef's own on-the-spot mood, he will also make some improvisations. Therefore, China's cooking not only does not emphasize the standardization of accuracy to seconds and grams, but also emphasizes randomness.
The randomness of food processing first led to the repeated expansion of menu space in China: the diversity of raw materials, knives, spices and cooking methods, and then cross-combined, one raw material can be made into several or even dozens or dozens of dishes. For example, the most commonly used raw chicken can cook dozens or even hundreds of dishes in the hands of Guangdong chefs. So are other raw materials. Therefore, in places rich in certain raw materials, tables and tables of banquets can often be made with this raw material, such as the whole duck banquet in Beijing, the whole dog banquet in Yanbian, the whole fish banquet and the whole oyster banquet in Guangdong, the whole cow banquet in Li Hesheng, the whole sheep banquet in Changsha and the whole pig banquet in some Muslim restaurants in Beijing, all of which reflect China's cooking.
Their respective harmonious combination
Mr. Qian Mu, a master of Chinese studies in Taiwan Province Province, said in the preface of "On the Academic Balance in Modern China": "Taiwan Province's scholarship varies with different cultures. China is harmonious, while the West is divided. "This cultural feature is also reflected in Chinese and Western food culture. Except some soup dishes in western food, such as Russian red vegetable soup (Luo Songtang), it is cooked in one pot with all kinds of meat and vegetable raw materials. Fish is fish, chicken is chicken, snail is snail, and oyster is oyster. The so-called "burning beef with potatoes" is only burning beef with cooked potatoes, and it is by no means a combination of potatoes and beef. Even seasoning ingredients, such as ketchup, mustard sauce, lemon juice and spicy soy sauce, are eaten and added now. All of the above embodies the "western emphasis on separation." "
People in China have always regarded harmony as the most wonderful realm, music pays attention to harmony, singing pays attention to harmony, and medicine advocates the unity of form and spirit. We hope to achieve "political harmony" in national politics. And we call the marriage of husband and wife "marriage" and the beautiful marriage "a match made in heaven"; When we express our reverence, we hold hands together as gifts. When all the beautiful things come together, we call it "a match made in heaven".
The core of China's cooking is "harmony of five flavors", which is called "compatibility of fire and water, harmony of five flavors" in Suntech, Wen Zi. Lu's "Chunqiu Benwei Pian" praised "harmony of five flavors" as "the change of three pillars, which is exquisite and witty".
China's theory of five flavors harmony consists of original flavor theory, smell yin and yang theory, time sequence theory and palatability theory. In other words, the "harmony of five flavors" should be carried out on the basis of attaching importance to the natural taste of cooking materials, and the basic laws of yin and yang and five elements should be used to guide this harmony. Reconciliation should conform to the time sequence, pay attention to the season, and the final result of reconciliation should be delicious. Therefore, almost every Chinese dish should be cooked with more than two kinds of raw materials and various seasonings. That is to say, home cooking is usually cooked with vegetarian dishes, such as fried shredded pork with chives, fried garlic sprouts with sliced pork, braised pork with yuba and fried dried beancurd with celery ... If these raw materials are cooked in western kitchens, shredded pork with milk is boiled with white water, or fried pork chops are boiled with clear water, is it natural for China diners to "laugh and cry"? Authentic western food is steak with two potatoes, three tomatoes and four-leaf lettuce. Although they are on the same plate, they are "separate" and do not interfere with each other. Only when you eat it can you reconcile it.
People in China call cooking "cooking", which means that we always combine cooking and mixing. In the west, there used to be unadjusted cooking, and now there is adjustment, but it still belongs to two independent processes.
In terms of food tools, the west pursues a separate meal system. First of all, we should order our own dishes and what we want to eat, which also shows the respect of individuality in the west. After serving, people eat their own dishes, add seasonings at will, eat a second dish after eating one dish, and never mix the first and second dishes. For Chinese food, a table of people sit around and eat a table of dishes, and the hot pot in a cold and hot casserole is full of tables. Diners eat one bite in the east and one bite in the west, and swallow several dishes at the same time, which is completely different from the eating utensils in western food, and reflects the fundamental difference between Chinese and western cultures.
Mechanical and interesting
Due to the standardization of western food, cooking has become a mechanical job. KFC grandpa fried chicken should be prepared according to the formula; The temperature of oil and the time of fried chicken should also be strictly regulated, so the cook's work has become an extremely monotonous mechanical work. He is like a worker on the auto production line, and even robots can take his place. Furthermore, the purpose of westerners' eating is to absorb nutrition. As long as the nutrition is up to standard, others can tolerate it. Therefore, it is definitely not interesting for a chef to repeat mechanical work every day with an extremely tolerant attitude towards diners.
In China, cooking is an art, as San Mao, a female writer, said in the article Hotel in the Desert: "I have always hated doing housework, but I am very interested in cooking. A few onions and pieces of meat are fried into a dish, and I appreciate this art. " Cooking is an art, which, like other arts, embodies the unity of rigor and improvisation. Therefore, cooking has always been very interesting in China, even with a certain degree of interest, attracting China people who regard diet as their greatest pleasure in life.
Interesting cooking is a tradition in China. The unearthed Han Dynasty portrait "Kitchen Painting" is very similar to the performance of a large acrobatic troupe. In Du Fu's two poems "For Tao", the poem "Chopping the air with a machete" refers to a knife with many bells tied to its back. It is said that chefs in the Tang Dynasty can use it to play Ding Dong's music when cutting vegetables. It's a pity that this knife and the skill of operating it have been lost.
Similar to them, instant-boiled mutton, Sichuan spicy hotpot and Guangdong seafood hotpot are widely loved because they are fresh, tender, spicy and comfortable to eat, and because they move the main part of cooking to the dining table, so that people can experience this interesting cooking method while eating. Another example is Xi 'an's mutton bread in soup, which is hard and hard. It seems that the guests want to break into pieces and eat them themselves, which is more fragrant than the chef's chopping. The reason why Beijing-style "barbecue season" barbecue is disappointing is that it is not as delicious as before, and also because it has turned itself into a "gentleman who talks but doesn't do it." This change has turned it into a boring one, and its taste is too bad. This is all because I don't know the interesting cooking in China. It is absolutely impossible for western chefs to blindly direct tragedies and pursue the pleasure of cooking. The creed of westerners is "Work while you work, and play while you play". According to their dichotomy of mechanism, playing at work is dereliction of duty, and working in games is a loss-making business, both of which are "I do nothing"? For China people who advocate mastery, "there is a game in work and a job in the game" is the right way in the world.
Cooking has always been regarded as a great pleasure by China people, and it is regarded as a positive expression of enriching their lives. As the saying goes, "there is heaven above and a kitchen below". Cooking is as important to China as music, dance, poetry and painting, and it is of great significance to improve the realm of life.