Mr. Cao Xueqin, who was born in Zhong Ming's catering family, used a lot of space in A Dream of Red Mansions to describe a complete catering system of the Red School. When it comes to eating in Rong and Ning, it can be said that it is rich and luxurious. How can we experience the rise and fall of families and the changes of characters through the description of food in the novel? 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 was born at the same time as human beings, but in primitive times, human beings ate raw things.

Like the cavemen in Beijing, Peking man has already known how to cook food with fire, which is a great revolution in human food culture, that is, human food culture is promoted to civilization by using torches.

We see that in the process of human development, the diet is gradually from coarse to fine, from low to high, from food and clothing to the pursuit of 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 a pedigree of such a grand food that should be a dream of red mansions. Let's summarize it in several aspects:

First of all, what is the biggest feeling of the diet in A Dream of Red Mansions? It is rich, which among China's classical novels, no novel is so rich as A Dream of Red Mansions.

A Dream of Red Mansions, a wealthy and well-known family with a century-long history, pays attention to this "home of Zhong Ming Ding's food, the family of poetry and ceremony". That kind of wealth and power means that it must pay attention to the diet. One stress is that you are constantly eating, and there are more than 180 kinds of dishes and pastries in the diet, such as staple food and pasta.

Secondly, there is another feature: the diet in A Dream of Red Mansions is all nourishing, dietotherapy and tonic, that is, health, that is, the ancient medicine and food in China are well combined, that is, it pays attention to health preservation 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 food activity is combined with game activities. After you see a big food activity, almost all of them have game activities such as couplet poems, guessing games, pass the parcel, etc., so there is another dish that we see provided to us, including water, land and air, as well as Chinese and foreign, north and south, Manchu and Han, that is to say, it is also ancient and modern.

I remember the eggplant owl, which was the dish that the Jia family entertained Granny Liu. The Jia family's diet was very rich, which can be seen. His eating method was very exaggerated, but his cooking skills were relatively well-founded, so it was not that kind of fiction. There was also the second half of the book, that is, the section where twelve women ate roast venison, which was also called Xueli Hongmei.

When I ate venison in Luxue Temple, I found that my classmates remembered it very well. The eggplant was unforgettable, because it was so expensive. Then there was pigeon eggs, which really showed its value, and then there was venison. Because of eating it, everyone was very relaxed and happy.

In the banquet, it should also be said in A Dream of Red Mansions that it is a big banquet in secret, not a big banquet in Ming Dynasty. He didn't explicitly write it. He wrote some family gatherings and small banquets, especially when writing about personal eating habits. Every dish has a name, wormwood stalks, shredded chicken wormwood stalks, fried bean sprouts, spiced kohlrabi, steamed taro, etc.

But he avoided the big banquet. How can you write with so many people? Where to start writing, avoid it, but the details should 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 would eat a dish called Peony Banquet, which was made by cutting shredded radish as thin as hair, steaming it for nine times, and then stewing it in chicken soup. This is a dish that Wu Zetian ate that year. There is a version in which it is written that this eggplant has to be steamed and dried for nine times. Some chefs or some food researchers think that this is impossible. How can it be steamed and dried for nine times? In fact, after I ate the peony banquet in Henan, I know that this is possible and can be done. This eggplant from a farmhouse has become a very rich and noble dish when it comes to Jiafu, a noble family.

Some people say that A Dream of Red Mansions is not only a masterpiece with high literary value, but also a unique diet spectrum. Cao Xueqin gave a detailed description of Jia's food life with more pen and ink, involving nearly 100 kinds of snacks, drinks, soups, staple foods, dishes, etc., which is not inferior to a middle-class restaurant now. Here's a brief introduction to some representative diets.

One: Dim Sum

Small flour fruit is a traditional snack that northerners like to eat. The making method is relatively simple. The dough is made into various shapes such as animals, flowers and fruits, and fried. The forty-first chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions wrote: "Two more small holding boxes were brought. When they were opened, there were two kinds in each box ..... that was all kinds of small noodles fried with cream."

Chestnut powder cake is a traditional snack with local characteristics in the south of the Yangtze River. It is made of lotus root starch from West Lake, roasted fresh chestnut powder with sugar, sprinkled with osmanthus, and steamed in a cage. In the thirty-seventh chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions, it was written: "When xiren heard about it, she brought two small boxes of shredded silk ..... a dish of steamed new chestnut powder cake with sweet-scented osmanthus sugar."

Cream-filled crispy rolls 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. In the sixty-second chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions, I wrote: "I saw a box sent by the Liu family, and Xiaoyan then opened it ...... and there was a plate of four cream puffs."

Two: drinks

Rose bittern This is a kind of beverage made of rose, and its quality is extremely high. The thirty-fourth chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions wrote: "I only took the sugar-pickled rose marinade and ate it. After eating half a bowl, I was too tired of eating catkins, which was not sweet."

Poria cocos cream This is a nourishing drink made of fungi. In the sixty-fourth chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions, it was written: "Only yesterday did an official from eastern Guangdong come to worship and send two small baskets of poria cocos cream."

Three: Soups

Jianlian Jujube Soup Jianlian is produced in Jianning, Fujian Province, with high nutritional value. The soup stewed with red dates and rock sugar is delicious and is known as a tonic. In the fifty-second chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions, I wrote, "My little girl brought a bowl of Jianlian jujube soup with a small tea tray, and Baoyu took two sips."

Ham and fresh bamboo shoots soup 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 crystal sugar. It has the effects of tonifying kidney, nourishing stomach, promoting fluid production, increasing appetite, consolidating bone marrow and strengthening foot strength. In the fifty-eighth chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions, I wrote: "I saw that there was a bowl of ham and fresh bamboo shoot soup in the box, and I quickly put it in front of Baoyu."

Fire meat cabbage soup is made of fresh tender cabbage with ham slices, fresh ground, mushrooms, etc., and stewed with chicken soup, which is delicious. In the eighty-seventh chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions, Zi Juan said, "Just now I asked Xueyan to tell the kitchen to cook a bowl of turkey cabbage soup for the girl."

Four: dishes

Steamed lamb with milk is a famous dish with lamb fetus as the main material, which has a high nourishing and dietetic effect. The forty-ninth chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions wrote: "It's easy to wait until it's served, and the first course is steamed lamb with milk."

Trough quail has a long history of eating quail in China, especially in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, which 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 hurriedly held it over and said it was bad quail."

Fried Lycium barbarum buds with oil and salt This is a light and delicious vegetarian dish popular in the south of the Yangtze River. It is made of Lycium barbarum buds and winter bamboo shoots as the main raw materials and quickly stir-fried with strong fire. The fiftieth time in A Dream of Red Mansions wrote: "The day before yesterday, Miss San and Miss Bao had a chance discussion, and they wanted to have a fried wolfberry bud with oil and salt."

In addition, there are many beautiful dishes such as Little jiaozi, Yam Cake, Goose Skin Soup, Bird's Nest Soup, Stewed Elbow with Ham, Wind Pickled Civet, Eggplant Turtle, etc., which make readers drool, and at the same time, let us see the splendid food culture of that era.