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Norwegian compatriot Marlette: savoring the great changes in China on the tip of the tongue

Source:People's Daily Overseas Edition

Norwegian compatriot Ma Lie - tasting the tip of the tongue on the great changes in China

Norwegian compatriot Ma Lie in his late 70s, engaged in the catering industry for nearly 50 years, is a master of the culinary arts.

After a lifetime of dealing with food, Marlette spoke with great emotion about the dramatic changes on the tip of the tongue of the Chinese people.

Here's what he had to say.

More ingenuity in the hard times

Recently, I rewatched a number of red classic movies that tell the story of the development and growth of China's ****anufacturing party. Some of these shots and stories touch me y: the Red Army on the Long March, the Party Central Committee at the dinner table to discuss things, several leaders in front of only one or two sweet potatoes or corn, food is very scarce; anti-Japanese war period, Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia Border Areas are blocked to the Eighth Route Army 359th Brigade as the representative of the anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians to carry out the production movement, self-reliance, hard work, and turn the uninhabited NanNiWan into "Everywhere is a crop, everywhere is the cattle and sheep" of the good south of Shaanxi Province.

From not having enough to eat and wear to not worrying about food and clothing, the Chinese people say goodbye to hunger and live a good life with plenty of food and clothing, the most important thing to thank is the Chinese **** Producers Party.

I was born before the founding of the new China, and I have experienced the hard times of lack of food and clothing. When I was young, what I remember most is that every day after school, my mother would ask me to go to the vegetable farm near my home to pick up some cabbage leaves, and go home to make food. At that time, there were five of us, brothers and sisters, and we lived with our parents in the "big walled gate" of Hangzhou. A courtyard was crowded with a dozen families, all of whom were ordinary people, and there was very little to eat.

When I was in junior high school, it was a difficult time. The first thing you need to do is to buy food, meat, and oil on the basis of food stamps, meat stamps, and oil stamps. I remember, with the food stamps to receive back not all rice, and mixed grain flour, corn flour, many neighbors in the yard do not know how to do. I went to the Xinhua bookstore to look for a book that taught me how to make snacks, and I learned how to make all kinds of snacks by mixing a little flour with mixed grain flour. The neighbors tasted it and found it delicious, and came to me to learn.

From then on, I had an idea - to go to a professional school to learn cooking. Later, I became a chef as I wished, and became a national senior culinary technician, and gradually gained fame in Hangzhou catering industry.

At the beginning of the reform and opening up, the party and the government in the development of production at the same time pay great attention to the "food" problem. the early 1980s, the Hangzhou Federation of Trade Unions life department cadres to find me, I hope to organize a chef training center in Hangzhou, industrial, mining and public enterprises and institutions, and around the troops, the chef of the school in batches, to improve these units of canteen dishes, to improve the quality of food. Improve the quality of dishes in the canteens of these units.

I and several other chefs attached great importance to this work, and thought of a lot of ideas. For example, initially, in some canteens, 20 cents can only buy a small piece of braised pork, I suggested to change to one meat and one vegetarian, add tofu, diced lotus root and other ingredients in the meat filling, make a lion's head, and then with a stir-fried greens, so that you can eat more rich, more nutritious.

From 1982 to 1989, we trained more than 4,000 cooks in one ****, and also held a cooking grand prix on the local TV station, encouraging cooks from all units to share their culinary wizardry, and make as many patterns as possible with limited ingredients, so that the workers would not only be well-fed, but also well-eaten.

Chinese restaurant to add "Chinese flavor"

1990, I was invited by a friend to go abroad to develop, to become a chef of a Norwegian international catering company. Not long after my arrival, I was given an important task - to go to the Norwegian Prime Minister's residence, for the then Prime Minister and his family and friends to make a table of Chinese food. Song Sister-in-law fish soup, fried spring rolls, Kung Pao Chicken ...... traditional authentic "Chinese flavor" to the Prime Minister was very good.

Four years later, I had my first Chinese restaurant in Oslo, Norway. At that time, there were many Chinese restaurants overseas, but the food was generally more simple. Like in my part of Norway, most Chinese restaurants do 5 dishes: spring rolls, fried rice, chow mein, kung pao chicken and goulash. Some of the old expatriates told me that they had been seafarers on ocean freighters, stayed in Norway to make a living, in order to make a living, they rented a house, hung up red lanterns, the Chinese restaurant opened up. As for the 5 dishes actually sold for how many years, they can not remember.

But after I went abroad, things were very different. With the deepening of reform and opening up, the awareness of overseas compatriots in spreading Chinese food culture gradually increased, and a large number of professional chefs like me went out of the country to bring authentic Chinese food practices overseas. Entering the 21st century, Chinese and foreign cultural exchanges have become more and more heated, more and more study tours from all over the country to foreign countries, and more and more Chinese and foreign friends come to eat in Chinese restaurants, which further promotes the development of Chinese food overseas. Foreign friends often after dining to me exclaimed: "the original Chinese restaurant has so many both delicious and artistic dishes, we need to come more often in the future!"

Over the years, we, the overseas Chinese chefs, have been "going out" and "coming back". As China's comprehensive national strength and international influence continues to rise, the country is increasingly emphasizing the spread of Chinese food culture and other Chinese culture overseas. In recent years, Zhejiang Province has organized a number of overseas Chinese cooking skills training courses, inviting overseas Chinese chefs around the world "back to the forge" to improve Chinese cooking skills and business management capabilities, in order to better promote the overseas Chinese food industry.

In the past two years, when I went back to Hangzhou to visit my family, I caught a few training courses. At that time, many of the overseas Chinese who participated in the training courses were excited to tell me that the lectures were given by masters of Hangzhou cuisine, and that the contents of the courses, including nutritional and health lectures and practical cooking exercises, were very rich, and that they had benefited a lot from the courses.

Nowadays, not only is the development of overseas Chinese restaurants getting better and better, but the "Chinese flavor" on the table of ordinary compatriots is also getting stronger and stronger. I have asked some of the old expatriates: "How did you celebrate the New Year overseas in the early years?" They said that most of them simply fried two dishes, not much ceremony, unlike now, every family in the Spring Festival will prepare a large table of delicious food, and sometimes will invite foreign neighbors to come to taste Chinese food, celebrate the Chinese New Year.

Small noodle store into a "net red store"

Just went to the overseas development of those years, busy with the livelihood, I went back to China less often. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get the best out of it, but I'm sure I'll be able to get the best out of it," he said.

Gradually, I came back more often, but less time to eat at home, because we always go to a restaurant to eat. The country has developed, and the living standards of the people in the country have improved significantly, and they eat more carefully.

One year when I returned home, my family told me that in the "big wall door" opposite where I used to live, a noodle shop with a very small front was featured on the domestic hot food documentary program, and became a "Netflix", with a long queue in front of the door every day! I was curious and went to try the familiar noodle soup, to which many ingredients had been added, adding a lot of freshness and a better flavor than I remembered! The owner told me to do a good job with this bowl of noodles, make it special and do a good job of spreading food culture.

Before I went abroad, I could basically count all the famous restaurants in Hangzhou. Now, I dare not boast. In Hangzhou, there is a wide range of food from all over the country, and new restaurants are opening every year. The people not only have more choices, but also pay more attention to healthy diet. Some of my old classmates when the grandparents, often consult me how to do a more nutritious breakfast for the grandchildren, no longer like we used to simply eat a doughnut, drink a bowl of soybean milk.

The changes are not just domestic. China is stronger, people are richer, and our compatriots overseas are more confident, more confident. I not only want to use the "Chinese flavor" to capture the "foreign stomach", but also to tell foreign friends a good story of China on the table.

On the eve of the G20 Hangzhou Summit in 2016, I planned and produced a booklet. Each page, four poems, a paragraph, a picture, tells the human geography and food culture of Hangzhou: "Dongpo meat" records the love of Su Dongpo in Hangzhou when he built the Su Causeway and the people *** enjoy the food; "Glutinous Glutinous Dumpling" originated from the mid-autumn night The "Sister-in-law Song's Fish Dumpling" is related to a chance encounter with Song Gaozu when he was touring the West Lake. ...... I have written more than 150 stories and put English translations in the booklet, so that foreign readers can read them at a glance, and understand a more colorful China. The booklet is a special English translation of more than 150 stories that foreign readers can read at a glance and learn about a more colorful China.

It's about culture, and it's also about development. The fish head soup of Qiandao Lake in Hangzhou is very famous. In fact, in the early years, life there was very poor. Later, the people in the vicinity of the brain, in the Qiandao Lake farming, raised out of the fish is particularly large, they will follow the trend of innovation out of the "Qiandao Lake fish head soup" this dish. Nowadays, the people's life is full of flavor! I have told many such stories to my foreign friends.

Chinese culture is profound and profound, China's development is changing rapidly, the tip of the tongue is a vivid example of the great changes.