Shredded pork with green pepper is a very common home-cooked dish.
I was deeply impressed. The first one is that when I was young, I was at home, and my parents gave me the smell of shredded green peppers.
The second story comes from a Japanese young writer's six-month "green pepper and shredded pork trip" in China a few years ago.
Although his trip with green peppers and shredded pork was forced in essence-this man is a die-hard fan of The Romance of Three Kingdoms, and he came to China as a fan to visit many historical sites involved in The Romance of Three Kingdoms.
However, as a senior otaku, he can't speak a word of Chinese. More than 100 historical sites in the Three Kingdoms, which are distributed in more than half of China, have been handed down because he is a fan of the Three Kingdoms. He is familiar with the Chinese characters "Guan Yu" and "Zhang Fei". He can write them on paper and ask questions all the way.
But he can't rely on this trick for three meals a day. After all, there is no such dish as scrambled eggs with tomatoes and kung pao chicken in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Fortunately, this man ate the same two Chinese dishes every day during his six-month trip to the Three Kingdoms-one of which was Mapo tofu (which we talked about last time).
Because as a Japanese, he is the only Chinese food that can open his mouth and say his name. The pronunciation of these two dishes in Japanese is similar to that in Chinese. At the same time, these two dishes are also one of the most popular Chinese dishes in Japan.
I also like to eat shredded pork with green peppers. Steamed on the table, a look is green and white, green is green pepper, white is shredded pork white. After the color is clear, the taste is clear, the shredded pork is tender and smooth, and the shredded green pepper is crisp and sweet. Of course, this is just the 1.0 version of shredded green pepper in the general concept.
As an ordinary home-cooked dish, shredded green pepper has many changes.
From the perspective of development, the shredded green peppers that we are talking about in all corners of the country are actually different. It can be a "heretical" version of small fried pork, a "bankrupt" version of fish-flavored shredded pork, or it can be improved with shredded bamboo shoots and sweet mouths like the Japanese version.
From the collocation of ingredients, green peppers, colored peppers and peppers can be used here, and shredded pork and beef there can compete with them.
Although our shredded green peppers can be transformed into many versions today, the formal formation of shredded green peppers is not far away from us today, that is, 100 years ago.
Accurately speaking, the story of shredded green pepper is a short story that was born when two magnificent food torrents collided.
The first eating binge was about shredded pork. In China, the earliest method of cutting meat into shredded pork in ancient books is "Wan". According to the Book of Rites in the Qin and Han Dynasties two thousand years ago, ten thousand people cut the meat into thin slices and then cut the thin slices into filaments, which is very close to the processing method of shredded pork today.
By the Northern and Southern Dynasties 1600 years ago, the earliest fried shredded pork had appeared in the Book of Qi Yaomin. In the Song Dynasty, iron pots became popular among the people, and fried shredded pork began to develop as a formal dish. In the Ming dynasty, fried beef shreds appeared; In the Qing Dynasty, fried shredded pork entered its heyday, gained great popularity among the people, exhibited many changes, and began to be refined.
Yuan Mei, a famous gourmet in Qing Dynasty, recorded a section of fried pork shreds in Suiyuan Food List: "Shred pork, remove tendons, skins and bones. When using clear sauce and wine, boil white smoke into smoke with vegetable oil, then add meat, stir well, and then add steamed powder, a drop of vinegar, a pinch of sugar, onions, leeks and garlic. "
Yuan Mei also stressed that in order to ensure the taste and mouthfeel, his exquisite version of fried shredded pork only fried half a catty at a time, and the finer the shredded pork, the better. Cooking needs fire, not water.
Compared with the grand narrative of the thousand-year history of fried shredded pork, the rival green pepper will be added in the evening of 2000. Moreover, the introduction of green pepper is only an episode in the grand narrative of the spread history of the whole pepper world.
Pepper originated in America. After Columbus discovered the New World, pepper was introduced to Europe around 1500, and to China in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.
At first, people in China regarded peppers as ornamental plants, but in the Kangxi period of Qing Dynasty, peppers began to enter the menu of dishes. Written in the mid-Qing Dynasty, Diaodingji has recorded some dishes with Chili as raw materials.
However, there is no record of any dishes with green peppers as ingredients even in Diaoding Collection.
This is because, as a less spicy or even sweeter pepper, green pepper was introduced to China later than ordinary pepper. Among many kinds of peppers, green pepper can be regarded as the latest one to enter China. It was popularized and planted in Daoguang period of Qing Dynasty, but it was not until the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China that green peppers generally entered home cooking.
Although green pepper fell into the historical trend of pepper late, its promotion speed and popularization range are miraculous after it entered the home-cooked dish menu. Green peppers, because of their large output, unique taste and easy cooking, quickly emerged in Chinese food.
Bright collision: green pepper+shredded pork
In this historical attempt to put green peppers into Chinese food, the home-cooked dish of fried shredded pork with green peppers quickly became popular as soon as it appeared, which can be called a brilliant collision of the grand historical trends of the two ingredients.
Yuan Mei attaches great importance to fried shredded pork when entertaining guests, because it has two advantages. The first is that fried shredded pork is a convenient and quick dish, which is immediately popular. The second is that shredded pork tastes delicate and can be taken.
In the late Qing Dynasty, the exquisite shredded pork, which is also desirable, finally met the green pepper with unique taste.
Gourmet Tang was born in 1908. There are two famous figures in his family, namely, two concubines of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty, Zhen Fei and Jin Fei.
According to Tang's memory, when his family hired a chef, they had to take a soup, a dish and a meal during the trial. The soup is chicken soup, and the chef's slow cooking skills are investigated. The dish is fried shredded pork with green pepper, and the chef's martial arts are investigated. It is important that the shredded pork should be fried tender and delicious, and the green pepper should be fried crispy and not pan-fried, so as to pass the test. Obviously, in those days, shredded pork with green pepper has become a threshold for examining chef's skills.
The more common you are, the more you see kung fu. Shredded pork with green pepper is convenient and quick, and refined blindly. This should be regarded as the consensus reached by people 100 years ago and us today.