Putian Food

When the morning light is awakened by the warm lights of every house, the busy figures under the lights often circle around the stove. Breakfast is an important node in the day for every family to wake up their stomach, mouth, tongue, spirit, and family affection. Therefore, every family will evoke their own family members with their own warmth.

In Putian, a common breakfast is porridge. I often think that "porridge" in dialect is called "yinmi". Because the Putian area has always been rich in rice, and at the same time the area is small and densely populated, making a living difficult, so people live frugally and do not indulge in luxury. Therefore, eating a bowl of porridge and some home-cooked side dishes for breakfast is very warm to the stomach and yet simple. But besides porridge, the smart Putian people also know how to constantly enrich the types of breakfast to adjust and improve their lives. When you walk on the old street in the dim light of morning: golden fried dough sticks, turnip cakes, triangular fried taro cakes, round horse eggs, snow-white bowl cakes and rice cakes, fragrant pot edge paste, rich Soy milk, and even the distinctive soy milk fried rice noodles. They are all vying to wave to you on the whole street. The breakfast in a city can be so rich that you will be at a loss for what to do. At this time, the breakfast guests kicked off the Putian diet as scheduled:

Putian, known as Xinghua in ancient times. It is located on the southeast coast, with a mild climate and four seasons. At the same time, it has mountains on its back and faces the sea, so it can benefit from the mountains and seas. This fertile land has rich fish, delicious mountain mushrooms, no worries about fish and rice, and abundant products. A place of water and soil deeply nourishes the people of this place. And people have been cultivating this land and water for generations. In this beautiful southern land, culture and education are developed, outstanding people are educated, and the fire is passed on from generation to generation.

Food culture always grows up with the development of social culture. Food is the most important thing for the people, and there is no period in history where food can be left alone to move forward. Therefore, as long as there are people living, there will be food, and wherever there is food, you can find carefully crafted food. Putian is no exception.

Historically, Putian was rich in many unique and delicious ingredients. It is said that Huang Gongdu, the number one scholar in Putian in the Southern Song Dynasty, once said when he was in the palace examination: "The only products in Putian are fish, seaweed, lychees and oysters." " (There is also a saying that "the oriole is beautiful in brocade, and the fish is fat in Tongyinzi".) To be able to talk about delicious food in the Jinluan Palace shows how deeply Putian food nourishes local scholars.

Since Putian is close to the mountains and the sea, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, barley, free-range chickens, ducks, sheep, etc. are all common sights on the dining table; the long shallow beach, the sea Oysters, razor clams, fresh fish, seaweed, abalone and other seafood are available all year round; even folk proverbs have folk recognition of the delicacies of the mountains and seas: "Mackerel and pomfret in the sea, partridges and deer in the mountains." There are also lychees, longans, loquats, and pomelo When the four famous fruits became famous far and wide, the mountains and sea gave these simple and rich ingredients to the people of Putian without reservation. In this way, they make use of the natural ingredients produced by the innate geographical environment and process them into table delicacies in various forms. After more than a thousand years of slow accumulation and inheritance of food culture, Putian's traditional cuisine has formed its own unique heritage.