The humid heat of Guangzhou's climate is unparalleled in the whole country. In such a harsh environment, if you don't just eat fresh food, you can only collectively be scavengers. As for a series of unique basic cooking techniques and theories of Cantonese cuisine, such as the pursuit of smoothness, crispness, original flavor, preference for steaming, love for raw food, etc., they are all born out of the deliberate pursuit of the word "fresh" for raw materials. As for the word "seafood", which often becomes the suffix of "raw and fierce", there is nothing to make a fuss about. Eat the sea by the sea, what to eat without seafood? If we must get to the bottom of it, we really need to ask "why" when eating "raw seafood" in Lhasa and salmon in Yunnan.
Hong Kong Sai Kung Seafood Market
Of course, as far as preservation technology is concerned, there was no refrigerator in Guangzhou at that time, just like people all over the country. In order to cope with the hot and humid climate almost all year round, Guangzhou people have to pay more attention to eating. When northerners enthusiastically shouted "strike while it's hot" at the dinner table, most people in Guangzhou in the kitchen were chanting "take advantage of life while being fierce" in their hearts.
Guangzhou people are neither a genius in cooking, nor do they have any "cruel" original intention. Everything was forced out! Although there was a refrigerator later, the eating habits were deeply rooted and genetic, and it was difficult to change them.
Water cockroach, a Guangzhou delicacy, is a kind of food with high protein, low fat and low sterol.
Misreading the second key word: weird
Compared with the food culture in the Central Plains, Guangzhou people's daily ingredients and cooking methods are at least "heresy" if not "cult". Lao Huo Tang and its ubiquitous medicinal materials are masterpieces of heresy. Medicine and food have the same origin, which is the same belief of the Chinese nation, especially in Guangzhou. In fact, this is also forced by the weather. The hot summer climate makes Guangzhou people generally have an innate "hot air" imagination about their bodies. Another important difference between "hot air" and "getting angry" in northerners is that "getting angry" is accidental and "hot air" is inertial.
Medicinal diet is extremely popular in Guangdong.
The experience of Guangzhou people shows that eating can solve health problems, even if it can't be controlled, it can be contained in the bud. So there is a completely "weird" old fire soup (including some snakes, insects, rats and ants, some wild animals) from raw materials to color, taste and table drinking order. What mainlanders still don't understand is that half of what Guangzhou people eat and drink is taking medicine.
Weird diet does look evil, but it's the weather and water and soil that are to blame. Besides, as long as there is one person who believes in Chinese medicine, and as long as you can't tell me why your grass can detoxify, don't worry about my bug, why it can't clear away heat.
Guangdong famous dish "Taishi Five Snake Soup"
Misreading the third key word: omnivore
It is no exaggeration to say that you dare to eat anything except a four-legged table on the ground and a plane flying in the sky. The Southern Song Dynasty's Answer to the Generation Outside the Ridge has long been a testimony that "no matter what birds, animals, insects and snakes eat". Like "fierce" and "weird", omnivorous food is also forced by natural living environment.
Except for most mountainous areas and barren hills, Guangdong's plain area is not large, so it is not suitable to grow rice and wheat. There has always been a shortage of "normal" things to eat, and in addition, in history, it has never stopped accepting refugees from all over China, and the "population" has become increasingly serious. According to historians, the mountainous areas of Guangdong and Guangxi had been completely developed during the light years of the Qing Dynasty, but the excessive increase in population made the southern Guangdong region full of idle and hungry refugees.
Although there is a shortage of arable land, it is better to have mountains and water, so relying on mountains to eat and rely on water to draft. If there is no "domestic", you will eat "wild". "Why do people in Guangzhou like to eat wild animals?" To be honest, who has not eaten wild animals from the ancestors of various tribes in China? If we hadn't eaten wild animals, we wouldn't have these black sheep.
Cantonese-style hot pot is called "edge furnace" by Cantonese people.
The biggest paradox in Guangzhou is that it is civilized late and open early. "Omnivorous food" has also been promoted. According to "Guangdong New Language", all the food in the world is almost available in eastern Guangdong; All the food in eastern Guangdong may not be available in the world. This is the result of opening a port and opening a sea ban.
Cantonese expatriates all over the world have also brought all kinds of ingredients and cooking skills to Guangzhou as the earliest trading port, and local western food called "Fan Restaurant" began to appear in Guangzhou in the 1960s. Since11970s, Guangzhou's "Fancai Restaurant" has been moved northward to Beijing and Shanghai, focusing on the first batch of "Fancai Restaurant" in Dongjiaominxiang, Beijing, Hongkou and Xujiahui, Shanghai, most of which were run by Cantonese.
Taipingguan Western Restaurant, established in 1860, has its first branch in Taipingsha, Guangzhou.
Misreading the fourth key word: just do it and don't say it
After years of training, Guangzhou people have developed a "tricky" taste in their mouths. The developed taste and "sharp taste" have further created an "oral tendency": in addition to eating, I also like to talk. In fact, many things in Guangzhou are eaten and told, or they are born while eating and talking. Tea house is an excellent hotbed for the development of oral tendency, and the word "saliva is more than tea" is likely to be born from the noisy tea house.
An old teahouse and a tea restaurant may have accompanied the neighborhood for decades.
Since1the early 1980s, the strong spread of Cantonese popular culture in China has always been inseparable from the charge of Cantonese cuisine and canto pop, two "oral school" generals. At the same time, the smooth spread of Cantonese culture and the so-called "Guangzhou concept" in the pre-reform and opening-up era was guaranteed by the Guangzhou people's "doing nothing".
"Just do and don't talk" is the same as "eat in Guangzhou", which is misunderstood by non-Cantonese speakers. Guangzhou people don't say anything, but they don't say it like mainlanders. This matter is just like drinking tea. The number and scale of tea houses in Guangzhou are the highest at home and abroad. Guangzhou's position in the history of world tea trade is unparalleled in the world, and its annual tea consumption ranks first among major cities in China. However, Guangdong has never been a traditional tea producing area in China.
"One cup and two pieces" of Guangdong morning tea (one cup of tea+two snacks)
"Eat in Guangzhou", although this text has now become a myth due to the creative correction of "misreading" and even over-interpretation. In fact, walking on the streets of Guangzhou now, restaurants and restaurants are everywhere, and banners from all corners of the country have already rolled over half of the old camp of Cantonese cuisine. Under the wave of globalization, Guangzhou is no longer Guangzhou for Guangzhou people, and Cantonese cuisine is no longer Cantonese cuisine for Guangzhou people ...