Next, let's find the answer together from the perspective of food culture!
There is a famous dish in Beijing cuisine, and its name is very interesting. It is also called "beggar chicken" and "rich chicken". There is a reason for naming this dish with completely different words of the rich and the poor: "beggar chicken" originated in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, and is a poor refugee, that is, "beggar" or stolen or begged chicken, which is cooked by a hot local sentence. It is originally an unpretentious street dish.
When the Qing emperor Qianlong visited Jiangnan incognito, he accidentally left his rags on the streets. One of the beggars felt sorry for him, so he gave him the beggar chicken, which he thought was delicious. He was tired and hungry. Of course, he thought the chicken was extremely delicious. He asked its name urgently, and Hua Tou was embarrassed to call it beggar chicken, so he boasted that it was called "rich chicken".
Qianlong said that this "rich chicken" is delicious. Afterwards, I learned that this tramp is the current emperor. This "beggar chicken" also became a "rich chicken" because of the emperor's golden mouth. Become a famous dish.
Beggar chicken culture:
Beggars' chickens often appear in China's story novels. Businessmen rack their brains to imagine the delicious food that Hong Qigong had eaten in those years. What Hong Qigong missed most was the beggar's chicken with a chicken butt torn to her by Huang Rong at the first meeting. Beggar chicken is a traditional famous dish in Changshu, Jiangsu Province. In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, a beggar at the foot of Yushan Mountain in Changshu stole the chicken without cooking utensils, spices and boiled water. After killing the chicken, he pulled out his internal organs, pasted it with mud, and piled up some broken branches and pine leaves to bake. This DIY eating method may have been invented by beggars long ago, so it seems reasonable for Jin Yong to advance Changshu beggar chicken to the Southern Song Dynasty.
Lin Yutang's "Instant Beijing" also wrote a beggar chicken. Mulan, who lost her daughter, pursued peace of mind, modeled herself on Changshu cooking method and dipped it in soy sauce. Lin Yutang borrowed her mouth to talk about her views on food: "Chicken originally has its beauty, and too much triggering, stuffing and adding seasonings and spices will only distract its pure beauty." Huang Rong feels the same way about this. Her best dish is not "Twenty-four Bridges Moonlit Night", but the most homely fried cabbage, steamed tofu and stewed eggs.
According to the theory of Huang and Erh Lin people, the specialty dishes of Wangsi Restaurant in Changshu, Suzhou and Louwailou, Hangzhou have obviously gone bad. Huang Rong's "beggar chicken" is baked for a while, and it will be sweet and fragrant in the mud, and it can be eaten when the wet mud is dry; Mulan's "beggar chicken" takes only 20 or 30 minutes, but now it takes four or five hours to cook, and the chicken is filled with various ingredients and seasonings such as sliced gizzards, shrimps, diced ham, diced mushrooms, etc., first wrapped in fresh lotus leaves, then pasted with mud and wrapped heavily. This beggar chicken was renamed "noble chicken" instead.
Soil and lotus leaves can be said to be the essence of this dish. When the finished dish is knocked open, gas will come out, and the smell of chicken is fragrant with lotus leaves and soil. It is best to choose the mud at the bottom of a small river, which has good sealing performance. It is still difficult to really call a beggar chicken now, and it is best to use firewood in baking.
China is the first country to domesticate chickens in the world, and according to archaeologists, it has a history of at least six or seven thousand years. The earliest written record of chicken being made into a dish can be found in the Book of Rites, and there are five kinds of preserved chicken, chicken soup and steamed chicken in Qi Min Yao Shu.
With the improvement of people's living standards, the dishes cooked with chicken are becoming more and more abundant. By the end of Qing Dynasty, there were 30 kinds in Suiyuan Food List, and the number in Diaodingji reached 108. Besides the hair, all other parts of the chicken can be eaten into vegetables. The famous dishes made of chicken are all known in various cuisines-Bailu Chicken in Beijing, Braised Chicken and Braised Chicken in Dezhou in Shandong, Braised Chicken in Guangdong, Sticky Chicken in Sichuan, Chicken with Strange Flavor and so on. Interestingly, although the methods of making it are different, it is still the most creative one. "Taoism is natural", beggars get the touch of nature and use local materials when they are hungry, which makes them a delicious food on earth.