I haven't been able to travel for a long time, and I especially miss all kinds of delicious food in the country. If you think about it, when you go to a new city now, the most important thing you yearn for is the local specialty food.
Guizhou spicy chicken, Chongqing hot pot, Cantonese refreshments, northwest cauldron stew... Although many local specialties have come to all parts of the country, it is often in the area of its origin that the most traditional and authentic taste can be eaten.
Food is not only a reflection of a place's characteristics, but also a cultural heritage.
Some dishes, such as Kung Pao chicken, mapo tofu or something, because the process is relatively simple and taste good, has become a home-cooked dish that can be seen everywhere, although it no longer has a significant regionality, but because it has its own historical allusions, it has a strong emotional color.
The cultural nature of food is not only present in life and history, but also reflected in a large number of classic fictional works.
"Romance of the Three Kingdoms" Qingmei boiled wine on heroes, between the chips is the sword and light sword shadow on the wine table, "Water Margin" good men are bold and happy, outside the rivers and lakes are meat and wine and life in the cold and warm world.
In fact, it is not a simple thing to write "eating" well in the story, because the reader can easily distinguish whether the description of food in a story is true or not.
In the details of the story's diet, you can see the experience of life, the background of history, and even the soul of the writer.
Zhang Jiawei is a reader who is keen to explore the details of food in literary stories, and since childhood, she has especially loved the content related to eating in various books, and has carefully counted the delicacies in classic Chinese and foreign masterpieces in "Is this book delicious".
Through the taste of human food, feel the beauty of literary classics in the way that is closest to life.
cover
01 Look hungry
"Is this book delicious" composed of a number of relatively independent small stories, the front protagonist is a variety of food that appears in a number of literary works, and behind it is the life of the food presented by the food.
The first time I opened this book was in the middle of the night, as a bedtime easy little book to flip through at will, I did not expect to see most of it.
Sleepiness looks gone, stomach looks hungry.
"Dream of the Red Chamber" is not to mention, notoriously exquisite cuisine, roasted venison, jujube mud yam, shrimp ball chicken skin soup, sake stuffed steamed duck, rouge goose breast, cream pine roll crisp, green rice japonica rice...
The young lady and the old lady sometimes feel this greasy and that tacky, but I look hungry and tongue-tied.
I also saw Xiangzi in "Camel Xiangzi" eating old tofu at the bridge:
"Vinegar, soy sauce, peppercorn oil, minced leeks, scalded by hot snow-white tofu, give off a bit of a delicious taste."
Momentarily nostalgic for the northern flavor of the salted tofu brain, soft and delicious, tender and smooth, but unfortunately this time in the south, can not taste the salty fragrance, can only suck a sip of saliva bar spit down the mouth.
Seeing su Shi's debasement and unbillioned dashing pleasure and ease with the encounter, he ate a refreshing spring vegetable poem, ate and ate vegetables, recounted his heartfelt intestines, and vowed to return to his hometown next year.
Finally, I couldn't help but order a takeaway, what is not suitable for eating before going to bed, supper is not conducive to digestion and forget about it, it is really fragrant.
Inner page
02 Sense of substitution
"Is this book delicious" not only lists various foods, but also gives us a taste of the lives of the people in the story.
"From how people eat in the book, you can know how they live."
Throughout the ages, food has never been as simple as filling your stomach.
The city people eat and drink in pursuit of full stomach, reliable porcelain.
The coachman Xiangzi in "Camel Xiangzi", the delicious food he wants to eat for a "big day" is hot baked cake with fried lamb; when he is caught, he escapes back, and a bowl of hot chaos can feel alive again.
Ordinary people are not too picky and eat a homely meal.
In "Dream of the Red Chamber", Grandma Zhao eats red-legged stewed elbows, fat and fragrant; several heroes in Jin Yong's martial arts love to eat Hunan cuisine, simple and grounded; "Water Margin" Wang Po entertains Pan Jinlian's walnut pine nut tea, tea and fruit are fragrant, and all are folk flavors.
Rich and noble families maintain their own identity, and eat and drink more style.
"Golden Bottle Plum" Wu Yueniang sweeps snow to cook tea, Ximen Qinghao eats crab, and the dim sum is also a steamed cake with rose goose oil hot noodles, using ingredients that were very rare at that time.
The food in "Dream of the Red Chamber" is even more exquisite, Jia Baoyu eats bad goose paw duck letter to match good wine, lotus leaf soup picks a spoonful of wood clear dew, pheasant melon and pickles at the time.
The old lady's diet is more exquisite, the tea is lao Junmei, the dish is steamed lamb with cow's milk, and the poetry is accompanied by a little bad quail leg meat, which is fine and chic.
Food has its own taste, days have their own tastes, and the identity and life details are revealed between diets.
illustration
03 Look thick
Watching "Is This Book Delicious" also has the feeling that the book is not thick, but it is very well read.
Each chapter is not long, but it is a delicate story, and it is still unfinished after reading a paragraph. I can't help but open the original work, or seek verification, or contrast, or observe the follow-up, many details that I have not paid attention to in the past jump out of the paper.
The chapter "Dream of the Red Chamber" tells that Jia Baoyu was beaten by Jia Zheng, and the whole family accompanied him to eat lotus leaf soup. Forget why he was beaten, look over the original work, see Jia Fu's baby bumps were put on the family law, the whole family up and down the wife and miss girls have their own things to do, but also around him, so not lively.
Before reading "Dream of the Red Chamber", I only felt that the Jia Family ate exquisitely, but this time I read it again, and I had a clearer feeling about the connection between the food and drink of each person and the identity of the personality, and the impression of the characters in the mind was more vivid.
Mr. Lao She used food and drink to write the life of the coachman Xiangzi who struggled to feed himself, this old Beijing-style gentleman stayed in school, but the story told was particularly simple, Xiangzi worked hard to survive, thrifty and self-suffering, but also very humane.
The contradiction between people can also be expressed from eating, Shoko likes meat cakes, red bean millet porridge, which he "eats fragrantly and sweats", but the tiger girl who forms a family with him eats sheep's head meat, boiled fried tofu, which is more advanced, but he "eats not fragrant, can't sweat" things, from the side to write the sense of violation of the relationship between the two.
After reading the chapter "Lao She's Eating", I reread the story of Xiangzi, and I only saw Xiangzi's unfortunate and bumpy fate before, but this re-reading seems to have a deeper understanding of what kind of person he is and why he does it.
There are also many original books that I have not actually seen, "A Song of Ice and Fire", "Homer's Epic", Shakespeare, O Henry, Dumas... There are also quite a few details about food, which has aroused the yearning to read the original book, and is ready to be put on the agenda. If you think about it, isn't this the "thicker the book is"?
back cover
summary
Zhang Jiawei said in the afterword to "Is this book delicious":
"For most of human history, food has been at the heart of human life. Human history, too, has oscillated for food. ”
The fictional part of the story may be difficult to distinguish, but if the taste and eating state can be described in the story, the story must be extremely reliable to read.
"Is This Book Delicious" is a small book of more than 200 pages, which revolves around the food and drink in Chinese and foreign masterpieces, which not only describes the details, but also undertakes the index, so that I can immerse myself more in the classic literary masterpieces, which is a very interesting book.
In the gastronomic details of literary masterpieces, there is a historical background and the soul of the author.
THE END
I am Nie Ziyin, share the original book review, welcome to communicate with me more ~ ~