Qianjiang Evening News Hourly News Reporter Zhu Lizhen /Wen Wang Yi/Photo
If there is a crossing, some people will suggest, do you want to dream back to the Tang Dynasty? Like a bright pearl, the Tang Dynasty is the most colorful. But if you are a Hangzhou person, you may want to go back to the Song Dynasty to see. During the Southern Song Dynasty, Hangzhou was already a bustling street market and restaurants.
Compared with the Tang Dynasty, the temperament of the Song Dynasty is like a round of breeze and moon, elegant and beautiful.
If you want to find Some kind of connection between Hangzhou more than eight hundred years ago and Hangzhou today, diet may be a good breakthrough. China's food culture has always been closely linked to history. In chai rice oil and salt and the three meals of the four seasons, there are many answers hidden.
Although there is no opportunity to truly cross to the Southern Song Dynasty and see the prosperity of the capital city, for thousands of years, the Song Yun culture has been flowing in the blood of Hangzhou, especially the Shangcheng District under the roots of the imperial city, which has always maintained the pursuit of aesthetics, including the excavation, restoration and innovation of Song Yun cuisine.
Southern and northern cuisine, blending the cultures of the north and the south
In 1913, a small shop was opened on Renhe Road in The Upper District, and eight big characters were hung at the door, "If you want to know my taste, you will know the material", which is really the golden sign of the small shop. "ZhiweiGuan" came from this, and also got the elegant name of "Zhiwei stop and smell the incense and get off the horse".
Once a small shop, it has been operating on the shore of West Lake for a hundred years and has become a well-known hangzhou café.
To pick out a representative Hangzhou dish, Chen Yongqing, executive deputy general manager and executive chef of Hangzhou Zhiweiguan, will choose Song Sister-in-law fish soup, which is also one of the 36 classic dishes in Hangzhou.
Famous dishes are often accompanied by mysterious folklore.
Song sister-in-law fish soup
It is said that in the sixth year of the Southern Song Dynasty, Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty zhao zhao boarded a royal boat to swim in the West Lake, ordered the waiter to buy turtles and fish in the lake to release, and there was a woman who sold fish soup called Song Wujie, who made a living selling fish soup by the West Lake. Emperor Gaozong ate the fish soup she made, admired it, and remembered her old age, and gave her gold and silver silk. Since then, the reputation has risen, the rich family and the giant room have competed to buy food, and the Song sister-in-law fish soup has become a famous dish.
Not only is it a Hangzhou cuisine, in Chen Yongqing's heart, Song Sister-in-law Fish Soup is also one of the most Characteristic Foods of Song Yun.
"The soup method actually has northern characteristics, a bit like peppery soup, and the ingredients are like fish, bamboo shoots, ginger shreds, etc., which are loved by southerners." Southern and northern cooking, in Chen Yongqing's view, is a major feature of Song Yun's cuisine.
Before the Southern Song Dynasty, the capital cities of Chang'an, Luoyang, And Beijing, and the interior of the Central Plains, the court diet was mostly based on sheep cheese, chicken and duck. The Song dynasty moved south, and the northern chefs in the court were scattered. After the capital was set in Hangzhou, the Southern Song Court summoned famous chefs from the south to enrich it. This is where the southern and northern cooking comes from.
Chen Yongqing
It is conceivable that in the liquor stores and restaurants in Hangzhou, there was a confrontation and fusion between the north and the south of the food culture.
The Record of Dream Liang records: "Since the southern crossing... The water and soil are habitual, the diet is confused, and there is no distinction between the north and the south. "People's pursuit of food is generally the same, there is no obvious geographical division, only good or bad.
Obviously, Hangzhou soon realized the exchange and integration of cooking skills between the north and the south, and the place was at the intersection of rivers and lakes, the sea was wrong and the river was fresh, and it was inexhaustible, thus promoting the innovation and development of Southern Song cuisine.
Exquisite and elegant, showing the aesthetics of Jiangnan
The Song Dynasty advocated the beauty of quiet and inaction, and qingya was not only reflected in poetry, song, piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, but also in the choice of ingredients and cooking techniques.
A Song sister-in-law fish soup, fresh and delicious, has been passed down for 842 years. But what is the taste of exquisite and elegant Southern Song Dynasty dishes? There is no more than one Song sister-in-law fish soup that can be summarized.
The royal dining table can be glimpsed in the "Jade Food Batch", and the housewife's specialty dishes can be learned in the "Middle Feed", but the flavor of the food is difficult to understand from archaeology and text, but it is immersed in the Southern Song Dynasty's Relics of Hangzhou Cuisine and long-established restaurants, has been trying to restore the answer.
As early as the early 1980s, Professor Lin Zhengqiu, a famous historian of the Southern Song Dynasty, began to study the food culture of the Southern Song Dynasty and excavated and sorted out the southern Song cuisine from historical documents. In May 1985, he launched more than 20 Southern Song Dynasty dishes in The BaguaLou in Hangzhou, which was all the rage, and after that he also wrote a "Chinese Song Dynasty Recipe", which opened the precedent for the study of Song cuisine.
A master like Chen Yongqing, who has been working in Hangzhou cuisine for more than 30 years, is still sparing no effort in inheriting Song Yun's cuisine. Southern Song Dynasty recipes are "martial arts secret books" that can be read at any time in the kitchen. "Sometimes if you want to push a new dish according to the season, you will find some inspiration from the book."
In Chen Yongqing's view, Song Yun's cuisine, the avenue to Jane, a "fresh" word does not depart from its ancestors. To name a few, there are similar styles.
A crab-stuffed orange that has been on "Flavor of the World", take the seasonal fresh orange, open the lid on top, and remove the pulp and juice. The hairy crab removes the crab yellow and crab meat, puts the crab powder into the pot, stir-fry with orange juice, put it into the empty orange after the pan and steam it again. The fresh aroma of crab blends with the sweet and sour of orange.
Crab stuffed orange
A deceptively simple cat's ear is cooked in broth with rich ingredients such as ham, shrimp, sea cucumber, dried scallops, and chicken breasts.
"The ingredients must be fresh and delicate, and the intrinsic umami taste of the original soup wins, so that one dish is one taste." Seemingly simple sentence, the connotation is very exquisite, "for example, the West Lake vinegar fish, the fish in April to July is earthy, if not processed, the taste of the burned out is a difference." ”
Not eating from time to time is also one of the exquisite dishes of Hangzhou.
Chen Yongqing still remembers that when he was a primary school apprentice, he often listened to the teachers and masters sitting together and chatting. "What is the story behind the famous dishes, what are the exquisite raw materials, just listen to them, just like this from generation to generation." Inheritance, not only in technical techniques, but also in these hidden doorways behind the dishes.
Inherit innovation and continue the attitude of the city to this day
The same city, more than 800 years apart, is engaged in dialogue across time and space through a series of cuisines. A drink and a scoop, a spoon and a meal, the north and south blend, the revolution of the old and the new, in the food is vividly reflected. There are traditional cake dumplings such as chicken called Huatong chicken and West Lake vinegar fish made in the ancient way, Dingsheng cake and strip cake, as well as innovative dishes such as crab stuffed orange.
"Many chefs know to dig up new menus from Song Yun's recipes, but they are completely copied, and it is estimated that it is not delicious." Some have stories, no taste, no market. For example, Chen Yongqing mentioned that the Song sister-in-law fish soup, which seems to be a refreshing hangzhou dish, is actually constantly changing. The fish used has gradually changed from ordinary prickly river fish to mandarin fish with fewer spines; in order to remove fishiness, rice vinegar will be added, in order to look good, a few drops of soy sauce will be added, plus shredded ham, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, chicken soup and other condiments to cook, "definitely the more improved, the more suitable for the current taste." ”
Dingsheng Cake
Wulin boiled duck is also very representative, which is also based on the Song Dynasty recipes to imitate the traditional Zhejiang cuisine, with the style characteristics of northern cuisine, before the southern material north cooking, the use of southern duck, the meat is tight, relatively thin, cooked with heavy oil, and later changed to Beijing duck filling, "from heavy rape to light oil, more suitable for the current taste." ”
Chen Yongqing said that inheritance lies in retaining the essence, not copying it. "Fundamental things don't change, like the ingredients, but the process is constantly improving."
Each restorative and innovative Song Yun cuisine injects the chefs' whimsy and perception of the world, and through food, maintains the communication with the hearts of the ancients. And tolerance and innovation, not only in the food, but also in the urban context of Hangzhou, engraved on the brand, continues to this day. In Hangzhou, you can see the historic West Lake where light makeup is always appropriate, feel the elegance of Jiangnan Water Town and the fireworks in the home, and touch the pulse and vitality of the fashion business district, the city brain, and the Beating Of the Internet.
Cat ears
In the old brand to know the taste of the concept, the preservation of the taste of the old foundation, but also in the pursuit of young fashion sense. Colorful cat ears and various filling flavors of Dingsheng cake are all satisfying young people's pursuit of food. Rejuvenating and rejuvenating is also one of the secrets of the century-old brand.
Art and life, inheritance and innovation, in a city to integrate with each other, this is also the gastronomy, Hangzhou from the Southern Song Dynasty to the present city attitude.
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