Text/Ice Brick
Lu cuisine, as the name suggests, is a dish of the Shandong region. It has a rich and long history, and is the only spontaneous cuisine in Chinese cuisine (compared to other "influential" cuisines, the main cooking techniques and dishes of Lu cuisine are self-evolving and not influenced by other regions. ）
However, this name appeared later, and was named when the four major cuisines were evaluated in the early Qing Dynasty. Prior to this, although it is described in the book from time to time, it is impossible to restore the process of the formation of this cuisine. This article briefly describes the historical origin of Lu cuisine and its formation and development, and focuses on the characteristics and main cooking techniques of Lu cuisine.
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Linzi in the State of Qi and Qufu in the State of Lu both belonged to the prosperous cities of that time, and the rich products of Qilu also provided a guarantee for the diversity of Qilu's diet at that time.
Yi Ya of the State of Qi was the first culinary master in history to be known for his ability to reconcile tastes, and both Confucius and Mencius praised his ability to distinguish flavors and seasonings.
The content of the book "Guan Zi" reflects the eating etiquette of Qi Di at that time, as stated in the "Disciple Position":
Whoever eats others, birds, beasts, fish and turtles, will first be vegetable soup. The soup is not in the middle, the cardinal is in front of the sauce, and its setting is square. Rice is for pawns, left wine right sauce.
It can be seen that the order of the banquet at that time and the way of furnishing were also extremely exquisite. Of course, compared with the Lu cuisine feast formed in later generations, the difference is still quite large.
Lu cuisine was popular in the court and official palaces through the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the feast system was unsurpassed.
Take the swallow wing seat of the high-end banquet as an example (in the old days, the banquet was named after the main dish of the banquet, the swallow wing seat is the bird's nest shark fin seat, and the others are duck wing seat, abalone wing seat, ginseng wing seat, sea cucumber seat, etc.). Swallow-winged mats are generally the highest specifications. ）：
Sichuan, Cantonese and Huaiyang are served in the following order: one look at the plate (finely crafted cold spelling), six-wai dish (cold dish), four hot stir-fry, six major dishes (made of precious ingredients, can also be combined with four hot stir-fry together called ten dishes), six noodles, one beet. Lu cuisine before this add four dried fruits, four fresh fruits, four preserves, cold dishes for four three cold spelling (that is, twelve dishes), the specifications are slightly lower, such as other cuisines of a look at the plate six around the dish, but called one belt six. After the pastry, four meals (i.e. four stir-fries with rice), a pot of soup, and two staple foods. As for the court and high-standard official feasts, the grandeur of their pomp and circumstance is difficult to describe here.
In the 1950s, Liang Jixiang (middle) of Jinan Yanxitang Hotel made banquet dishes
In terms of food customs, a famous exposition comes from the "Township Party" section of the Analects:
Food is not boring, the neck is not tired of fine. Eat and eat, fish and meat defeat, do not eat. Evil color, do not eat. Stinky, not eaten. Lost, not eaten. From time to time, do not eat, cut is not correct, do not eat. Do not eat its sauce, do not eat. Although there is a lot of meat, it does not make it better to eat gas. Only the wine is immeasurable, not chaotic. Sell wine in the city, do not eat. Do not withdraw ginger food, do not eat much.
This passage has a far-reaching impact on China's orthodox food culture, and it has laid the basic style of Qilu cuisine and even the later formation of Lu cuisine. Nowadays, there is a Lu cuisine chain named "Eight No Food" that means this.
Looking at this period, cooking techniques are still relatively simple, although according to the records in the Book of Rites, it is basically possible to determine the emergence of boiling, cooking, roasting, braising, cannon and other techniques, but still can not form a cuisine. And the dishes that can really be passed down from that time to the present day are also very rare.
A few years ago, a friend saw a news item saying that Mr. Ma Ying-jeou demonstrated his cooking skills and made a famous dish of Lu Guoguo that has been lost in the mainland for 2,500 years, "Swill Turning Fish", and asked me if this report was accurate. I had to search for it, and the first thing I saw was the introduction of the Taiwanese poet Lian Heng (Lien Chan's grandfather) in the "Taiwanese Dictionary":
Swill is a word for cooking fish, which is well known to women in Tainan. "Ji Yun": 'Swill' Yingan; Taihu '庵'. "Xunzi" and "Rough Outline" chapter: "Zengzi eats more than enough fish, and he knows that he will be swill". Yang Xun's note: 'Swill, the name of cooking'. The method of Tainan swill fish is first boiled with lard, and then charred with green onion beads; the fish is boiled in soy sauce, and the taste is very beautiful. Yu had consulted people in Taichung and North China with this remark, and there was no one who knew. Not the language of two thousand years ago, and the name of the Lu people cooking and cooking, still exists in a corner of Tainan, rather than precious!
Seeing this, I probably understand the origin of "swill turning fish", because the dialect is similar to a certain word in "Xunzi", which is not enough to confirm its origin. As for this way of cooking, it is not uncommon, if measured by today's Lu cuisine, it is absolutely like the "boiled fish" in home cooking, which is now carried forward in Tianjin and has become a representative of home cooking, which will be cooked by every household. If the order is slightly changed, and the onion, ginger, garlic is stir-fried in a pot and cooked in soy sauce clear soup, and then the fish is simmered, it is called "stewed fish".
Whether it is "boiled fish" or "stewed fish", it is not difficult to see from its name that this is a very grounded way of eating from the folk. Whether it can be related to the 2,500-year-old Lu national cuisine is impossible to verify.
Mr. Ma Ying-jeou cooks "swill fish"
There are some kinds of cooking that really passed down to later generations during this period, one is the "grits soup" in the present-day Lunan area, according to the "Neizhi" of the Book of Rites: "Grits, take cattle and mutton, three as one, small cuts." With rice two, meat one, combined as bait, fried. "Compared with each other, it is basically the same, except that the rice is replaced with wheat kernels, and pepper and several spices that are only available in later generations are added.
Linyi morning "grits soup"
The first is the "liver belly" contained in the "Inner Rules", that is, the dog's net oil (the fat membrane between the intestines is like a net) wrapped around its liver and baked together, this cooking method is now reserved in Lu cuisine, there is a "grilled mesh oil skewer" to cut the pork tenderloin into meat skewers, wrapped in mesh oil, sealed with starch egg whites into the oven and roasted. Basically maintained the style of "liver and stomach", but with the change of customs, the dog that was one of the six animals in the Zhou Dynasty was not able to attend in the future.
In addition, there is a Cantonese dish "net oil phoenix liver roll" that is fried with chicken liver and other materials wrapped in net oil, which is also relatively close. In addition, the production process of "cannon porpoise" and "cannon mute" listed as the same as "liver and stomach" as the eight treasures of the Zhou Dynasty is very complicated and considerable, but whether there are similar dishes today needs to be examined. As for the rest of the Eight Treasures of the Zhou Dynasty, they are probably similar to the meat sauce bibimbap grilled meat jerky and the like, and cannot be regarded as a dish.
Lard oil
It is worth mentioning that the zhou dynasty eight treasures of the zhou dynasty were first mentioned in the "Tianguan Tsukazai" of the Zhou Li:
Food Medicine, Palm and King's Six Foods, Six Drinks, Six Meals, Hundred Dishes, Hundred Sauces, Eight Treasures of Qi.
Originally, it referred to eight precious foods at that time, not rare ingredients. Later generations have evolved, relying on all kinds of rare ingredients, Lu cuisine has developed into twenty-four kinds of upper, middle and lower eight treasures, combined with various cooking methods, and the resulting dishes are no less than 100 kinds. Because it involves many cherished and protected animals, it is no longer advocated today, and it is ominously included here.
The Qilu diet of the Qin and Han dynasties continued to develop for two weeks, and there are more than 40 Han Dynasty tomb paintings unearthed in the country, half of which are excavated in Shandong. Among them, the content of the Han painting stones in front of Zhucheng is the most abundant and detailed.
A picture of the kitchen in the Han painting stone of the Liangtai in front of Zhucheng
There are many scenes in the picture, which can be roughly divided into slaughtering, cooking, cutting, and collecting water and chopping wood. The right side of the painting is slaughtering dogs, pigs, cattle, and sheep from bottom to top, the center of the painting, the right side of the well is a scene of a man holding a poultry in hot water, and the top part of the painting is a hook hanging all kinds of meat that has been divided, which may also be made of pickled wax. The three people below sit on their knees in front of the cutting board to cut the ingredients.
The most striking thing is that in the upper right of the painting, a grill is placed on the skewered meat skewers, the shape and grilling method is the same as today. Just from the picture, at that time, the wok still did not appear. It can be seen that although the iron smelting technology was relatively mature at that time, it was limited to the salt and iron system, and the iron pot still could not enter the kitchen.
The Qilu diet of the above periods can only be glimpsed in these existing literature. The appearance of the book "Qi Min Zhi Shu" in the Northern Wei Dynasty completely shows us a complete cooking system.
The book was written by Jia Sixun, who was then the Taishou of Gaoyang Commandery (高阳郡, in present-day Linzi, Shandong). There are twenty types of dishes covered in the book, one hundred and fifty. The cooking methods described in it are far-reaching, and the word "cuisine" is also from the book, and it is from this that Japan and Korea still refer to cooking as "cuisine".
Many of the cooking methods recorded in the book are still used in Shandong and even the whole country, such as the "hot porpoise method" recorded in the book:
Those who use the milk porpoise to be extremely fat, [豕贲] and [牛字] are all obtained. Cure is like boiling, washing, scraping, making it extremely clean. Open the abdomen, go to wuzang, and wash it again, and make it full with maoru belly, wear it with oak wood, slow fire, and turn sharply. (Turn often make Zhou Za, not turn or focus also) sake number coated with hair color. Take the new pig cream extremely white and clean, and do not stop it. If there is no new pig paste, pure sesame oil is also available. The color is the same as amber, and it is similar to real gold. The entrance is dissipated, like snow, with a pulp and cream, and it is extraordinary.
This dish is now the roast suckling pig.
In addition, the book also records the diet of ethnic minorities in the western region, as mentioned in the book, "Hu tang" and "Hu cannon meat", which are basically hand-grabbed lamb and lamb belly roast meat in the northwest region today.
The most valuable thing in the book is the first written appearance of stir-fry and the use of vegetable oil and broth.
Its "fried chicken method": "Break, in a copper bell, stir to mix yellow and white." Finely chopped shallots are white, and sautéed with salt honey, tempeh (i.e., tempeh), sesame oil (sesame sesame oil), is very fragrant. "Not only is there the earliest and clear record of stir-frying, but also the record of vegetable oil being eaten.
At that time, the way of scrambling eggs was not much different from today's home-cooked practice, and the salted tempeh was more elaborate than the average home-made method. Because vegetable oil has a higher boiling point than animal oil, the temperature during cooking is increased, which can enhance the aroma and taste of food, and techniques such as stir-frying that appear in the future must rely on higher oil temperature to be realized.
Regarding eggs as the main ingredient, today's Lu cuisine is mostly "yellow cabbage" (scrambled eggs have stall yellow cabbage, boiled yellow cabbage, sweet and sour fried egg skin is called crispy yellow cabbage), "wood tree" (wood tree is osmanthus flower, because of its golden color. Wood chestnut meat is egg scrambled meat, Lu cuisine method for bamboo shoots, eggs, shredded meat, and then introduced to local conditions, such as Beijing method to replace bamboo shoots with yellow cauliflower or cucumber, there are also some areas to add fungus renamed wood whisker meat, has been false rumors), "soup woguo" (that is, boiled poached eggs) and other words instead.
According to the "Barnyard Banknotes":
The northern people curse people's words, there are egg words, hun eggs, noisy eggs, yellow eggs , huangba (wang eight) eggs, so the egg word of the dish, avoid it. Eggs are known as chickens, peeled eggs are called pine flowers, and scrambled eggs are known as yellow cabbage.
Due to the difference in the names of the north and the south, there have even been jokes. Liang Gongchen of the Qing Dynasty,"The Three Compilations of the Records of the North East Garden:
There is a southern customer who does not eat chicken eggs, the first to the north of the early tip, the next public opinion into the store, the shop guy is very anxious, its shape seems to be very hungry, opened the mouth and asked: Is there a good dish? Answer: There is woody meat. Okay, get it quick. And to give a few, then they will not eat, and they will be laughed at, so they dare not speak. And asked, is there any good one? Answer: What about yellow cabbage? Guest: Wouldn't it be nice to say this earlier. and to those who are still uneaten.
Although a simple scrambled egg, but in the cooking method of Lu cuisine there is still a lot of attention, only to the boiled yellow vegetables as an example: three whole eggs in the bowl three egg yolks (in order to make it more colorful), add the appropriate amount of salt, clear soup, water starch, green onion, sea rice crushed and stir well, burn wide oil in the pot, pour the well-stirred egg liquid into the stir-fry, solidify and then out of the pot.
It sounds very simple, but there are many exquisite ones, first, the eggs must be fried thoroughly and unusually soft, like a plate of tender bean flowers stacked up, and the plate is slightly trembling when it is placed on the table. Second, the fried yellow cabbage is delicate in color, and there is no trace of burnt paste, but it is allowed to eat the burnt aroma of scrambled eggs. Third, there must be no excess water and oil precipitation after frying, and the bottom of the pot must be refreshing and clean after being plated. No sticky pan.
To do the above points, the proportion of clear soup and starch mixed into the egg liquid, how much oil is used in the pot, the oil temperature and the change of the heat when the egg liquid is put into the pot, there can be no mistakes. If there is no special oil spoon (Lu cuisine calls the pot a spoon), you need to use a frying spoon to fry the spoon three times (the oil is poured into the frying pan and then turned and poured out, so three times) to achieve a non-stick effect, of course, if you directly use the current non-stick pan to make it is only in vain, because the temperature and heat dissipation method of the pot are different from the traditional iron pot, and the unique aroma of the iron pot cannot be made.
After being introduced to the northeast, the surface of the yellow cabbage has an extra layer of mustard juice
The preparation of broth is recorded for the first time in the Qi Min Zhi Shu:
Pound the beef and sheep bones, crush them, cook them to get the juice, sweep away the foam, and stop to make it clear.
The emergence of broth laid the foundation for Lu cuisine 'no soup, no dish'. Although many dishes in Lu cuisine are not soup dishes, in the process of seasoning, there is great dependence on clear soup (that is, filtered broth, Lu cuisine's clear soup using a unique "red whistle" and "white whistle" filter).
In the era when there was no synthetic condiment such as monosodium glutamate, the umami taste of cooking dishes basically relied on this spoonful of soup, of course, Lu Cai Fresh also had a secret sea intestine powder dried oyster powder at that time. Shandong proverb often says "the cavity of the play, the soup of the cook." "This shows its importance. In the past, the first thing restaurants did every day was to hang soup, and Lu cuisine, which is famous for soup, is even more complicated.
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