I thought that the sweet and salty dispute would only involve foods such as tofu brain and rice dumplings, but in Shantou, I was refreshed by a "sweet crepe belly meat" in front of me: pork belly was first boiled with water to release some fat, and then smeared with thin soy sauce to dry. Then the whole piece is fried, and the pork skin forms a crepe-like effect. It is then followed by 6 hours of sugar marinating and simmering in the syrup, and finally the pork is fished out and sliced and then poured with sugar to make a transparent sauce. Although it is coated with a layer of soy sauce, this dish is completely sweet to eat. So, why is pork made sweet?
The Chaoshan region was once an important sucrose producing area and the center of sucrose export, and this history has also left a sweet mark on the lives of the Chaoshan people. One of the manifestations of the Chaoshan people eating sweet is that they will arrange "head and tail sweet" in the banquet, that is, sweet dishes must be arranged at the beginning and end. Sweet crepe belly meat generally appears on the table as "tail sweet", not a meat dish in the main dish.
Left: Ginger potato mung bean sweet soup, which can be used as the "head sweetness" in the Chaoshan banquet; right: Sweet crepe belly meat is sweet pork belly, and appears as "tail sweet" in the Chaoshan banquet (Photo by Cai Xiaochuan)
As for why the people of Chaoshan don't feel that the sweet pork is against the law, Zhong Chengquan, the cook of this dish and the head of the Shantou Donghai Restaurant, told me that because the locals use sugar-stained fatty meat grains to make dim sum, they will not be unfamiliar with this taste.
However, in Suzhou and Wuxi, which I just visited, the filling of the dim sum will also use diced pork plate oil stained with sugar, but it will not make the whole pork belly sweet. However, Sichuan has a "sweet roasted white", fat pork sandwiched with red bean paste, and then steamed with brown sugar mixed with glutinous rice, and sweet crepe belly meat has similarities. It seems that the sweet and salty dispute also needs to add pork belly.
Above: Creative dessert produced by Jiangnan Ya Chef Banting Jiayan: Garden Cake; Bottom left: Wuxi Sauce Ribs from Lakeside Hotel; Bottom Right: Chestnut Muffin cake and chestnut sweet soup from Suzhou Huachi 88 Restaurant (Photo by Cai Xiaochuan)
China is vast and has taste preferences everywhere. The taste experience that is familiar to locals can bring "head-on" shock to outsiders.
In the small article "Five Tastes", the writer Wang Zengqi has long commented on the taste taste preferences in various places: Speaking of acid, Wang Zengqi shouted "Shanxi people can really eat jealousy!" Examples are "Elsewhere for the Spring Festival, they all serve a little good wine, but the oil and salt shops in Taiyuan all post a note: 'Supply old vinegar, one pound per household'"; referring to spicy, he preached that "there is a kind of chili pepper in northern Sichuan that cannot be eaten, hang it on the stove with a thread, and when the soup is done, the chili pepper is shabu-shabu in the soup, and it is very spicy"; and for the sweet, he sighed a wuxi not far away: "Wuxi's fried eel paste puts so much sugar!" The meat filling of the bun also contains a lot of sugar, and I can't eat it! As a Gaoyou person in Jiangsu, he can't accept the degree of sugar in Wuxi cuisine, which shows how obvious it is to eat "five miles of different winds, ten miles of different customs". Wang Zengqi summed it up in one sentence: "Chinese the mixture of tastes, dare to say that it is the crown of the world." ”
Guizhou Kaili people like to invite banquets, marriage to please, to have children to please, to move to a new home also need to please (Liu Youzhi photo)
In the tenth year of the gastronomy magazine, we decided to use taste as a clue to the search for food. Salty, sour, sweet, fresh and spicy, a total of five routes to present the flavor map of China. There is no bitterness in this, because there is no place where the dish is characterized by "eating bitterness". Humans evolved to reject bitterness —most poisonous foods are bitter, and most of the bitter stuff is also very toxic. The reason why people break through the defense line of self-protection and eat certain bitter ingredients is mostly because they value their efficacy. Just like the Dai people in Yunnan will eat "bitter fruit", Cantonese people like to eat bitter melon, they are all believed to have the function of clearing heat and detoxification.
In terms of taste, people will try to remove the bitter taste through cooking techniques, or let it reach the taste of "bitter and sweet". For example, a common dish in Chaoshan is bitter melon pork pot, which relies on flying bitter melon water first, and then during the stew process, the gravy penetrates to cover the bitterness.
Another method of candied bitter melon is to marinate the bitter melon in advance with sugar and then boil it in a thick syrup. Eventually, the bitter melon will change into a dark green color, and the texture is very transparent, like jade. When you eat it in your mouth, it is a very sweet piece, as if you have sealed your mouth with honey at once. From this point of view, bitterness and sweetness exist dialectically, and they are included in the sweet section.
After making the bitter melon into a preserve, there is no bitter taste at all (Photo by Cai Xiaochuan)
Among the five tastes, which one is most favored by the Chinese people? According to a 2019 "China Taste Preference Survey Data Report", the most popular taste among people aged 18 to 40 is spicy. This is in line with the expansion of Sichuan cuisine that we feel every day in major cities across the country.
Cao Yu, author of the book "The History of Chinese Spicy Food" and an associate researcher at the Center for Migration and Ethnic Studies at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, observed an interesting phenomenon: some experts attribute the popularity of spicy food to the result of immigrant culture, such as many Hunan and Jiangxi people in Guangzhou, who brought the habit of eating spicy food in their hometown to the city.
However, this can make sense in Guangzhou, and it will not work in Shanghai and Beijing. Most of the immigrants in Shanghai come from Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and they do not have the habit of eating spicy food in their hometowns. The largest number of immigrants in Beijing, Hebei and Shanxi, did not eat spicy. So why did they come to the big cities and become spicy?
Boiled yellow croaker from Beijing Silent River Restaurant (Photo by Huang Yu)
The explanation Cao Yu found was that spicy dishes were relatively cheap because the stimulating taste could mask the imperfections of the ingredients. Immigrants come to new cities to build new networks through extensive eating and social networking, and relatively cheap spicy dishes become ideal. And the spicy taste is not so much a sense of taste as a burning pain like a burn, and eating spicy together at a dinner party contains a kind of friendship that endures pain together.
The popularity of spicy food in big cities is often represented by easy-to-operate, industrialized spicy foods such as hot pot, skewers, and spicy hot, but when it goes deep into the source of the cuisine, spicy has more colorful faces. My colleague Zhang Xingyun went to Chengdu and Chongqing. He found that in the traditional Sichuan cuisine of Chengdu, spicy is elegant, gentle, delicate and restrained. Local chefs describe spicy and hot food as "too simple to be spicy, and the spiciness of true traditional Sichuan cuisine is complex, rich and layered." ”
However, Chongqing, where the dock culture is developed, has embarked on a different path from traditional Sichuan cuisine with Jianghu cuisine - Chongqing chefs to satisfy consumers, making vegetables marijuana, spicy, collecting fire, heavy oil, although Sichuan cuisine teachers do not agree with this, but it is undeniable that every two years will sweep the country's dishes, whether it is Mao Blood Wang, boiled fish, or spicy chicken, all belong to Chongqing's Jianghu cuisine.
Traditional Sichuan cuisine contains 24 flavor types that can make different flavors of spicy (Photo by Yu Chuzhong)
The opposite of "spicy" is probably "fresh". When Cao Yu talks about why people like to eat spicy when they come to big cities, there is also a point of view: "spicy" brings a kind of instant stimulation, which can make the general public in a fast-paced life get pleasure and satisfaction more quickly. Feelings like "umami" taste need to mobilize the taste buds of each part of the tongue to feel and taste carefully in order to appreciate the magic.
Why do we find food delicious? From a scientific point of view, it is the widespread presence of umami substances in ingredients. The known umami components are mainly amino acids represented by glutamic acid and aspartic acid, nucleotides represented by inosine and guanylate, and organic acids represented by succinic acid. Although the umami taste is often indescribable, it does not prevent Chinese from pursuing umami.
Jason, the chef of Ling Long, a fusion restaurant in Beijing, told me that he had thought hard about the difference between Asian cuisine and Western food, and found that whether or not to emphasize "freshness" was the biggest difference. "Japanese cuisine has 'Dashi' boiled from konbu and bonito, and Chinese food has a broth made of ham and chicken skeleton, which are the 'secret weapons' of chefs' seasoning, but there is no such concept in Western food." Still, it doesn't stop Chinese from enjoying certain Western dishes. You see the popular Italian cuisine, which is popular with the Chinese people, the three major ingredient elements, cheese, ham and tomato, are full of glutamic acid, indicating that the taste buds of the Chinese people will still be attracted by umami. ”
Employees at Qingdao Kaihai Restaurant make three fresh shrimp dumplings and mackerel dumplings (Photo by Wanshan)
Another colleague, Ai Jiangtao, carefully designed the "freshness journey" according to the different ways to obtain umami according to ingredients, cooking, fermentation and so on. He first chose Qingdao in Jiaodong Bay to explore the deliciousness of small seafood in Jiaozhou cuisine. There, he ate the most amazing raw pickled sea oysters of the trip, and spooned the sea oyster meat into his mouth along with the soup, the extreme taste of the umami taste, which is indescribable.
He then went to Huzhou, on the shores of Taihu Lake, one of the three major freshwater fish farming bases in China. He not only experienced the local people's various ways of locking and treating the freshness of the rivers and lakes, but also found the other half of the "fresh", the southern stew method of lamb, and the experience of enriching the umami taste with the freshness of fish and sheep. In the last stop in Huangshan, Anhui Province, he experienced the umami charm brought by fermentation through two dishes, stinky mandarin fish and edamame tofu.
Top left: The best way to eat oyster shrimp is to burn in white and have a sweet taste. Golden hook sea rice made of oyster shrimp, also a classic refreshment; top right: halal white fish from Huzhou Hundred Fish Feast, from Qiandao Lake; bottom left: semi-finished lamb cooked in a large pot, when eating, then put on the pot to collect the juice, garnished with green onions, minced garlic, minced pepper, the taste is fragrant and soft; bottom right: in any Huizhou restaurant, pan-fried edamame tofu is an indispensable dish (Photo by Huanshan)
Among the five tastes, the diversity of acids may be the most out of people's imagination. The author of "Sour Food Chronicles" has visited areas around the country where acid eating habits are observed. He told me that the acid of the north is the first acetic acid everywhere, and in the southwest, all kinds of acids are more.
This is traced back to the source, or related to the living conditions of lack of salt. "Salt production in the southwest is limited to lake salt and well salt, and the production is low and expensive, which is not as low as the low price and high popularity in the coastal areas. In many places in Guizhou and Yunnan, acid has long been used instead of salt, which is longer than the history of replacing salt with spicy salt. The technique of brewing vinegar from grain is more complex, while the acids derived from natural fruit acids and fermented from leftover food are more readily available and abundant. ”
Colleague Wang Shan went to Guizhou and Yunnan. Guizhou's sour soup fish can be eaten in many parts of the country, but some places must go local. For example, a kind of stinky acid from Qiannan Prefecture is a juice that is washed with vegetables and put into a jar, and the magic lies in using it to fry all kinds of leftovers, and this unique smell can integrate all the different flavors. Wang Shan tried it, but the price was that the stench on her clothes could not be dissipated for several days. It is said that there is also a kind of "meat sour", which is fermented with meat, bones, and fish, and it is also added with henna and fried wheat to help fermentation, which is the most lethal "weapon".
The acid of Yunnan is fresh and fragrant, mostly from the sour fruits produced in this plant kingdom. Wang Shan took kunming's Zhuanxin farmers' market as a starting point and saw 10 or 20 kinds of sour vegetables and fruits, lemons, tree tomatoes, sour papayas, green mangoes, etc., many of which had never been seen in the past. She finally understood why even without vinegar, Yunnan people can eat a variety of acids.
Above: Miao Ago's sour soup beef, beef from the natural growth of beef in the mountains, very tendon, the entrance has a milk aroma; bottom left: sour papaya can cook fish, boiled beef, full of fruit; bottom right: sauerkraut and tangyuan, never appeared together in the recipes of northerners, but can be made into a popular stir-fry dish in Guiyang (Liu Youzhi photo)
Saltiness is very important. Take the status of salt, Chinese called "salt is the first of all tastes", compared with the role arrangement of "junchen zuo envoy" in Chinese medicine, the status of the monarch belongs to salt. There is a folk proverb called "a good cook, a handful of salt". When cooking, the amount of salt added and the timing of salt addition are exquisite, and the level of salt determines the level of the chef. Especially in Chinese food, there is no concept of table salt, and adding salt is not a decision made by diners on demand, but the responsibility of the chef. Even so, salt is the least existent among the five flavors, because it is the bottom flavor of many ingredients in cooking, and salt can only attract people's attention when it is missing or excessive.
Colleague Jing jing specially went to the hometown of Yanbang cuisine - Zigong in Sichuan. The prosperity and decline of the city of Zigong were tied to the rise and fall of the salt industry. Some of the various cuisines under the category of salt dishes can be restored to the specific scenes of salt production, such as the most famous boiled beef; some are driven by the work, life and taste of the two major groups of salt merchants and salt workers, such as zai ginger field chicken; and some are the results of chefs' excellence in ingredients and techniques after the gradual enrichment of production means in the past century, such as hot waist flowers. This makes Zigong cuisine unique among Sichuan cuisine.
If you can't understand the uniqueness of Zigong well salt, then try Zigong kimchi. She heard that a local restaurant owner found a small salt well, the salt produced in a certain section of the rock formation, even seafood can be soaked, abalone, shrimp, these he have tried, "three years without color", "that section of the formation contains a special trace element, other wells do not, can keep fresh."
In addition to Zigong, Nuejing also visited Quanzhou, Fujian Province. The salty taste of southern Fujian is derived from the fermented fish in salt, that is, fish sauce. Although soybean fermented soy sauce has become popular today, there is still a strong gene for this fish salt ferment in the taste style of the Minnan people today.
Left: "Zhongxiu" restaurant's salt baked snail, the bottom of the pot salt mainly bears the role of heat conduction; right: in Quanzhou, soy sauce water remediation of all kinds of seafood is a very common and very common practice, Quanzhou restaurant menu common "stew", is "boiled with soy sauce" meaning (Huang Yu photo)
Even if each route is themed on a certain sense of taste, it does not seem monotonous, because the emphasis on compounding and balance is the essence of Chinese cooking. Seemingly simple red oil for cold mixing vegetables, behind not only the rapeseed oil and chili noodles stimulate each other, the oil itself is fried by onions and spices to enhance the flavor, pepper noodles may have added pepper noodles to add flavor, so it is not a "spicy" word can be summarized; and the soy sauce that every kitchen has, each chef also has the secret recipe of adding different spices to boil soy sauce, which is not a "salty" word can be described.
The sourness of Yunnan and Guizhou is inseparable from spicy, and the sweetness of Suzhou and Wuxi is precisely because of the collision of saltiness, which has a balanced feeling of "sweet out of the head, salty mouth". Not to mention freshness, which attaches to every sense of taste, bringing the icing on the cake. Take the Sichuan cuisine that is the best at seasoning, with 24 flavor types, and it is not only that "spicy" can exhaust everything.
Lan Minglu, a master chef of Sichuan cuisine, said to me: "The fish flavor type that everyone is most familiar with uses spices such as pickled pepper, pickled ginger, sugar, vinegar and other spices supplemented by spicy small ingredients such as ginger, onion and garlic, and finally produces a new taste without fish and fish flavor." This kind of out-of-the-box stunt is the magic of the five flavors of Chinese food. ”
What makes a delicious meal? Liu Zhilin, an expert in food culture, mentioned to me a sentence of the ancient Chinese: "The five flavors are harmonious, and the delicious sweetness is also delicious." "All cuisines, no matter which one stands out, are in pursuit of harmony in the overall taste. Sweetness is one of the five tastes, and it is also a trace of aftertaste that ultimately makes people feel happy and comfortable. We hope that this past year, despite the mixed tastes, will still end with sweetness.