Small town new year taste! The smell of Huai'an, lips and teeth remain fragrant

China Xiaokang Network Exclusive Article

Wen | "Xiaokang" and a reporter of China Xiaokang Network, Jian Hongni

Before becoming the fifth city in China to be selected as the "World Capital of Gastronomy", the story of Huai'an people and food has a long history. The Chinese New Year's Eve meal of the Huai'an Laoqingjiangpu family with 6 to 8 family members is usually composed of ten dishes, which means perfect.

New Year fun Nowadays, Huai'an also follows the traditional custom of relatives and friends of the Spring Festival to feast on each other to eat "New Year wine", today your family please, tomorrow his family to bring, the day after tomorrow my family to restore the east. Photo: TUCHONG

The small town in northern Jiangsu, the hometown of the great Zhou Enlai – was the most eye-catching label in Huai'an until November 8, 2021, and after UNESCO announced Huai'an as a "Global Creative Cities Network – City of Gastronomy" on November 8, Huai'an became the fifth city in China to be selected as the "World Capital of Gastronomy".

Before the "official announcement", the story of Huai'an people and food has a long history.

Sumptuous Spring Festival table

"This year, in response to the call for the New Year on the spot, we may not return to Huai'an, but the Table for the New Year will not change." For Ou Yan, who has worked and lived in Suzhou for many years, making a table of Huai'an dishes for the New Year is the best comfort for Huai'an wanderers and the opening of the New Year's taste.

In Ou Yan's memory, every New Year's Day is opened by a bowl of solid tangyuan dipped in black sesame and white sugar. Tangyuan was made by my mother the night before, and the number of tangyuan in each person's bowl was even, and if he couldn't eat it, the remaining number must also be even. What Ou Yan remembers the most is the grated black sesame seeds and white sugar mixed with the sesame candy, "fragrant, sweet silk, I will always eat two more tangyuan in order to eat sesame candy."

Zuo Bin, 48, is a native of Huai'an Laoqingjiangpu and the director of the Huai'an Maternal and Child Health Hospital Union, but in Huai'an, he also has a more widely known identity - the moderator of the Huaishui Anlan Huaiyang food edition. As a veteran food lover and the earliest Huai'an food blogger, Zuo Bin, in addition to the three Chinese New Year's Eve meals in his military career, every Chinese New Year's Eve meal in his life was shared with his family in Huai'an.

Zuo Bin introduced that the Chinese New Year's Eve meal of the old Qingjiangpu family with 6-8 family members is usually composed of ten dishes, which means perfect. Among the ten dishes, there will be two meats, two vegetarian and four cold dishes (pork sewage, sausage, beef, cucumber, radish, etc.), four roast dishes (usually there are green vegetable roast meat balls, yellow cauliflower roasted chicken nuggets, soybean sprouts roasted tripe, roast beef, etc., or use fried spring rolls to replace one of the roast dishes), a family portrait (braised chowder), and an annual fish (braised fish). For large families of more than 10 people Chinese New Year's Eve two more cold dishes and four stir-fry dishes (stir-fried long fish, sautéed loin flowers, stir-fried seasonal vegetables, etc.) will be added to the rice. Among them, meat balls, family portraits, and fish every year are the essential dishes for each family to Chinese New Year's Eve meals.

Huaiyang cuisine began in the Spring and Autumn Period and flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and is the benchmark cuisine of the "first banquet of the founding of the country" in New China. There are more than 1,300 kinds of classic famous dishes in Huaiyang cuisine, and 298 dishes and cooking techniques have been selected into the provincial intangible cultural heritage list, which is the largest number of districted cities in the country. Huaiyang cuisine is also an important part of the "Chinese Food Prosperity Plan" of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, and Huai'an has built the largest theme cuisine museum in the country, the China Huaiyang Cuisine Culture Museum.

Knowing that her hometown was selected as the "Global Creative City Network - City of Gastronomy", Ou Yan was not at all surprised, from the time she left her hometown at the age of 24, she realized that many of the foods in her hometown could not be found outside, and when talking to people about Huai'an, many people's reaction was "the restaurant is delicious". Ou Yan described Huai'an cuisine as "just right": "not spicy, not sweet, not salty, not light". So much so that Ou Yan's "Huai'an stomach" can't adapt to any heavy taste, especially spicy, no matter where it goes.

Counting the festival cuisine of the Huai'an people, Ou Yan believes that the biggest feature is that the ingredients are fresh and diverse, and the meat and vegetarian dishes are well matched, "Our family's Spring Festival table usually has braised fish, shrimp, tofu soup, fried shredded meat with artemisia annua, braised pork balls (braised lion's head), fried spring rolls (leeks and pork fillings), fried lotus clips and so on."

Huai'an is located in the geographical dividing line between the north and south of China, with four rivers running through the city and five lakes, and the water area accounts for 1/4 of the city's area, and is known as "a city floating on the water". The unique green ecological environment has created high-quality and abundant ingredients such as lobster, hairy crab, mustard fruit, and puddle.

Huaiyang cuisine, along with Lu cuisine, Sichuan cuisine and Cantonese cuisine, is known as the four major cuisines of China. Huaiyang cuisine was formed in Yangzhou, Huai'an and Zhenjiang. "Huai" refers to Huai'an, Jiangsu, and "Yang" refers to Yangzhou, Jiangsu. Huaiyang cuisine pays attention to knife work, delicate knife technique, light taste, the main dishes are braised lion's head, soft long fish, Wensi tofu, crystal dish, shrimp seed pu cai and Wenlou soup bun.

In ancient times, Huai'an was the junction of north and south, and there were many famous officials here, so it was also the gathering place of famous chefs in the world. Huaiyang cuisine has a light taste, mainly the taste of the ingredients themselves.

In the ancient city of Huai'an, on the eve of the Spring Festival, relatives and friends and neighbors exchanged traditional customs such as giving each other steamed buns, assorted vegetables, crystal beans, etc., called "scattering". Every year, as soon as they enter the Layue Gate, the urban and rural people of Huai'an find large plaques and dustpans that have been shelved for many days, and begin to prepare for making assorted vegetables and crystal beans, and this traditional folk custom continues to this day. These two ordinary small dishes, in the era of insufficient supply of materials, are the testimony of the enthusiasm of the Huai'an people who are good at cooking, the birthplace of Huaiyang cuisine - in order to let the family and relatives and friends who come to visit the New Year during the Spring Festival eat well and drink well, the housewives will use home-grown and inexpensive and good-quality ingredients bought on the market to make delicious assorted vegetables and crystal beans that can be used as both large dishes and small dishes.

Nowadays, Huai'an also follows the traditional custom of relatives and friends of the Spring Festival to feast on each other to eat "New Year wine", today your family please, tomorrow his family brings, the day after tomorrow my family fudong.

Zuo Bin introduced that Huai'an people pay attention to family affection, pay attention to etiquette, usually around the twentieth day of the Waxing Moon, close relatives and close friends will begin to agree on a time to get together, basically every Huai'an family will have a meeting table during the Spring Festival. Post-90s Ou Yan likes the family banquet during the Spring Festival, relatives and friends generally choose to invite guests at home, if you encounter anyone who has a happy event, you will go to the restaurant to invite a few tables. Gathering people to enjoy food as a courtesy exchange is a pleasure in the Spring Festival.

Pass on the beauty of cooking

In the eyes of international friends, Zhang Shenglai, a professor at Jiangsu Food and Drug Technician College, is a master with good craftsmanship, humor and humor, and love of Huaiyang traditional culture. In the eyes of students, Zhang Shenglai is a very "international style", deeply loved and charismatic professional teacher - in 2012, he was sent to Australia and New Zealand by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council to carry out a 21-day "Huaiyang Cuisine, Culture China" tour activity; in 2015, he participated in the International Young Celebrity Chef Cooking Competition and won the third prize; in 2019, he won the Chinese Golden Chef Award, and in the same year, he was invited by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the State to the Jordanian Royal Family to carry out food promotion activities such as "Walking Chinese New Year's Eve Rice".

As the inheritor of Huaiyang cuisine, Zhang Shenglai has successively served as the director of the culinary training center and the leader of the culinary profession of the Food and Drug Vocational and Technical College, sparing no effort and working overtime to ensure that teachers and students can comfortably teach and learn in the beautiful environment training center, so that they can be deeply influenced by the culture of Huaiyang cuisine in the professional workplace atmosphere.

Huai'an is a famous food city in China, the output value of the city's food industry has exceeded 100 billion yuan, and it has 129 national geographical indication certification trademarks, ranking the forefront of districted cities in the country. By the end of 2020, there are more than 40,000 restaurants of various types in the city, more than 250,000 employees, and annual sales of catering of 21 billion yuan.

At the same time, Huai'an culinary education is relatively developed, with 10 colleges and universities offering culinary majors, training more than 100,000 middle and senior chefs, and 120 national -level "cooking masters". The city has more than 30 cooking master studios and intangible cultural heritage food studios.

Cheng Ping, deputy secretary general of Huai'an Culinary Association, introduced that the Huai'an Culinary Association, founded in 2002, adheres to the principle of "inheriting, carrying forward, pioneering and innovating", carries forward the culinary culture of Huaiyang cuisine, carries out technical exchanges, develops and improves culinary skills, studies culinary science, publicizes culinary knowledge, cultivates culinary talents and management talents, unites the majority of catering operators and culinary workers, and makes due contributions to promoting and developing the culinary cause of Huaiyang cuisine and the culinary cause of Huai'an region and the economic development of Huai'an region.

Since 2002, Huai'an has actively promoted and protected Huaiyang cuisine through successive food festivals, cooking competitions and other activities. The characteristics of Huai'an cuisine are not only the freshness, crispness and tenderness of southern cuisine, but also the salty, colored and thick characteristics of northern cuisine, forming their own sweet and salty moderate, salty and slightly sweet flavor. Because Huaiyang cuisine is made of fresh products as raw materials, it pursues lightness when seasoning, which can highlight the original taste of raw materials. According to the cooking program of "taking fire as the age" proposed by the ancients, the transformation of Dingzhong is exquisite and microfiber, and the different characteristics of dishes such as freshness, aroma, crispness, crispness, tenderness, glutinousness, fineness and rottenness are reflected through the adjustment of the fire. Strict selection of materials, fine production; pay attention to fire, good at stewing; pay attention to knife work, elegant shape; salty and sweet moderate, pay attention to the original taste; soup as the weight, both mellow and mellow.

"Food is both national and worldly. Only by going to the world and integrating into the world can the classics last forever through the baptism of time. Zhang Shenglai said, "After becoming the 'World Capital of Gastronomy', Huai'an will better inherit and promote the Huaiyang cuisine culture on a global scale, promote the transformation and upgrading of the Huaiyang cuisine industry to specialization and internationalization, and dig deep into the gastronomic elements of literature, film and television, etc., promote the more close and in-depth integration of food with tourism, culture and creativity, better promote Huaiyang food culture, and let more diners understand and taste Huaiyang cuisine." ”

("Xiaokang", China Xiaokang Network Exclusive Special Article)

This article was published in the late January 2022 issue of Xiaokang