Jiangnan Mountains are warm and moist, the climate is mild, the material is tianbao, the people are diligent and pragmatic, and there is no lack of poetic aesthetic pursuit, so it has the unique advantage of nurturing gastronomic culture. The Qianlong Emperor went to Jiangnan six times, and everywhere he went, he tasted folk food, making Jiangnan on the tip of his tongue famous all over the world.
Suzhou's "world's first dish" has a moving legend: when the Qianlong Emperor first came down to Jiangnan, he paid a private visit to the famous town of Mudu and hesitated in front of the "Shishushun Building". The shopwoman asked him "what's so hard?" Qianlong said, "Because I lost two silver coins, I haven't eaten yet." The simple shopwoman heard that she was a foreigner, and immediately invited to enter the store, but the food had basically been sold out, so she casually burned a "red-billed green parrot brother" (stir-fried spinach) and "gold-encrusted white jade board" (watercress roasted tofu), and then fried the leftover pot with oil, poured the boiled soup, only listened to the "squeak" sound, the aroma was fragrant, and it was interesting, so that Qianlong, who was hungry for almost a day, had a great appetite and ate the soup of the meal. Qianlong asked the name of the soup, and the shopwoman smiled: "You are the first person to taste this soup dish, just call it 'the first dish in the world'!"
There are many such legends, and now many Jiangnan delicacies are circulating the moving story of the Qianlong Emperor when he went down to Jiangnan or tasted, or named, or paid tribute to Beijing.
Mudu Ancient Town
More than three hundred years ago, Hong Sheng's "Hall of Eternal Life" Kunqu opera was performed for three days and three nights in the Weaving Mansion in Suzhou. On the stage, Tang Minghuang and Yang Yuhuan in the fold of "Little Feast" are entangled in pity and snuggle between the flowers; offstage, the spectators listen to the play while drinking and tasting dishes. The exquisite dishes of the Weaving House at that time have now been included in the list of intangible cultural heritage of Jiangsu Province and are regarded as the "national treasures" of the Chinese gastronomic community.
Jiangnan diet, conform to the timing, from time to time do not eat, the taste of "the main light, still the original taste, heavy health", Lixia eat broad beans, eat spring shoots in the spring, eat wheat green dough before and after the Qingming, not only to commemorate Tabor, from the perspective of the food itself, the green juice contained in the green dough is rich in nutrients, and has a better therapeutic value for the spring liver fire.
Wu Ge's "Fish Proverbs in December" vividly depicts the eating habits and pursuits of Jiangnan people: "The head of the mandarin fish in the pond is fine; the mandarin fish fat in February; the turtle in March is replenished; the anchovy is added to the fine onion in April; the white fish eats belly in May; the bream is fresh like chicken in June; the eel is stewed in soy sauce in July; the mackerel in August eats only the lungs; the crucian carp in September is red stuffed with meat; the grass carp tooth sacrifice in October; the silver carp soup head fat in November; and the blue fish in December eats tails." ”
In the era of no air-conditioning fan, Jiangnan people have the habit of "staying up in the summer" in their diet, eating lightly to help spend the summer safely. The "three freshness of the ground, the three freshness of the tree, and the three freshness of the water" that you should eat in the summer are both in accordance with nature and beneficial to health. Today's Jiangnan, even if the ordinary people's daily meals, also pay attention to spring to taste fresh, summer to eat light, autumn flavor, winter into nourishment.
Food is a mirror of the exquisite life of Jiangnan, pinning on the expectations and aesthetic interests of Jiangnan people for life.
The more taste-conscious life is, the more sophisticated the food. Elegant and delicate, it is the characteristic of Jiangnan cuisine. The ingredients in Jiangnan are often not as rare as Cantonese cuisine, but they are better than the fine workmanship. Yangzhou lion head, you need to choose 60% of the meat, 40% of the lean meat, the meat of the meat should be cut separately. Using a knife to cut the meat into slices, cut into silk, and then cut into diced meat larger than the grain of rice, this effort requires the heart of embroidery. Then chop the lean meat into a puree and merge it with the fat cubes. Add salt and stir until it is sticky, stir until the wrist is sore and the arm is numb, which shows the fine kung fu.
Nanjing Yonghe Garden boiled dried silk, a 1 cm thick white square dried to cut into 18 thick and even pieces, and then cut horizontally into fine wire, is a very knife-like dish. Look at another dish: "If you talk about the mellow taste of the crisp, Jinling is good at stewing and knocking." When making stew raw knocks, Jingsu celebrity chefs pay special attention to stewing skills, if the fire is not enough, the clear soup is scarce and the taste is thin; when the fire is sufficient, the soup is rich and mellow, crispy and delicious, and the food is unique. Counting carefully, the Jiangnan diet is mostly kung fu dishes. A piece of eggplant in the dream of the Red Chamber, seasoned with "ten chickens", a taste of ordinary eggplant, only chicken to accompany it, only to achieve the fine taste of Jiangnan.
Since ancient Jiangnan has been known as the "granary of the world", "Suhu is ripe, the world is full", during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, half of the world's grain endowment came from Jiangnan. The superior economy and abundant products satisfy the Jiangnan people's pursuit of material life, coupled with the penetration of cultural aesthetics, pay attention to eating and drinking, and become an indispensable part of fine life.
Jiangnan cuisine is the most emotional carrier of traditional Chinese culture. To say that the most exquisite carrier is the Jiangnan garden.
Jiangnan Garden is a synthesis of architecture, mountain ponds, horticulture, painting, sculpture and poetry. Garden architecture, pay attention to the coupling of the form of the god and the environment, the green trees, pond water, stacked stones and pavilions, bridges, pavilions in the park cover each other, complement each other, presenting the artistic characteristics of nature, indifference, tranquility and subtlety, and through the design techniques of long-range borrowing, step shifting scenery, first suppressing and then rising, small in the big, etc., to achieve the wonderful artistic conception of "although made by man, it is like opening from heaven".
Before the garden is built, the owner must carefully plan, carefully survey, review the situation, carefully design, and make some ideas, just like writing articles and paintings to make intentions, to plan, and then layout and operation.
The design and construction of Jiangnan Famous Gardens are directly involved in the design and construction of famous scholars, such as the Ming Dynasty famous artist Wen Zhengming who helped plan the Humble Administrator's Garden, and also left hand-planted vines as proof. Some of the gardens have coopers and old trees, all of which are on the original foundations and are well organized into the garden scenery. Preserving ancient trees, optimizing the river pond according to the terrain, in order to harmonize the garden with the existing environment. Those exquisitely carved dishes with good color and flavor, such as changing scenery and creating a garden in the south of the Youjiang River, all contain a lot of spiritual and aesthetic components, and they are also like boating in the blue waves of the Slender West Lake, which makes diners visually beautiful and linger.
Humble Administrator's Garden
As Mr. Chen Congzhou said: Looking at the Humble Administrator's Garden and lingering garden is like tasting Yangzhou's famous five-ding bun, which should be carefully tasted when eating, and then it can be divided into chicken cubes, diced meat, diced bamboo shoots, shrimp and diced shiitake mushrooms, so that the taste can be eaten. These two gardens are colorful and every place is good, just like the five-ding big bag of each Ding Ren is a fine product.
Lingering Garden
The fine ingenuity of Jiangnan cuisine can be seen in a five-ding bag.
5 diced buns win with the fineness of flour and filling. Fermented with flour that is "as white as snow", the fermented noodles are soft and flexible, and they are not sticky to the teeth. "Five Dings" are made from diced chicken, diced meat, diced bamboo shoots, shrimp and diced shiitake mushrooms. The foreskin is stained with the marinade of the filling, the invert is soft and hard, the salty is sweet, the sweetness is crisp, the oil is not greasy, and the shape is beautiful.
Ingenuity is connected.
In the Humble Administrator's Garden, the water surface is open and the layout is sparse. The best is the mountain pavilion in the middle and the lake pavilion, and the exquisite method of borrowing scenery. The large pond and small courtyard are divided into scenes, dense and intermittent, small places see large, reduced to zero, and the layout is exquisite. The Lingering Garden, the scenery is divided into garden ponds, pavilions, mountains and forests and Murata and other districts, the pavilion area is the most distinctive, the portal overlaps, the convergence turns, the space changes, the layout is unique, and the famous stone crown cloud peak becomes a special scene.
What is the Viewer's Garden like? Chen Congzhou also said: "Master of Nets Garden is like Suzhou's famous soup buns, each small soup bun does not show its appearance, one bite into the mouth, delicious soup, meat filling is all wrapped in it, watery, fragrant, endless aftertaste." If you don't understand the famous points, you won't savor them, gobble them up, sweep them up, eat them and don't know their taste, and you will waste these beautiful points. ”
Master of the Nets Garden
Master of Nets Garden is a small garden in Suzhou, with jagged stones around the pond; the ring pond is built, the exquisite stretch is stretched, and the courtyard is small and close to the mountain forest. Although it is a small garden, it is also arranged in a very pattern, and even the route also distinguishes the differences between the master, guests and servants, on the one hand, it pays attention to etiquette and humility, on the other hand, it also reflects the ingenuity of Jiangnan gardens and meets different functional needs.
The coupling garden of the east and west gardens are coupled into pairs, the small but delicate garden, the retreat garden that wins more with less... Each garden has its own subtlety, the mood of food and drink appreciates the garden, in the small beauty of the contemplation of self-satisfaction, a flavor from the heart.
Coupling Garden
Retreat Garden
Reader: Liu Rong
Moderator of Nanjing Radio and Television Group
Deputy Secretary-General of Nanjing Recitation Association
Planning 丨 Cui Shuping
Audit 丨 Cao Yunhua Cui Shuping
Edited by 丨Liu Yuxuan Li Fei
Proofreading 丨 Xu Hongyun
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