In 2014, Shunde was awarded the title of "World Capital of Gastronomy" by UNESCO, and it should be known that there are only 6 cities in the world that have obtained this title, and China accounts for two, one is Chengdu, and the other is Shunde.
Originally, it was a matter of great joy to be named a city of gastronomy. But compared to the stupid Chengdu, there are all kinds of negative rumors on the Internet about Shunde, another food capital.
One of the rumors is that after going to Shunde, you will feel that you are eating before.
There are also rumors that there are three taboos for getting along with Shunde people:
One of the taboos is never to eat with a Shunde person;
Taboo two, if you eat with a Shunde person, don't order fish;
Taboo three, even if Shunde people come to your house to eat, don't cook by yourself;
It is said that if anyone dies in violation of these taboos, he personally cooks a whole fish feast to entertain the Shunde people.
Then shunde people will definitely spit on you to make you doubt life.
01
Shunde people pay attention to food
To know why Shunde people are so picky about eating, you have to start with the eating habits of Shunde people.
The day of Shunde people often begins with a bowl of steaming porridge.
For the average person, what is there to pay attention to when drinking porridge? Isn't it just plain white rice porridge? Even if you want to pay attention to it a little, you will add some skin and egg lean meat to the top.
But Shunde people are not, there are many tricks.
There is a nest of egg beef porridge, pour in the marinated beef slices when the white porridge is boiling, and after it comes out of the pot, you have to lay a fresh raw egg, borrow the remaining heat to cook, and crush the golden brown;
There is raw fish fillet porridge, in addition to adding anchovies to the porridge, but also with lettuce, shiitake mushrooms, celery, coriander and many other vegetables are considered authentic.
There are pork porridge, after the preparation of the pig offal, under the harsh heat and the hot white porridge "wind and clouds", pig brain delicate, pork belly lingering, pork liver crisp, all in a pot "inclusive".
More creative breakthrough rice porridge, cooked with fragrant rice until rotten, de-grained and stored in the pulp, add chicken soup to taste and boil out the soup base. When eaten, it is eaten like a hot pot, and it is eaten from mountain treasures to seafood.
When the ingredients are exhausted and only a pot of soup remains, scoop it into a bowl and savor it.
A bowl of porridge, which was changed to this one by the Shunde people, has made it unclear whether the Shunde people are eating hot pot or porridge.
It is not only porridge that is played badly by the Shunde people, but also milk.
For example, the name of Cantonese-style dessert double skin milk can be said to be known to everyone.
It is said that the birth of double skin milk was entirely due to an inadvertent act of the Shunde people in the late Qing Dynasty.
In an accident, the Shunde people found that the local milk-rich buffalo milk stopped heating, and during the rapid cooling process of contact with the air, it would form a thick layer of milk skin.
The milk is rolled over to press down the milk skin, and when the second layer of milk skin emerges, the bowl of milk will become incomparably mellow and thick.
So the Shunde people who discovered the New World immediately opened their minds and extended the hand of the demon reform to the milk.
Heat, cool, remove the milk skin, beat the milk into the egg whites, add sugar, pour back into the bowl and float the milk skin... The timing, temperature, and dosage of each step change with the state of the milk.
Through the magic reform of generations of Shunde people, double skin milk has finally turned out to be born, and with its tender taste and rich flavor, it has conquered the north and south of the river, and has been sought after by countless people.
Of course, just as there is no end to the magic reform of porridge, the Shunde people's magic reform of milk has not stopped because of double skin milk.
There are ginger bumping milk mixed with ginger juice and milk under strict temperature control; there is milk roll porridge with milk into porridge; and there is fried milk that has been changed to the extreme.
The so-called sautéed milk is a mixture of milk whites with an appropriate amount of corn starch, as well as ingredients such as crab, shrimp and olive kernels.
After the pot is continuously stirred, on the one hand, it is necessary to control the temperature of the heat, increase one point is easy to burn paste, and subtract one point is difficult to form;
On the other hand, it had to be rotated for a long time, shoveling and pushing, and about nine times before it was fried into a semi-solidified state, looking like a pile of loose mashed potatoes. But the entrance is lingering and the aftertaste is endless.
You can play with milk into mashed potatoes, and only Shunde's magic cooks can do it.
02
"Sashimi" is also Chinese, and even more Sociable
Of course, the Shunde people are not just magic reformers, they have also inadvertently preserved some of the traditional delicacies of our Chinese nation, such as sashimi.
Whenever we talk about sashimi, most of our first reactions are Japanese food that looks full of force.
However, in fact, this Japanese dish is also stolen from us in Greater China.
But later we gradually forgot about the sashimi dish ourselves, but Japan made a name for itself in the world with this dish.
But in Shunde, I still retain this traditional chinese dish of my Greater China, and both the workmanship and the taste are much better than the cottage version of Japanese sashimi.
Shunde's sashimi is undoubtedly the closest way to eating fish with its original taste.
A live fish takes the meat, removes the bone with a superb knife method, cuts it into several transparent thin slices, and folds them into petals and places them on an ice plate, so it is also called "chrysanthemum fish raw".
The most traditional way of eating is only seasoned with oil and salt, which preserves the fat and tenderness of the fish.
Shunde people should have a "fishing" action when eating raw fish, representing "more and more fishing", "wind and water rise", the fish is soft in the mouth, the aftertaste is fresh and sweet, just like the "natural to carve" of the plain beauty, Shunde fish raw light ingredients there are more than a dozen kinds.
Before eating fish, first pick the ingredients according to personal preferences, add oil, salt, sugar, and iced raw fish together in a bowl to mix, and then immediately eat the raw fish seasoning into the mouth, chew carefully, all kinds of fragrant, spicy, sour, sweet condiments will bring out the deliciousness of the fish, so that the mouth is full of fragrance, endless aftertaste, making people want to stop.
In contrast, the Japanese only use mustard soy sauce as a seasoning, which is much more monotonous.
In addition, Japanese people eat raw fish mainly with thick cuts, because this fully reflects the best taste of the raw materials.
In Shunde, it is different, Shunde fish raw is a very test of the master knife kung fu dish, a good master, can cut the fish fillet into only about 0.5 mm thickness, as thin as a cicada wing, crystal clear, beautiful to the extreme.
Shunde people eat fish, and spend a lot of thought on it, in addition to sashimi, fish heads can be stewed, fish skin can be cold mixed, and fish skin dumplings, which can be described as various.
03
Shunde's cook
Since Shunde people are so particular about eating, their cooking skills are naturally famous all over the world, and since ancient times, there has been a saying of "eating in Guangzhou, cooking out of Fengcheng".
Since the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, Fengcheng chefs have gone out into the world with skills, they have gone to Sui, Hong Kong, Macao, and even Southeast Asia and Europe, the United States, Africa to open restaurants, the Shunde cuisine as a representative of Cantonese cuisine to the world, so, "overseas, Shunde restaurants are always Cantonese cuisine clubs", many restaurants with the "Fengcheng chef management" signboard to attract a wide range of visitors.
At the beginning of the 20th century, some self-combing women went to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Singapore and other places as maids, these "Shunde majie" are good at cooking, Guangzhou Xiguan cuisine, in fact, is their legacy.
To this day, under the influence of the wind of food, almost everyone in Shunde cooks, and everyone likes to cook a few times.
With the vertical and horizontal water network as the bones, the fertile soil as the body, the inheritance of generations as the bloodline, and the wandering nostalgia as the memory, Shunde's "all the people are cooks", although not everyone is in charge, but diet is indeed a "family science" for them.
Therefore, it seems that they are picky about eating, but in fact, they have the unchangeable attachment to their hometown in their hearts, and the pickiness of Shunde people's tastes is completely accustomed to the exquisiteness of ingredients in their hometown.