Many people misunderstand that Sichuan cuisine is not the same as blindly putting chili peppers
Sichuan people love to cook. (Photo/"The Taste Aesthetics of Sichuan Cuisine")
Author | Peach butter
Edit | Xiao Feng
What is the first dish of Sichuan cuisine?
In the view of Shi Guanghua, who is humbly known as a "researcher of Sichuan cuisine" and has just released a new book "The Taste and Aesthetics of Sichuan Cuisine", the answer is to return to the pot meat, and the reason is: "This dish integrates the wisdom of Chinese culture, the Chinese concept of human spirits, the history of our Sichuan people, and the way of seasoning." ”
The "three white meats" of Sichuan cuisine - garlic white meat, even the pot, and back to the pot are all white meat from the Northeast in origin. The ancestors sacrificed to use the "chicken knife head" - to kill a rooster and cook a side of meat. The meat is usually pork rump, which is called "sitting knife meat".
How did the white meat of the Northeast come to Sichuan? It all started more than 300 years ago. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the total population of Sichuan was nearly 10 million; By the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the population had plummeted to 500,000, and it could be said that "one in a hundred does not survive". After that, immigrants from all over the country, you led the horses, I carried the burden, and dragged the family to Sichuan. The sacrificial customs and white meat of the Northeast were brought to Sichuan at that time.
Ancestor worship is usually carried out during the Spring Festival and Qingming Festival, but the immigrants who come to Sichuan are different, and they have to worship their hometown and ancestors every time they leave their hometown. As a result, in the land of Sichuan, there are frequent sacrificial activities. After sacrificing to the gods, the white meat will be eaten, which is the unique concept of "sharing between man and god" in Chinese.
On October 14, Shi Guanghua (right), a poet and scholar of Sichuan cuisine culture, appeared at the 2023 Tianfu Book Fair with "The Taste Aesthetics of Sichuan Cuisine". (Photo/Provided by Guangdong People's Publishing House)
Slice the meat back into the pot and add fermented seasonings such as bean paste, tempeh, soy sauce, and sweet noodle sauce to make the back pot meat. The food fermentation of Chinese is to hand over food to nature and time, which is the wisdom of Chinese culture "the unity of heaven and man, the Tao and the law of nature". Shi Guanghua's understanding of this is that only in the folk of Sichuan can such a dish be born.
Due to the limitation of ingredients, Sichuan people are not as good at working on "freshness" as people in other places (such as Huaiyang cuisine and Cantonese cuisine), but focus on "fragrant". The subtlety of Sichuan cuisine lies in the variety, layering and tension in the single taste.
The seasoning of the meat is sauce-flavored, including the spicy flavor of the sauce brought by the bean paste, the soy flavor brought by the tempeh, the strong fragrance brought by the soy sauce, and the sweet fragrance brought by the sweet noodle sauce; The meat as the main ingredient must be fat, at least "four fat and six thin", and what you eat is the fat and fragrant of the meat; Finally, add the garlic sprouts, so that the fragrance of the garlic sprouts will add the finishing touch to the whole dish.
"We Sichuan people are the best at eating pork. When Du Fu came to Chengdu, he wrote, 'Every family raises black ghosts, and eats yellow croaker at once'. The black ghost is a pig, and the yellow croaker is a yellow spicy dice, which shows that Sichuan people have a long history of eating pork. Back to the pot meat is the 'first fragrance of Sichuan cuisine', and it can best reflect the characteristics of Sichuan cuisine. Shi Guanghua said.
The Taste Aesthetics of Sichuan Cuisine
Written by Shi Guanghua
Guangdong People's Publishing House 2023-9
What is the flavor of "Ten Flavors of Sichuan Cuisine"?
Documentary producer Chen Xiaoqing said when writing a recommendation for "The Taste and Aesthetics of Sichuan Cuisine": "Teacher Shi Guanghua's previous books have led those of us who love to eat to experience the beauty of Sichuan cuisine with saliva flowing. ”
The books in Chen Xiaoqing's mouth refer to "My Life in Sichuan Cuisine" published in 2004 and "My Taste of Sichuan Cuisine" published in 2017. Shi Guanghua's self-evaluation is: "Those two books are in Sichuan cuisine, there is not much new knowledge, and they can still sell something, and some readers like it, but there were not many readers who wrote about food at that time, so I took advantage of a little first." ”
Shi Guanghua is a poet who participated in the "holism" poetry movement in the 80s of the last century. In "My Life in Sichuan Cuisine", he once sorted out his relationship with food: before the age of 8, every Sunday, his grandfather would take him to a restaurant to eat, and he would ask for a dish, and his grandfather watched him eat. Famous shops or famous foods in Chengdu, such as Duoyi, Panfang City, Weizhiyu, City Meixuan, Long Zhaoshou, Han Baozi, etc., were taken by his grandfather.
The strong grandmother taught him to experience the righteousness of the world in his meals; Father was his first teacher in cooking - when there was no meat, his father fried it into skin with red flour, cut it into small pieces, and fried it with garlic sprouts, saying that it was back to the pot meat; The sweet roasted white made by my father wrapped the roasted white into a roll and put it in a hollowed-out pear, and then "covered" a longan on it.
The cover of "My Life in Sichuan Cuisine".
Shi Guanghua calls himself a "vegetable man" - a man who cooks at home almost every day. It wasn't until he reached middle age that he began to write about food. Through the introduction of Li Shuren, the founder of the Sichuan Gourmets Association, he got to know many Sichuan cuisine masters and catering experts. So, he wrote the story of a "beef stew" that he heard into his first food article "Beef and radish equals gourmetism".
He mentioned in the article that after the beef is stewed, the radish should not be directly added to the cooking, it is best to scoop out a part of the broth, and cook the radish separately, and after cooking, then serve it with the beef in a bowl and pour it into the original soup on the table. He commented to himself, writing these tips, "people may find it somewhat interesting".
Write food articles, so that Sichuan cuisine, a broad and profound cuisine, gradually unfolds in front of him. As for the opportunity for him to re-examine Sichuan cuisine, it came from Sichuan cuisine master Shi Zhengliang.
When it comes to the style of Sichuan cuisine, people generally summarize it as "100 dishes and 100 flavors, one dish and one style, good at spicy". Shi Zhengliang's suggestion is: "Fresh is the base, spicy is good, and the emphasis is on taste change." According to Shi Zhengliang's understanding, even mapo tofu has to be eaten to the fresh bottom taste.
In Sichuan, chili peppers are called sea peppers, indicating its identity across the ocean.
Shi Guanghua said that it was as if an electric current was passing through his head — he was shocked. In his opinion, Shi Zhengliang's proposal, with taste as the core, designed and constructed the top-level theory of Sichuan cuisine, so that Sichuan cuisine "finally has the first accurate and complete expression". Later, Shi Zhengliang passed away in an accident, which made him determined: to start sorting out and narrating the taste genealogy of Sichuan cuisine.
Five years ago, Shi Guanghua opened a column called "Shihua Shishuo" in "New Weekly", which opened his research road of "Ten Flavors of Sichuan Cuisine".
These are the 10 most representative and charming flavors of Sichuan cuisine. "They start with the spicy flavor of chili pepper, and then the pickled pepper flavor, red oil flavor, sour and spicy flavor; On the right, the pepper hemp flavor with Sichuan pepper as the main flavor starts, followed by home-style flavor, dry roast flavor, fish fragrance, and strange taste; When the ancient Chinese peppercorns meet the owner of the peppers from the Americas, they are the pinnacle of the world's amazing taste in the history of food - the spicy Sichuan cuisine that is unique in the world. Shi Guanghua wrote. It is their correlation that constitutes the unique taste aesthetics of Sichuan cuisine.
According to Shi Guanghua's plan, write 10,000 or 20,000 words for each flavor type, and after writing 10 flavor types, about 200,000 words, you can publish a book. However, just when the Lord said the spicy taste of chili peppers, he wrote for 3 years and more than 100,000 words, "I just feel that I have just entered the spicy world of Sichuan cuisine."
Shi Guanghua writes spicy flavor, starting from green and spicy. (Photo/"The Taste Aesthetics of Sichuan Cuisine")
Therefore, the original intention of compiling "Ten Flavors of Sichuan Cuisine" into a book has become a separate book for "Spicy Flavors", that is, the first volume of the "Taste Aesthetics of Sichuan Cuisine" series, "The True Taste of Chili Peppers". The second flavor of pickled pepper, he is writing, "I have written more than 70,000 words, and I haven't written how to soak the pickled pepper." "May God have mercy on me, give me another 10 years, finish writing 10 flavors, don't let me hang my head and be ashamed of myself all the way back on the way home, and have no shame to see the ancestors and ancestors of Sichuan cuisine."
"A great cuisine with the most fireworks and common spirit, the most pursuit of rich taste and change, and the best expression of Chinese cultural wisdom", this is Shi Guanghua's definition of Sichuan cuisine.
"I'm not a foodie"
Shi Guanghua once commented on himself, "Say first, write second, eat third, and do fourth".
He said he's not a foodie, "I don't really like to eat." A foodie who knows what's good in a place and wants to eat it if he 'flies', [but] I wouldn't do that." He positions himself as a researcher of Sichuan cuisine culture and memory.
The master of Sichuan cuisine he admires, Huang Jinglin, who is famous for his "aunt's feast", is counted as one (Mingxun, Jinglin, and Jinlin are aliases). "Aunt Feast" comes from the Chengdu dialect, which is similar to "playing at home". According to the memories of Che Hui, a veteran newspaperman born in 1914, in the book "Sichuan Cuisine Miscellaneous", when he was a child, the grocery stores in Chengdu could buy small stoves, small spatulas, and small kitchen knives that imitated the cooking used by adults.
Huang Jinglin took the "aunt's feast" as a signboard, on the one hand, "without losing his innocence", and on the other hand, it also has a sense of self-deprecation. He once wrote a couplet: "Learning is not as good as people, talent is not as good as people, only frying vegetables and boiling soup can be regarded as my true ability; Relatives laugh at me, friends laugh at me, and I am content with a knife and shovel, which is the tip of the literati. ”
The scene of the aunt's feast displayed at the Chengdu Museum. (Photo/Sichuan Online)
Che Hui wrote: "Huang Jinglin has neither a teacher nor a recipe for the culinary arts, and because he is well-informed and exhaustively searching, it has become his own creative practice, and it is not impossible to call it the 'Huang system'." "The unique way of cooking and the way of doing business make Huang Jinglin's aunt's feast legendary.
In terms of business, he pays attention to the fixed number of seats, setting up two or three tables a day, and no more than four tables, which must be booked a few days in advance. He needs to know who the guests are, what they like, what they eat or what they don't eat, etc., so that they can tailor the dishes to the person. Sometimes he also served himself as a hostess, personally serving the food to the table and explaining it to the diners. A calligrapher once commented: "Listening to him explain the way to cook is like listening to Huangshi Gong's talk." ”
Almost at the same time as Huang Jinglin, Li Jieren, who had returned from studying in France, resigned from his teaching position at Chengdu University and opened a restaurant called "Xiaoya". Like her aunt's feast, Xiaoya doesn't have a recipe, and the recipes are all in the minds of Li Jieren and his wife Uncle Yang. Li Jieren cooks without oil (pour a scoop of oil on the pot when the dish is fried) to remove the taste of the restaurant; He didn't use spices like fennel and star anise, because he thought it was too cheesy, and it was a kind of herbal flavor, which didn't show the kung fu of home-cooked cooking.
If Huang Jinglin's "Huang system" occupies an important position in the history of Sichuan cuisine, then Li Jieren's contribution lies in the elucidation of the way of eating. In his famous works such as "Dead Water Breeze" and "Big Wave", he described in detail the food situation in Chengdu at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China. And these practices are all part of the culture and memory of Sichuan cuisine.
Li Jieren inscribed the "Xiaoya Restaurant" plaque. (Photo/Chengdu Go)
The spicy confusion of Sichuan cuisine
At the end of the 90s and the beginning of this century, Sichuan cuisine began to sweep all over China and to the world. Food writer Fu Xia said in her book "Sichuan Cuisine" that mapo tofu has become one of the must-order dishes for international diners.
At the same time, Sichuan cuisine is also facing doubts: cheap, large portions (pointing to not high-end, civilian), and "spicy to the end, 100 dishes and one taste".
In an interview, Shi Guanghua told a joke: A Sichuan contestant entered the ultimate PK link of a national home cooking competition, felt that he played well, asked a friend to inquire about the judges' evaluation, and got four words - "five generals", that is, spicy, oily, numb, black, and "horse-horse".
When it comes to Sichuan cuisine, people immediately think of hot pot, in addition to spicy. (Photo/"The Taste Aesthetics of Sichuan Cuisine")
For a long time, Sichuan cuisine has left the impression on the people of the whole country that is the words "five generals". People criticize Sichuan cuisine for not respecting the ingredients, ignoring their original flavor, and drowning all the ingredients in spicy. Some people are heartbroken, and they will defend themselves when they see people: our Sichuan cuisine is really not only spicy, we also have many dishes that are neither spicy nor numb, such as boiling cabbage, peony meat slices, fairy duck...
Shi Guanghua said that he was also one of the crappy ones, and even used the three chicken dishes of hibiscus chicken slices, snowflake chicken nao, and chicken bean curd everywhere to flaunt elegance and simplicity for Sichuan cuisine. One day, he saw a Sichuan cuisine master say this on TV, and he was a little anxious and white-faced, and suddenly he felt very uncomfortable, and felt that Sichuan cuisine had suffered a great grievance.
Is spicy Sichuan cuisine really sinful? Saying something, the whole thing is not spicy or spicy, is it defending the dignity of Sichuan cuisine and saving the fate of Sichuan cuisine?
Mapo tofu has become a classic dish of Sichuan cuisine. (Photo/"The Taste Aesthetics of Sichuan Cuisine")
In this regard, he made it clear that the reason why Sichuan cuisine can rise and become independent among many cuisines in China is that the core depends on spicy. Today, the biggest crisis of Sichuan cuisine is not spicy, but the chili pepper and spicy, and there is a serious lack of original knowledge and the way of melting. His biggest regret is that there are only a handful of Sichuan chefs today who really understand chili peppers and make good use of spicy flavors.
"In the face of countless crises and confusions, where is Sichuan cuisine going? My understanding is to go back to the source and hold on to the soul. The essence of Sichuan cuisine is taste. The two basic principles of Sichuan cuisine taste aesthetics are taste right and taste change. The taste is to keep the original character of the dish, the taste changes to seek the richness of the dish, and the righteousness and change, the Tao is great. ”
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Author丨Peach Sauce
Editor丨Xiao Feng
Proofreading | Yang Chao