Source: Triptych Cuisine
Journalist / Rye
Intern Journalist / Inpak Tong
The earliest sweetness comes from flowers and honey, which is the last barrier that honey breaks through the human taste buds, so it is often said that people do not have to eat sugar because the body does not need it. But the satisfaction of the heart depends on sugar, which is why the tempting desserts and hungry tangyuan should be placed after the meal, and the fluffy snacks and fruits should be left in the tea.
We often talk about the eight major cuisines, Lu, Sichuan, Guangdong, Su, Fujian, Zhejiang, Xiang, and Hui, but we don't know how to classify dim sum. Dim sum is not like a big dish, directly expressing the kind of glory and luxury that has more than one year or a treasure, so there is no place for dim sum in the round table, they are more like the "stars" who hold the moon at the annual Spring Festival feast. But without The New Year's snacks, it seems that there is a certain kind of New Year's exclusive fancy.
For Chinese New Year's Eve meals, dim sum must not be "noisy", as if indispensable, it witnesses the frying in the kitchen in front of the Chinese New Year's Eve, until the last bowl of steaming rice balls at the Lantern Festival, silently throughout the New Year; it will also appear at the tea and fruit plates of hospitality, and every moment when children are hungry and waiting for the meal but cannot resist the temptation.
These "gadgets" most intuitively carry and reflect the cultural characteristics of people's food and life in each era and region, and between the interesting talks of the Spring Festival, it also maintains a "touchable" distance from us.
Figure / pixabay
As a southerner who has lived in Beijing for more than a decade, Zhou Zuoren wrote a classic note for the dim sum in the north and south in the 1950s in "Zhitang Ji Wai Wen : After 49 Years" - the dim sum in the north is the nature of regular food, and the southern snack is idle food.
Regular food here refers to the fact that it can be used as a staple food, while idle food refers to it as a snack and snack. Of course, today's northern dim sum is not all as he said, gradually fading the color of carbs, and some of the southern dim sum has long become the most important part of the leisure food culture.
During the Republic of China, Beijing was the era ruled by the "Raobao Shop", and more than 200 "staple food dry food" (the original Mongolian translation of the Raobao Shop) is the original memory of the Beijing people about sweetness. The large characters of the gold plaque are eye-catching, and the exquisite decoration gives people a sense of being on top. When people walk in, they will be surprised to find that there are no counters and shop windows, like they are only sold to people who know the market, or high-ranking and wealthy merchants, in short, there is no dim sum from the outside.
▲Peach gum in Beijing House Box Restaurant (Photo by Li Squirrel)
According to Wang Shixiang's recollection, when he was a child, the pastries were placed in a wooden box of vermilion lacquer, one or two inches away from the counter, and he could only "buy cattle across the mountain", say the name, let the shop guys go to get it, if they did not understand, what to eat only depended on luck; people who had just come to Beijing must have acquaintances to introduce them one by one. However, at that time, the reputation of dim sum was also passed on.
Many Beijingers felt that dim sum was nothing more than some "dry food for the manchus", sweet and not full, salty and hungry, which was the logic of eating and drinking for the common people at that time. Liang Shiqiu once said in "Yashe Talks About Eating": "Speaking of conscience, there are not many People missing The Beiping cake bait, and some people call Beiping's 'eight big pieces' and 'small eight pieces', which is really difficult to agree with." ”
Zhou Zuoren even said bluntly, "I have been wandering in Beijing for ten years, and I have never eaten a good snack." It is enough to see that the literati and celebrities who lived in old Beijing do not seem to "buy" the dim sum of old Beijing. What really moves them is mostly Muslim snacks from the folk, sugar ears, scorched rings, donkey rolling, buying a few is not a word.
Liang Shiqiu, who was born in Beijing, has studied the rock sugar gourd since he was a child, and according to his recollection, there are three kinds of rock sugar gourds in Beijing: one is made of maltose, which is also called syrup in Beijing; one is dipped in sugar frosting, and has another flavor; and the other is made of rock sugar, which can be described as authentic, a thin layer of sugar crystals, transparent and bright. There are also many kinds of materials, begonias, yams, yam beans, grapes, can be strung on top.
It's a sweet tooth that spans classes and eras. The sugar gourd in old Beijing is not only fresh, sweet and sour, crisp and delicious, but also interesting to buy. Tang Lusun described in his book that at that time, there were two ways to buy sugar gourds, one was to set up a stall, and occasionally sell fruits and preserves in winter and summer; the other was to carry baskets down the street, stringing hutongs to drink, and there was a sign in his arms, and he met a good gambling buyer, found a shade, smoked a barrel or half a barrel of true and false five children, gambled on nine cards, and sometimes a string was not sold, and he could also earn a piece of eight cents. This is an interesting thing that only the "dessert dining circle" of that era would encounter.
Beijing's Daoxiang Village was opened in the twenty-first year of Qing Guangxu (1895), the "flagship store" is located in the front door of the Guanyin Temple, the south store is opened in the north, the front store is the factory, when the production is a water of southern food, in 1926 the store was forced to close, until the beginning of 1984 to resume business, which shows that in more than half a century, sweetness for the north, is a rare taste.
Suzhou's dim sum has always run through the four seas, and since the beginning of the Qin Dynasty, Suzhou, where merchants and merchants gathered, seems to be a bustling metropolis. By the time of the Song Dynasty, burning, burning, frying, steaming, has been a common cooking method, by the Ming and Qing dynasties, the city lanes have been full of jujube mud hemp cake, Qiaoguo, pine blossom cake, pan fragrant cake, horseshoe cake, bee cake, Umi cake and so on.
The Qianlong Emperor repeatedly went down to Jiangnan, which has always been a classic topic that historians talk about, and along with the history of the wild, every bite of Jiangnan food that Qianlong eats has been enshrined as a myth. The only thing that is conclusive is that he once ordered the dim sum chef in Suzhou to move his family into the palace and cook pastries for the "Su Zao".
Yuan Ming, a Qing dynasty, wrote in the "Dim Sum List" of the "Suiyuan Food List": "Prince Liang Zhaoming used dim sum as a snack, and Zheng Qi's sister-in-law advised his uncle and dim sum, which has an old origin." Make a dim sum list. "The distinction between regular food and snacks was the consensus at that time, although dim sum and snacks were different from today's classification, and noodles were also classified as dim sum by Yuan Ming, but it was enough to explain the wide variety of desserts."
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Tea produced in the south, the source of pastime. Looking at the history of the "forces" of the various dim sums in the north and south on the tea table, it can be said that they have both integrated and influenced each other. Qing Gu Zhang Si's "Record of Earth Winds" records that dim sum has different names in the north and south, the dim sum in the north belongs to the Tang and Song dynasties, also known as official ceremony tea, and in Zhou Hui's "Northern Yuanluo", the northern dim sum refers to steamed buns, wontons, buns and so on. This coincides with the description in the "Book of The Book of The Transformation of Fasting" that the northern world uses breakfast snacks as snacks.
The history of southern dim sum is not long, about the middle of the Ming Dynasty. According to the "Beiyuan Record", the so-called tea food is eaten when drinking tea, which is different from snacks. The "Jiahu fine point" was originally the mantra on the sign imitation list in Jiaxing and Huzhou, and the word "fine point" was the product of the Jiangnan refreshment culture at that time. Since the Ming Dynasty Yongle, the cultural center is still in Jiangnan, the gentry and rich people live in luxury, there are many teas, and naturally there is no need to match the dim sum.
For the elegant Jiangnan people, the delicate dim sum is naturally the finishing touch, with the various sweetness of tea, which has since evolved into a leisure food based on appreciation. Of course, after this, with the movement of population and the change of dynasties, the north and south dim sums have a new branch of factions in the fusion and collision of history.
In his book "Chinese Dim Sum", Jiang Xianzhu divided dim sum into Beijing dim sum (court dim sum, folk dim sum, halal dim sum), Huaiyang dim sum, Sichuan dim sum, Guangdong and Hong Kong dim sum, and later the industry recognized division divided dim sum into Beijing-style dim sum, Cantonese dim sum, Shanghain dim sum and Hong Kong-style dim sum.
▲Fuhua Zhai Rao Shop: Almond Tofu (Bao Ding photo)
The sugar shop has been rising in Guangzhou since the early years of the Republic of China. At that time, most of the sugar water shops were located in the streets and alleys, selling traditional sugar water made with home-cooked ingredients such as mung bean paste, sesame paste, and almond tea. At the end of the 1920s, the development of sugar water shops on the streets of Guangzhou ushered in a booming development, which can be called the golden age of the industry. The flower samples of Cantonese sugar water are also more abundant, and dairy products have become fashion representatives, such as double skin milk, nest egg milk, stewed milk, etc. are popular with diners.
Many people can't distinguish between Cantonese dim sum and Hong Kong-style dim sum, because more than 20 years after The return of Hong Kong to the motherland, the food culture of the two places has already experienced many integrations. Back in the last century, Hong Kong's dim sum chefs usually come from all over the world, so the finished product and taste are also different, so several large "series" have been formed.
In the late Hong Kong-style dim sum period (about the 1930s and 1950s), it can be divided into two factions, the southern dim sum originated in Guangzhou, and the northern dim sum came from Huaiyang, Beijing and other places, and the two sides grew, blended and integrated for a long time. Hong Kong is a city steeped in history and colonial rule, with a mix of East and West cultures that are implicit in architecture and food.
Round after round of Western desserts have long been pouring in, and the macarons in Beijing will not be sweeter than those in Guangzhou, and the puffs in Shanghai will not be more delicate than the taste of Xi'an. This has also promoted the fusion innovation of Chinese sweets and Western flavors to a certain extent, and the classic dessert ingredients of "cheese", "cocoa" and "pudding" that were originally pure Western have also appeared in the list of dim sum in Daoxiangcun. Nowadays, whether sweet or salty, it is just a blind ingredient, cheese and chocolate are mixed into Chinese-style su shells, and peppercorns and sesame sauce are stuffed into foreign desserts, which is not unusual.
The south has long had salty dim sum, but it is not as good as the north, but if you include sweet snacks such as char siu crisp and taro crisp, you can find a wide variety of varieties, which can be greatly better than the northern beef tongue cake, but the beef tongue cake finally dominates the dim sum box in the north during the New Year, and when you open the daoxiang village food box carried by a few passers-by, you will see those "spit out" tongues, as if they are making a grimace.
The best example of sweet north is Tangyuan, also known as the Lantern Festival, Liangguang and Hong Kong people, before playing Chinese New Year's Eve, they opened a small stove and boiled Tangyuan, and northerners have to wait until the fifteenth day of the first month, known as the "Lantern Festival", which shows that those northern tongues that love sweetness have fallen behind.
▲ Gourmand Cai Lan feels that Hong Kong-style dim sum is more close to the people (Photo by Li Squirrel)
Sanlian Life Weekly:
Cai Lan: Every place has the characteristics of each place, the key is the cultural influence that people accept, we have been reading Lao She's articles since we were young, so as soon as I came to Beijing, I could immediately accept bean juice and boiled these things. But if you haven't understood these things, you don't understand, you can't accept them, so these are cultures.
Cai Lan: In fact, Beijing used to have a lot of delicious dim sum. But what he said about dim sum was different from the dim sum that Cantonese people remembered, and he was talking about court snacks. Therefore, should the word "dim sum" be stipulated as Cantonese dim sum or some other dim sum? I think it might be better to think of dim sum as a free-spirited snack. Why are Beijing's dim sum disappearing? It is because the court dim sum is now too unkind to the people. The reason why Guangdong snacks can be done well is precisely because it is easy to contact, easy to adapt, easy to learn, and easy to make, so it can be passed down from generation to generation. It is important that the cuisine is approachable.
Cai Lan: I will be a little more tolerant, but at the same time I will become a little stubborn and cannot accept new things. It's twofold, so it's not necessarily good or necessarily bad.
▲Fuhua Zhai Rao Shop: Kidney Bean Roll (Photo by Baoding)
Tsai Lan: I love kuala lumpur cuisine. First of all, Kuala Lumpur is close to Singapore, it was my first city to visit, and I am used to eating Kuala Lumpur things, and I like any street food. The most difficult thing to accept, of course, is Europe, such as Germany, and there is also food in Northern Europe. These countries give me a more rigid and monotonous feeling, such as a sandwich, they can't even clip two pieces of toast, it's a slice, there are some things on it, the imagination is not rich, so it is difficult to create real food, this kind of place I don't like. But when I went to such a place, I couldn't eat nothing, and I could only run away immediately after eating.
Cai Lan: I've been away from home since I was a teenager and have been wandering overseas, so I haven't had any New Year's feelings and atmosphere, and I don't like the feeling of others coming to my house for New Year's Dinner, so the New Year doesn't mean much to me. But I also celebrate the New Year, and I find that I'm not alone overseas, I'm not the only one who is lonely, there used to be a group of people like this. Then I thought, it would be better to organize a tour group, and everyone would go together to eat the best food in the world, so the tour group I said earlier was born. These people who participated in the tour group have known each other for 23 years, and we still eat together, and we are still together every New Year.
Cai Lan: They like to eat Japanese things, and I have asked why, not necessarily because of how delicious Japanese things are, they think Japanese things are cleaner. Most of my friends are quite old, and although they like to eat randomly, they don't like to eat indiscriminately until they get sick, so they are more at ease eating in Japan. But there are also people who know exactly why they like Japanese food. Because I've lived in Japan for 8 years, I know what food is the best, and the same food, which store is the best, which day to eat the best, we all pay attention to these.
I think The Michelin in Tokyo would be better than their version if I were to choose it. Why are there so many Michelin-starred restaurants in Tokyo? Because the Japanese food culture used to be like this, people like to sit at the counter and chat with the master, very close to face to face chat, the master also understands the preferences of the guests, so this communication has become part of the culture of eating Japanese food. But in the past, it was impossible for foreigners and these masters to chat, and later these chefs slowly spoke a few words of English, so after the foreigners came, the chef could communicate with him. After hearing this, these foreigners immediately felt shocked, and they thought of a little thing, wow! This is very powerful, I think you have put a lot of effort, but in fact, a lot of things are taken for granted.
Cai Lan: I don't really like Michelin, unless I travel to France or Italy, I would like to go to Michelin restaurants, because I think they are experts in this area, but as soon as I leave those cities, I don't pay much attention.
Cai Lan: Writing food is like making love, if it is not subjective, there is no meaning, it is over, my feelings for food are absolutely subjective. For a wide variety of foods, everyone will have different ideas, that's a must.
Figure /pexels
Cai Lan: People should maintain a hungry attitude, and after you have eaten enough, you will have no interest in food at all. When we go to the market, we also have to go when we are hungry, and people have no desire for food when they are full; when we go to cooking, when we go to writing, we don't let ourselves eat too much.
Cai Lan: At first, it was because Wang Lijia and Li Pinxi and his wife came to me. They have been on many of my tours and I have a certain acquaintance with the couple. They work hard, do things very hard, are honest, have no bad habits, and are young and promising, opening more than 200 stores at the age of 35. We talked and they talked about an article I wrote about pho in Vietnam, "For a Bowl of Beef Pho" in Next magazine in 2001. I went on a trip to Vietnam decades ago and ate Vietnamese beef pho for the first time, and I said it felt like "a wonderful love affair has reached its climax". Unfortunately, this civilian delicacy was later lost in the war, and delicious pho was never eaten again in Vietnam. So after that, in order to eat a decent bowl of cattle, I ran a lot of cities. I then unexpectedly came across a restaurant in Melbourne called Yongji and ate the same taste that I had decades ago.
They were very impressed with that article and then hoped to be able to make some of these foods for everyone as well. They say that today's young people like to eat a little lighter and don't like such greasy things, and the Vietnamese pho I wrote is the most suitable. It was easy to talk about at the time, but it was difficult to do in practice. We went to the pho shop many times to study, and spent a lot of money to get the hostess to come and teach many times, but it was never so easy. Copying one or two may be easier to control, but it is difficult to continue to expand. If you don't get it right, isn't the brand invalid? After all, we put a lot of effort and money into it. At that time, we thought about it, why not open a dim sum shop, right? It was easier to control myself when I opened a dim sum shop, and we were more confident, and several of the masters were introduced to me by a good friend of mine.
After deciding to open a dim sum shop, I originally wanted to open the first one in Guangzhou, but then I thought it was not possible. Because dim sum is the first guangzhou people to start to do, we opened a dim sum shop there may have to scold people to death, and later said that it is not as good as in Shenzhen, after all, there are many people in Shenzhen, we are more courageous enough to try it. Then we started from Shenzhen, opened one, two, three, and then slowly opened to Guangzhou, which seemed more acceptable.
Cai Lan: This is considered lucky, our dim sum shop is really quite popular. It takes luck to open a restaurant. We also do our best to make the best, but only luck can explain the arrival of guests. Chinese very good at words, why do you say two people are married? It is impossible to explain clearly, so we say that it is the fate of two people. The same goes for the guests.
Cai Lan: We haven't worried about that. What we pay attention to is that the material must be good, the price must be cheap enough, and we can master the craft ourselves, so we don't worry. Although the results of Beijing are not bad, but after we have calculated, we found that in fact, its profits are still very low, we have done so many things, we have done so many things, and the profits are still very low. This has little to do with the high rent in Beijing, the most important thing is that we like to use handmade, and the price is not high. Although the profit is low, I think it doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't lose money.
Cai Lan: Why add the word "Hong Kong-style" to the so-called Hong Kong-style dim sum? Dim sum was originally Guangdong, and the addition of the word "Hong Kong-style" means that dim sum can be made more free-spirited and can be chaotic. The so-called Hong Kong-style dim sum is equivalent to the snack of the Spaniards, and anything can be made into a dim sum. When we make Hong Kong-style dim sum, it is equivalent to liberating ourselves from the concept of traditional dim sum, so we always say to our master, let it go.
Cai Lan: The one I can't get tired of eating myself is milk jelly, followed by Mala cake, and white sugar cake also likes it. But the white sugar cake cannot be said to be ours, we are stained, because the white sugar cake we do is not as delicious as the Shunde people make. It's strange, the sugar cake seems simple to make, that is, it is fermented with white sugar and flour, and then steamed out. But the white sugar cake we made was not so good. Because the temperature of each day is different, the fermentation process is different, so it is difficult to master, behind which is a very deep knowledge. What about you, what do you like to eat?
Cai Lan: Well, red bean paste is easier to make, use good tangerine peel, slowly boil it, in the countryside there are still some places that produce tangerine peel, but it is much less than before. I have also written about the orange peel before, there are whole bags of new orange peel in the store, buy it home and put it for thirty or fifty years, it must be good, but whether human life is so long, I don't know.