Friends who have watched the documentary "Taste of Shunde" will definitely be amazed by one of the dishes in it - chrysanthemum water snake soup. This delicious dish with ancient thoughts, cooking begins with planting flowers, and can only be enjoyed after a four-month wait, with flowers eaten, with snakes cooking, only a master chef who strictly adheres to traditional techniques in every detail can do it. Looking at this delicate, crystalline mellow soup soup, the narration of the documentary says that it is a traditional Shunde dish, but it is actually wrong, the person who first invented the snake soup was not a Shunde person, but he - Cantonese cuisine master Jiang Taishi Jiang Kongyin.
Jiang Taishi was a famous eater in Guangzhou in the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, Jiang Kongyin, who worked as a Hanlin in the late Qing Dynasty, so he was called "Jiang Taishi". During the Republic of China period, he abandoned politics and business, made friends with celebrities, and became a famous social activist at that time. One of his hobbies is to study food, and even create by hand, he has developed many famous dishes, of which "Taishi Tian Chicken", "Taishi Snake Soup", "Taishi Tofu" are the most famous, and now it has become a classic dish of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, which has been handed down to this day, so people also call him specially created dishes "Taishi Cuisine".
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the people, the Taishi snake soup was already famous all over the food altar. The beauty of this dish is that it is delicious, the knife work is extremely delicate, the entrance is tender and smooth, and the person who eats it cannot eat what ingredients are inside. Jiang Taishi's ingenuity in making snake soup is first of all that the snake meat that has been boiled in the soup is not wanted, and the soup is made with water rhythm silk, so the taste is particularly tender and delicious. It is rumored that Jiang Taishi's pursuit of "fresh" is almost harsh, his orchard has a lot of lychees, when the dew is stained with glutinous rice fins, he immediately picked it up and tasted it and said: "This is called freshness." "Lemon leaf silk is the condiment for snake food, and Jiang Taishi asked the maid to cut the lemon leaf as thin as human hair." The snake soup needs to be put into the chrysanthemum, he asks the maid to break the white chrysanthemum petals and wash them, and the cleaning of the lemon leaves requires smooth washing.
Jiang Taishi's snake soup has two key secrets, one is that the snake soup and the soup should be cooked separately, the soup residue of the snake soup should be discarded, and when boiling the snake soup, sugarcane, tangerine peel should be added, and the soup is mainly boiled with ham, old chicken and fine meat; the second is that the knife work of the snake soup is extremely important, and the selection of materials is also extremely exquisite, so that people can eat snake soup "can't eat the taste", mainly to understand the next material, the first ingredient under the Jiang Taishi is the water law snake silk, and then add chicken shreds, excellent bows, flower glue silk, winter shoot silk, winter mushroom silk and yuannian chen pi silk, even lemon leaf silk, chrysanthemum petals These condiments, Not only must it be fresh and fragrant, but the knife worker must also cut the lemon leaves into thin and thin green silks, which are thin and crisp, fragrant and sweet.
According to Zhang Xianzhu, the granddaughter of Jiang Taishi, the chrysanthemum is the protagonist of the condiment, Jiang Taishi's home planted large white chrysanthemum, there is a kind called "crane dance cloud", resembling a large white chrysanthemum and white in the yellowish and purple, is a rare product in the edible chrysanthemum. The process of cleaning chrysanthemums can not be sloppy, the whole chrysanthemum is upside down in a large basin of water, and then cling to the flower handle, gently shake in the water to remove dirt, chrysanthemum petals are sometimes attached to small aphids, after cleaning also need to be soaked in light salt water, so that the aphids get rid of, this work requires extreme concentration and patience.
Today, snake soup is still a favorite winter soup in Guangdong, but it is difficult to compare with the predecessors in terms of practice, the commercial production makes the process extremely simplified, and even some steps have been omitted, and if you want to drink another bite of authentic chrysanthemum water snake soup, I am afraid that I am the only one who cooks it myself.
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