In the third year of Jiayou (1058), the new Longtuge scholar Ouyang Xiu came to Huai'an, Jiangsu Province, to inspect the work of the grain road. For the food of this place, Ouyang Xiu has been famous for a long time, and he has always wanted to try it.
The Huai'an people's "Seven Hairs", which Ouyang Xiu had read well when he was in school, said that there were "Peony Sauce, Lan Ying Wine, Autumn Yellow Su, and BaiLu Zhiru"; and Ouyang Xiu's colleague Zhang Qian often recited in his ear the "long fish and beautiful crabs" in his hometown of Huai'an.
The imagination was very plump, the reality was very bone- and came to Huai'an to investigate for seventeen days, Ouyang Xiu not only did not eat any good dishes worth recording, but even the local officials did not have a few decent hospitality. In addition to the hasty wind reception and practice held in the granary pavilion, the rest were all paid for by the distinguished university scholars, drinking in the "monk's temple" and "boat".
Simple. Or to put it mildly, chill.
Even if you come to Huai'an today, you can feel the simplicity of the degree of land richness and the level of economic development. Ordinary ingredients such as dried tofu, tofu, and puddle are made with a little bit of ham, minced pork, shiitake mushrooms, and kaiyang to create an umami flavor, and after fine processing, they become local dishes. In the eyes of northerners who are accustomed to using "hard dishes" for banquets, this belongs to the behavior of "flickering" and "stinginess", but it has become popular and habitual in Huai'an.
More importantly, Huaiyang cuisine, which uses Huai'an as a geographical label, represents Jiangsu Province and even represents the façade of China's state banquet. This is a great honor for a small place that is not a provincial capital or a municipality directly under the central government; of course, it often means a great misunderstanding.
Where does the legendary food vein of Huai'an come from?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">No.1 壹</h1>
Yangzhou, which is called Huaiyang, is perhaps the most unconvincing Huai'an. To this day, there are still many local scholars in Yangzhou who believe that "Huaiyang cuisine" is a misprint of "Weiyang" cuisine and has nothing to do with Huai'an.
But in fact, the ancient name of Yangzhou, "Weiyang", comes from the HuaiHe region. The Shangshu Yugong divides the world into nine prefectures, and the description of Yangzhou is: "Huaihai is the only Yangzhou." It means that a large area from the Huai River to the sea, including most of today's Jiangsu, most of Anhui, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong, belongs to "Yangzhou".
In the era of the Seven Kingdoms of the Central Plains, the degree of development of the south was very low, and this extensive administrative division was in line with the social conditions at that time.
Yu Xin of the Southern Dynasty quoted this sentence in the "Southern Fu of the Wai River": "Huaihai Weiyang, more than three thousand miles." But he wrote "Wei" as "Wei", and in the Poems of Du Fu in the Tang Dynasty, it was inevitable that he would be wrong, "Huaihai WeiYang Yi Junren, Jin Zhang Zi Shou Qing Youth." After the great development of the south during the Wei and Jin Dynasties, "Weiyang" became synonymous with the beautiful Jiangnan.
But before that, Huai'an was the most well-known place in the "Weiyang" area.
Huai'an's geographical location is special. Ancient geological movements formed a series of depressions here, through which the Huai River waterways passed, and formed many large and small lakes and complex water networks. Today, although most of these lakes no longer exist, their names have been preserved in pre-Ming dynasty encyclopedias such as the Taiping Imperial Records and the Yongle Canon: Fuling Lake, Broken Kettle Stream, Mudun Lake, Wanjia Lake, and so on.
For the Central Plains regime in the north, complex waterways meant ease of sailing. This is the outpost for conquest, development and management to the south after crossing the Huai River; for the southern separatist forces, this is the main battlefield for northward expansion, and "guarding the river must defend Huai" comes from this.
In 486 BC, the triumphant Wu Wang Fuchai excavated the Hangou in order to go north to qi and dominate the Central Plains, starting in Yangzhou and ending in Huai'an. This is the earliest section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the most important arterial road still in use today.
With a special geographical pattern, Huai'an's eating habits carry a strong trace of north-south integration. For example, the soft-pocketed long fish is taken from the yellow eels that can be found everywhere in the southern Ze country. Finely deboned, cut long eel slices with a small knife, cooked in onion and ginger water, naturally forming a curly pocket, and then simmered with soy sauce, sugar, rice wine, garlic sauce, full of southern culture exquisite delicacy.
Before serving, a large amount of green onion, ginger and white pepper should be added, and a spoonful of boiling oil injected into the soul should be "snorted", which is salty and fragrant. This practice of opening and closing is closer to the style of Shandong Lu cuisine.
There is a local saying in Huai'an, "a Huai'an mouth, eat all the south and north", the "one" here is both a quantifier, representing the Huai'an people's taste of the north and south; but also a verb, representing that in Huai'an, you only need to open your mouth to eat the different flavors of the north and south.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">No.2 贰</h1>
The north-south thoroughfare, to change the term, can also be understood as the land of four wars.
After more than two hundred years, this place became a place of repeated tug-of-war. "Between Jianghuai and Huaihuai, the red land is thousands of miles". Huaiyin, the rich land where Han Xin was born and had a fiefdom, became Huai'an to resettle the victims of Huaiyin.
In the Southern Song Dynasty, the story repeats itself, and Huai'an becomes the main battlefield of the Song-Jin War. Liang Hongyu, the wife of Han Shizhong, who is active in the drama story, is a native of Huai'an. The story of her from a woman in the Qinglou to a female general focuses on the tragic situation of the war era between the north and the south, when the people in Huai'an were poor and sold as prostitutes, and the poor women and children joined the army.
What is even more frightening is that during the invasion of the north by the Jurchens of the Jin Dynasty, they did not dredge the flooding of the Yellow River, allowed it to flow freely, and even artificially guided the Yellow River to change its course to the south, poisoning the Southern Song Dynasty. Laying the groundwork for the yellow river disaster in the following hundreds of years, a large area of fertile land in the Central Plains became barren land. Among them, the most seriously affected is Huai'an. The yellow river water south seized the Huai River channel into the sea, causing a large amount of the Huai River to pour out of nowhere, flooding near Huai'an, and engulfing the lakes that were originally large and small.
The vast Hongze Lake was formed at that time.
In contrast, the Southern Song Dynasty regarded the relatively safe area south of the Yangtze River as the basic plan of the state and carefully operated it. Suzhou, Wuxi, Huzhou, Jiaxing, Hangzhou and other cities around the Taihu Lake soon surpassed Yangzhou economically and culturally, and Huai'an, which was further north, completely withdrew from the sequence of economic centers.
To this day, in the Wu dialect, there are also discriminatory names for the two Huai people in Huai'an and other places, "Jiangbei Yankees", believing that they are not hygienic and polite. This kind of colored glasses comes from the two poor people who lost their land and came to the south to make a living under the plague of the Yellow River in the past.
But on the other hand, disasters and hardships have shaped the gritty and stoic character of today's Huai'an people, and the eating habits of coarse dishes. This mentality of being rich earlier and then declining is fundamentally different from the region that has always been poor.
For example, the aquatic weed "Pu Cai", which was once everywhere in the local rivers and lakes, has no taste in itself. Huai'an people add a little dried shrimp in it, half-roasted and half-simmered to promote its taste, achieving a taste comparable to tender shoots, the taste is as thick as seafood.
Another example is cheap tofu, the Huai'an chef who is good at knife work, will cut it into exquisite diamond-shaped small squares, add diced chicken breast, coriander, diced shiitake mushrooms, dried scallops, mushrooms, etc., simmer slowly over low heat until the taste is integrated, and finally drizzle a layer of open oil to seal the heat. Seemingly plain and unremarkable, scoop up a spoonful and send it into your mouth, only to know that the eyebrows have rarely fallen.
Linguist Xu Jialu said that the diet in his hometown of Huai'an is "coarse and meticulous, and kung fu is seen in the ordinary", which is a vivid summary of this concept of diet.
In Such an agrarian civilized society as China, simplicity, lightness, meticulousness, refinement and not extravagance largely mean the political correctness of the aesthetics of the table. The unique historical situation of Huai'an first yang and then suppressed coincides with the food concept pursued by Chinese, and finally achieves its extraordinary position in Huaiyang cuisine and even Chinese cuisine.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">No.3 叁</h1>
The depiction of eating in Journey to the West is perhaps the most magical page in classical Chinese novels.
On the one hand, it is a monotonous vegetarian food, from the Tang Dynasty to the Western Regions, 108,000 miles, the recipe is almost exactly the same rice, mushrooms, mushrooms, fungus, tofu, gluten, taro, radish. Even the wedding banquet of the king of the Daughter Kingdom of Western Liang was dull and tasted like chewing wax.
But on the other hand, tempting food often appears inadvertently: the monkeys of Huaguo Mountain give Sun Wukong practice, and a large number of fruits are painted with color, "Golden Pill Pearls Bouncing Wax Cherries, the Color is Really Sweet; Red Blooming Yellow Fat Ripe Plums, Flavor fruity and Sour", sweet almost overflowing paper; Pig Eight Commandments secretly eat the spectacular offerings on the table of the Sanqingguan Offering, "The steamed bun is big enough, and the roasted fruit has fifty or sixty pounds", which is full of taste; the woodcutters of the Hidden Mist Mountain made wild vegetables for the three Tang monks and apprentices, including "tender blanched yellow cauliflower, sour white drum dice." Floating rose purslane, River purslane... Sheep ears bald, goji berry head, plus dark blue without oil", a table of spring freshness.
The most egregious thing is that the youkai of Shi Huoling captured the Eight Commandments of pigs and prepared to steam them overnight. I also carefully mixed the dipping sauce of garlic paste salt vinegar and planned to eat white cut pork the next day. For some reason, people are hungry to see it.
In fact, Wu Cheng'en, who was well-read, knowledgeable, and passed the imperial examination to become a county clerk, under the knowledge system of the sixteenth century, could not have been unaware that there were various food cultures and huge culinary concept differences in the journey of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty. But the taste of his pen, like the plot of "Journey to the West", embarked on a path of magic realism.
If you combine Wu Cheng'en's birthplace of Huai'an and the middle and late Ming Dynasty in the era in which he lived, it is not difficult to understand the origin of this table magic.
In the ming and qing dynasties of great unification, Huai'an became the "five major centers" of water transport command, river management, boat manufacturing, grain reserves, and Huaibei salt distribution because of the excellent waterway traffic conditions at the confluence of the Huai River, the Yellow River and the Grand Canal. Merchants and merchants came here to grab the beach, and river transport officials were stationed here. To this day, the Huai River in Huai'an and the Grand Canal are the "three-dimensional hub on the water", which is the largest water transport wonder in Asia.
Merchants and officials who are rich enough to rival countries have brought a large number of social consumption needs, and also made Huai'an cuisine, which has been pursuing finesse, strive for excellence.
The viceroy of Hecao has become one of the most important sources of Huaiyang cuisine today. For example, chicken cake, meat balls, and bundled hooves, these three foods are actually quite similar. Chicken cake is chicken breast meat chopped into puree, add yam steamed and molded to form large pieces; meat balls are pork beaten into puree, fried into small balls; bundled hooves are pig's trotter meat marinated into casings, tied with rope, stewed and shaped.
All three are to make the original ingredients not like the original appearance, as delicious as possible, and easy to eat, to meet the requirements of the dignitaries and nobles who are not tired of eating and not tired of being fine.
On the other hand, the frequent flooding of the Yellow River and the Huai River has made ordinary social classes unhappy. According to statistics from the early liberation period, 130 million mu of 200 million mu of arable land in the Huai River Basin were often affected. Huai'an, the confluence of the three waters, is the hardest hit area in the hardest hit area.
The widening gap between the rich and the poor in society and the tearing of classes are also reflected in the dietary level. Huai'an's civilian snacks are simple and grounded: tea is actually fried noodles, delicate and shiny, crisp and fragrant. The ingredients are not valuable, but the simple pleasure of starch and oil can really be tasted.
The essence of bar noodles lies in bone broth, a few bones can boil for several days, so that even the poorest people can eat meat. As for shredded meat, pork liver, bone-breaking meat, shrimp, waist flowers, belly silk, long fish... These frugality is the topping of people, which gives people who have spare money in their pockets more choices.
The popular Huai'an dumplings are actually small wontons. Meat filling is not too much, but also add leeks and garlic, reduce costs, maintain the taste of incense, but the skin must be thin and transparent, exquisite appearance is indispensable. It is smooth and light in the mouth, and almost without chewing, it goes into the throat. Fried is even better, crispy and refreshing, and full of oil. For the poor, "pretending to eat a lot of meat", Huai dumplings are the best choice.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">-END-</h1>
In October 1949, the founding ceremony heralded the arrival of a new era. The first banquet of the founding of the People's Republic of China was held on the night of the ceremony, and although there was no written record of what dishes the founding fathers ate, according to the memories of the old employees of the Beijing Hotel, Huaiyang cuisine accounted for most of the menu of the banquet.
These include crystal pork, soft-laced long fish, large boiled dried shreds, roasted lion's head and mille-feuille cake. It has always been believed that these dishes are "not very oily, not very sweet, not very salty, not spicy" and are suitable for most people's tastes.
The "general director" who chose the dishes was the simple, wise, polite, peaceful and close to the people of Huai'an, Zhou Enlai.