Cai Lan's Experience in Shanghai Cuisine

The understanding of Shanghai cuisine comes from the "Great Shanghai" in Baole Lane, Tsim Sha Tsui, which has not yet moved into the building, and is a floor shop. Waiter Ouyang came to take orders, we familiar customers never look at the menu board, only open the chopsticks set of paper, which wrote the freshest ingredients, by the guests to match.

The first plate is usually meat or sheep paste, and then spelled with fried river shrimp and vegetarian goose, a lot of portions, a large dish, if not controlled, just eat this thing stomach is full.

Then came the braised yuan hoof, also a large pile, usually eating the vegetables it surrounded by a dish, and the meat was packed home. Yellow fish are eaten twice, the meat is fried into slices, like a large piece of tempura mixed with seaweed, called moss noodles dragged, head and tail snow in the red soup, floating a layer of yellow oil.

Cherries, which have nothing to do with fruit, are chicken legs with round pieces of meat. Shaped like it, hence the name, oil burst or smoke can be delicious.

Seasonal vegetables have grass heads. What the? Can grass be eaten? You can eat it. The taste of raw sautéed grass head is endless, and I have tried it for a lifetime.

Pickled tuk fresh, that is, dried bamboo shoots, used to cook soup with bacon and hundreds of leaves, it does appear umami.

Desserts include eight treasure rice, steamed or fried. Sometimes also come to Coli bean paste or sake stuffed balls.

In the crab season, the quality of hairy crabs in "Greater Shanghai" is not as good as that of "Tianxianglou", but the price is relatively cheap and very popular with customers.

These are all big dishes, and as for snacks, the knowledge of Shanghai cuisine comes from the "poinsettia" in the alleys of Jinbali's new streets.

As soon as you enter the door, you first see the shelves of roasted broad beans, fried snails in sauce, radish shredded jellyfish, golden smoked eggs, shallots and fragrant black shoots, etc., at least dozens, the deepest impression of the rows of bright red color belly meat, called "southern milk meat", cut into squares, how much to eat.

The large copper pot at the door, with four lattices inside, is steaming with oil tofu vermicelli. Among them are the rotten skin wrapped in minced meat, or the entire sheet of vegetarian hundred pages, and bean bu and so on. The soup that comes out of the big pot has a sweetness that ordinary families can't cook.

Dishes include fried eel with garlic, fried rice cakes in June, and so on. It is worth mentioning that the spring rolls made by this family have a lot of juice in the filling, and the assistant Xu Yanhua loves to eat this dish the most, but it is a pity that today's eating and eating, there is no flavor of the past.

Yes, The education given to us by Shanghai cuisine is big oil, big salt and big sweet, which has been completely lost today.

Hong Kong can't see it, run to Shanghai, haven't you?

Tried all the famous old brands, Shanghai vegetables are no longer oily, not salty, not sweet, even stinky tofu is not smelly. That feeling of loss, loneliness is unbearable.

Can't eat in the restaurant, there is still at home. The person who taught me to eat Shanghainese food was Mr. Zhu Xuhua. We lived together in Shaw's dormitory, and ran to his house at noon, and Mr. Zhu stopped cooking himself, taught Shanghainese kung fu to Guangdong worker A Xinjie, and made Shanghainese cuisine that was more Shanghainese than Shanghainese. The first course on the table is of course roasted bran, the oil is salty and sweet, it is perfect. After trying it, whenever you go to the Shanghai restaurant, first order a plate of Sixi roasted bran to eat the level of the restaurant. Alas, today, bran is cut into pieces with a knife, not by hand. Bran this ingredient, the oil is not enough, immediately completely flat, not to mention now it is all vegetable oil, such as chewing styrofoam.

Shanghainese cuisine is mostly influenced by Ningbo cuisine, and the characteristics of Ningbo cuisine are also oily, salty and sweet. Ningbo by the sea, poor days, food must be salty, on the one hand do not know how to preserve fresh, on the other hand, a salty, you can send a few more bowls of porridge. Oil is more needed by the body, and so is sugar. Now the substance is rich, and pay attention to weight loss, even Ningbo cuisine has faded.

Remembering the flavors of the past, I only made it myself. "New Sanyang" is an excellent southern shop, Shanghai cuisine is fully prepared, even freshly picked Malantou is also available, and the refrigerator sells yellow mud snails, pickled squid seeds, sauce melons and sweet osmanthus flowers for dessert.

Dried moray eels hanging from the ceiling, very large strips. Buy it back and braised it with fatty pork, add rock sugar, and you can eat the moray eel roast meat in your memory.

The dried orchid tofu is cut into pieces of rotten skin, and the left and right sides are cut horizontally with several knives, pulling up like an organ. After the brine, the taste is very good, and zeng Xibang brother, a good friend who has lived in Nanyang for a long time, has the opportunity to taste another piece, and the tears are flowing out.

Steamed kidneys can also be bought here, and strangely enough, they wouldn't have been bad if they weren't left in the refrigerator. Mr. Ding Xiongquan loves this thing the most, buying hundreds of them and eating them non-stop.

But today's Shanghai restaurants, very few eat a satisfactory one.

As soon as lard was replaced by vegetable oil, there was nothing more to say. The shallot oil is mixed with noodles, and once there is no lard, it is finished. Guests are afraid of saltiness, so it is better to eat light Teochew dishes. The young man said: What? Eat salty dishes, how can there be sweetness in the middle? This time, all the braised braised is not sweet.

Even clam stewed egg, the most homely dish, will not be cooked by a master chef. Come to the Shanghai restaurant and see the menu says, great joy, order it. But the waiter always pushed three or four, saying that today's clams are not fresh. This is all an excuse, the young cook has not eaten, how to know how to stew?

The fish jelly eaten at Mr. Zhu Xuhua's house is even more unheard of by the masters. It is boiled with nine-belly fish and snow red, and squeezed out of the juice in a cloth bag to make it frozen.

Not to mention the method, today's ingredients have also changed. Yellow croakers have been eaten, and today's ones are all raised, and the umami taste is lost. The so-called pretzel small yellow croaker in the restaurant is not the same kind of fish at all.

The change of an era has made Shanghai cuisine extinct.

The change in the tastes of young customers has made it embark on the road of no return. Now Shanghai restaurants also sell flower crab, grouper and other Cantonese ingredients, how can the craftsmanship be compared to Guangdong masters?

Fortunately, I have a blessing in this life and have tasted the real Shanghai cuisine. Shanghai cuisine I love, return my oil, return me salty, return me sweet!