"When a freshly boiled ishiki pigeon is placed on the table, diners only need to put on gloves and nibble a whole pigeon from tail to head, remember not to tear it open." Zheng Yaorong, president of the Zhongshan Culinary Association, who has been engaged in pigeon cooking for more than 30 years, suggested this.
At this time, the pigeons are still warm with hot oil, and the gravy is mixed with spices dripping. Authentic braised Ishiki pigeons are only the size of a girl's palm, and are preferred for pigeons weighing about 8 pairs in 20-28 days. The whole pigeon is fried at high temperatures, the skin is crispy, the subcutaneous fat is very small, and when you bite it down, the meat remains tender. The pigeon's spine, which is thinner than chopsticks, is fried so crisp that it can even be swallowed after chewing several times.
Prior to this, spices such as cinnamon and star anise, which were originally used for brine, had been crushed into a powder, salted and fried, and evenly applied to the inner wall of the pigeon to add a rich flavor.
This raw frying method invented by Zheng Yaorong subverted the original idea of cooking with white brine (brine without soy sauce) and then frying. It was this fried braised pigeon that earned him the "Gold Award for Asian Cuisine" and became one of the most common methods of suckling pigeon on the market today.
Even though the practice has undergone several changes and innovations, there is no doubt that the Shiqi pigeon is the most important thing in Zhongshan's food culture, and it is also the epitome of Zhongshan's overseas Chinese culture.
1
The historical mission of "Zhongshan Pigeon"
According to existing historical records, Chinese began breeding pigeons in the middle of the Shang Dynasty 3300 years ago. At least since the Han Dynasty, pigeons have become a delicacy on people's tables.
From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, pigeon meat has the effect of tonifying the liver and strengthening the kidneys, nourishing the qi and replenishing the blood, clearing heat and detoxification, and quenching thirst.
Folk are also known as "one pigeon wins nine chickens", many Cantonese people like to use old pigeons to cook soup. Li Zhengsheng, general manager of Zhongshan Shiqi Pigeon Breeding Co., Ltd., said: "In the past, we used pigeons to cook soups and stew soups, thinking that this would be more nourishing, but there were very few dishes about pigeons. ”
For most Zhongshan people, in the 20th century, when resources were scarce, it was a "terrible" thing to eat a pigeon.
In the 20th century, pigeons were an important agricultural product used by Zhongshan for export to Hong Kong and Macao. A large number of export materials, including Zhongshan suckling pigeons, exchanged the foreign exchange and various materials that were scarce in the mainland at that time, and undertook the important historical mission of promoting China's development at that time.
Today, the pigeon-producing areas are mainly concentrated in the Pearl River Delta, including Jiangmen Hetang, Guangzhou Zengcheng and Conghua, Huizhou Boluo and Zhongshan. The "Shiqi Pigeon" produced in Shiqi Town, Zhongshan, Guangdong Province, has been officially recognized as a national agricultural geographical indication product in December 2020, becoming the only two pigeon breeds in the country that have been certified by the mark - the other is the "Tarim Pigeon" in the Aksu region of Xinjiang.
Image source: Visual China
Zheng Yaorong sighed that many people know that Shiqi pigeon is delicious, but they may not understand the ingredient of Shiqi pigeon. Not only that, under the competition of the market, the choice of ingredients by merchants is more extensive, and the public knows very little about the history behind the famous dish of "Braised Shiqi Milk Pigeon".
2
The fusion of China and foreign countries gave birth to the Shiqi pigeon
If you trace the birth of the Shiqi pigeon, you can find that this has a great relationship with the overseas Chinese culture in Zhongshan.
According to the "Biography of Zhongshan", the appearance of Shiqi pigeon originally came from a Zhongshan overseas Chinese living in the United States - he brought back the American breeding meat pigeon "White Feather Pigeon" in order to increase the meat of his relatives in his hometown. After mixing and interbreeding with local native pigeons, the breed accidentally bred pigeons that are large and easy to raise and are highly resistant to disease.
Since then, pigeon breeding enthusiasts have used the channels of overseas Chinese to introduce breeds from the United States, Spain, Belgium, Japan and Australia for hybridization, and finally bred today's Shiqi pigeons.
According to Li Zhengsheng, Shiqi pigeons are raised in the alluvial plains of the Pearl River estuary, and the red soil is rich in elements, which is conducive to the growth of pigeons. In addition to using sorghum, corn, wheat, peas, and mung beans as raw grain feed, the process of breeding Shiqi pigeons also needs to feed the health care sand made of oyster shell pieces, coarse sand, laterite, etc., in order to raise shiqi pigeons with long bodies, thin eyes, long noses, long mouths, and red chests.
In Zhongshan, the older generation believed that the meat of the Shiqi pigeon had a smell of lilac flowers. In Li Zhengsheng's view, this is a metaphor for the strong meat flavor of Shiqi pigeon, "just like the Guangdong population's 'eat chicken to have chicken flavor', so Shiqi pigeon also has its own 'pigeon flavor'".
But what many people don't know is that the braised pigeon that is not strange in Chinese restaurants today is actually a Western food. Unlike some chinese cuisine, Western food abandons the tender taste of pigeon meat in pursuit of eating more meat, and only uses pigeons born within 28 days of birth.
Unlike the braised pork and braised fish that people usually see, the so-called braised suckling pigeon is the fried suckling pigeon. This well-known practice was first created in 1885 in the Western restaurant of the TaipingGuan in Guangzhou. The 1963 edition of the "Mingxi Cuisine Textbook" introduced its method: "First smear the surface of the pigeon with old soy sauce, then immerse the pigeon in hot oil for 15 minutes to cook, then pick up the chopped pieces and pour them with tomato sauce and french fries for meals." ”
The formal selection of Shiqi pigeon as braised pigeon originated from a Chinese-Portuguese restaurant in Macau, Fo Xiao Lou. The restaurant's founder, Huang Mincheng, is from Zhongshan. In order to cater to the dietary habits of the native Portuguese in Macau, Wong Min Shing's restaurant has created a baked Shiqi pigeon dish, which is also more elaborate: using about 8 double pigeons grown from 21st to 28th, flooded with white brine, and baked in the oven.
The resulting Ishiki pigeon is crispy, tender and delicious, oily but not greasy.
In the 23rd issue of Xindu magazine in 1943, an article entitled "Milk Pigeon" recorded the process of a diner "visiting the shop" in the Fo Xiao Lou, and he praised the fried milk pigeon as "transparent but not scorched, real but not dry".
"Cut down is a complete piece of tender meat, put into the mouth, tongue teeth up and down jaw, a little movement, the meat grains have lost their place, only fragrant and luscious juice, coated with your mouth..." Even though nearly 70 years have passed, the vivid written records make the braised Shiqi pigeon of Fo Xiao Lou still coveted.
Since Macao was a thoroughfare of Guangdong,Hong Kong and Macao at that time, the eating method of braised Shiqi pigeons also spread.
3
Achieve the glory of Zhongshan Cantonese cuisine
Although the eating method has begun to spread gradually, the production of authentic Ishiki pigeons at that time was not high. In 1970, the Number of Shiqi pigeon breeding pigeons raised in Zhongshan was about 10,000 pairs, with an annual output of about 30,000 suckling pigeons, and almost all of them were exported to Hong Kong and Macao, and zhongshan locals rarely tasted this delicacy.
Opened in 1980, Zhongshan Hot Spring Hotel, invested and built by famous entrepreneurs from Hong Kong and Macao, including Fok Ying Tung and Ho Hung Sun, is the first Sino-foreign cooperative hotel in China, three years before the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou. When the hotel opened, Fok Ying Tung also invited a chef from Macao to hold an opening banquet, and the name must have the dish of braised Shiqi pigeon, which spread to Zhongshan.
Starting with Zhongshan Hot Spring Hotel, a large number of Western-style seasonings, ingredients and cooking methods poured into Zhongshan, giving birth to a "new Cantonese cuisine" that integrates Chinese and Western cuisine.
The late 1980s and 1990s were a glorious era of Cantonese cuisine in Zhongshan, with two four-star foreign-related hotels on the banks of the Qijiang River, Fuhua Hotel and Zhongshan International Hotel.
In 1985, after graduating from high school, Zheng Yaorong entered the FuHua Hotel to learn cooking, under the study of Huang Ruikun, the hotel's production director at the time, who was also the third generation of the "Braised Shiqi Milk Pigeon". As a result, Zheng Yaorong began to associate with suckling pigeons. In his 6th year in the industry, Zheng Yaorong became famous with his "raw fried Shiqi milk pigeon".
After the invention of Zheng Yaorong's raw fried Shiqi pigeon, it also attracted other restaurants to learn and imitate, and constantly innovated.
Even with the traditional braised pigeon, the chefs of some restaurants have also ingeniously added The spice of Zhongshan, lemongrass, adding a little lemon freshness to the heavy meat flavor, attracting many diners who come from Shanghai or even Liaoning.
Image source: Time Weekly reporter photo
A braised Shiqi pigeon has become a microcosm of the culture of overseas Chinese in Zhongshan. Overseas Chinese who became rich first brought rich materials to their hometown, due to the proximity to Hong Kong and Macao, Zhongshan also created a commercial atmosphere, scattered in Hong Kong, Macao and even around the world many villagers at home and abroad have come back to invest in the opening of shops, restaurants, pharmacies, silver trumpets, photo galleries on Sun Wen Road.
Liu Jushang, a former member of the Zhongshan Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said that Zhongshan in the 20th century was known as "Little Hong Kong" and "Little Macao" at home and abroad.
But in Li Zhengsheng's eyes, in recent years, the sign of Zhongshan's food capital has been covered by the light of "net red" Shunde. In his view, the richness of Local Cuisine in Zhongshan is one of the best in the province, "the four local food factions of Mintian, Xiaolan, Sha tin and Wuguishan have their own masterpieces", he hopes that Zhongshan can continue to innovate in the exploration of cuisine, not only from the braised Shiqi pigeon, but more people to tell the story of Zhongshan's cuisine.
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Source | Read the City Chronicle Studio
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