Wen | Zeng Qingwei
Cantonese roast goose and goose profile picture
Every once in a while, I would meet up with a bunch of delicious friends to go to the Chaoshan restaurant "Tooth Festival" to eat Chaoshan cuisine.
If you say that you love food, you can't help but say and can't not taste Cantonese food, can't help but say or can't not taste Teochew cuisine, one of the three Cantonese cuisines in the world. After all, Cantonese cuisine has always ranked first among the four famous dishes, and Chaoshan cuisine has set up a world for Cantonese cuisine.
Chaozhou cuisine originated from Chaozhou, Guangdong (now Chaoshan region), referred to as Chaozhou cuisine, has a history of thousands of years, together with Guangzhou cuisine, Hakka cuisine and called Cantonese cuisine, with strong Lingnan cultural characteristics. Chaozhou cuisine has a wide range of ingredients and has the characteristics of "three more": First, there are many aquatic products. Most of them are taken from the sea tribe, fish, shrimp, mussels, clams, etc. have always been the main ingredients of chaoshi cuisine, and can be cooked into many famous dishes. Second, there are many styles of vegetarian dishes and unique ingenuity, it is cooked with meat, but when it is served, it does not see meat in the dish, and it is made of vegetarian meat, so that it reaches the situation of "three out of taste, three into tasteless", so that green vegetables are soft and rotten, full of meat flavor, delicious and delicious, vegetarian and not fast, which can be called a model of "reconciling the five tastes" in Chinese cooking culture. Third, there are many varieties of beets, and the materials are special. Teochew cuisine plays an important supporting role in the reputation of "food in Guangdong". In my opinion, Teochew cuisine also has a very different feature from other cuisines, but also in its sauce plate with food, one dish and one taste, one dish with one dish sauce, never mix and match, the sauce plate is numerous, the taste type is exquisite, it is indeed a grand view. In terms of the exquisite sauce and variety of dishes, Teochew cuisine is unique in the country and is unmatched.
Poetic Teochew Profile Picture
Originally, enjoying the delicacies of Teochew cuisine was a unique blessing for Cantonese people, but with the development of the times, especially the booming economy, this situation is no longer the case. For example, the city where I live, not far from the city of Wuhan, can not only eat high-end, mid-range Teochew cuisine, but also eat the most down-to-earth food stalls Teochew cuisine. For example, if you eat high-end Teochew cuisine, you can go to the star hotel Howard Johnson Pearl on Hankou Yanjiang Avenue and the Ramada Hotel at Aviation Road; eat mid-range Teochew cuisine can go to the Guangdong Restaurant run by the Guangdong Chamber of Commerce on Xinhuaxia Road and the Chaoshan Restaurant in the Wuhan Tobacco Building on Hankou Construction Avenue. As for eating food stalls Chaozhou cuisine, you can choose to hide in the streets and alleys of the public opinion four road, the door is not very protruding Chaoshan restaurant, there is a family surnamed Zheng from Shantou north to Wuhan opened this small shop, with the first hand of Chaozhou good dishes, after years of operating Chaozhou food stalls. As far as opening a restaurant is concerned, no matter what cuisine is operated, delicious or inexpensive and cost-effective, and the store can make money, this is the hard truth that can be based on the city, and based on this, Chaozhou restaurants are quite attractive to me.
A group of delicious guys, after a month, will definitely come to Teochew restaurant to eat Teochew cuisine. When ordering food, it is always indispensable to order a "roast goose". In Chaozhou cuisine, "roasted geese" is one of the traditional representative dishes with Chaoshan regional characteristics, and has a long historical heritage.
Chinese has a long history of eating geese. According to Mr. Zhu Wei's book "Examination eating", the goose was one of the six animals in the Zhou Dynasty, which was both a sacrifice and a kitchen, and it has a history of nearly two or three thousand years. The so-called six animals refer to cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, geese, and fish. Geese are geese. In the Erya, it is said, "Shu Yan, Goose." "Wild geese are domesticated and become geese." Li Shizhen explained in the "Compendium of Materia Medica": "The goose chirps to itself, and Jiangdong calls it Shu Yan, like a goose and Shu Chi Ye." According to Li Shizhen's research, in fact, there are two kinds of geese, one is a goose and the other is a white goose. It is said that the goose is insect-eating, the white goose eats grass, and the goose is poisonous and generally not eaten by people. The ancients ate geese, which should be white geese, in fact, until now, no matter what kind of cuisine, all the dishes we eat made of geese are also white geese.
White geese are domestically raised. It has a graceful posture and a laid-back demeanor. Ancient literati and scholars liked to use geese into poetry, and the Tang Dynasty poet Luo Binwang wrote "Wing Goose" when he was seven years old: "Goose, goose, goose, song to the heavens." White hair floats green water, red palms pluck clear waves. "In just eighteen words, the posture and situation of the goose swimming in the water are depicted beautifully, and its artistic appeal has continued for more than a thousand years, until now, in the primary school textbooks in many places, "Wing Goose" has been selected as a teaching material.
Goose dishes are made with the method of cooking in the early days, which is now the method of grilling. In the "Qi Min Zhi Shu", there are four kinds of methods of burning geese, pounding: "Take two pounds of fat goose meat, and shave it, without the need to cut it carefully." Good vinegar triad, melon and gourd, green onion and white, ginger, orange peel each half together, pepper twenty pieces - crumbs, harmony, more ordering, wrapped in bamboo skewers. Ten broken chickens, don't take the white, first mo it, order the tune. Paint it with chicken yellow. But the fire is burning, and the juice is ripe." In addition, there are three kinds of burning methods: lattice, brisket burning, and barrel burning. In ancient times, there was also a method of "sealing geese": "Cure the purity, rub the oil on the inside and outside, use fennel, large ingredients and green onions to wrap tightly, and wrap tightly with long onions on the outside." Put into tin cans, cover, pot and cover the brazier. Heavy soup is boiled, inserted with tendons, and the bottom is the degree. The goose enters the tank without juice, and the smell of natural rise is dignified and beautiful. Add bad oil or soy sauce and vinegar when eating. "This cooking method is closer to the current method of steaming geese.
Bird's eye view of Chaozhou Profile picture
In fact, the current Chaoshi dish "roast goose goose" has more similarities with the ancient method of burning geese, perhaps it is basically inherited from the ancient method of burning geese: first clean up the fat goose, put the cinnamon, star anise, and licorice into a small cloth bag, after the mouth is pierced, put in the tile pot, add water, soy sauce, fine salt, sugar, shao wine, boil over medium heat, put the fat goose, turn to a low heat for about 10 minutes, pour out the soup in the goose cavity, and then put it into the tile basin, roll the soup until it is cooked, take the goose out to cool; two pieces of goose meat under the slice, out of the four-pillar bone, Chop the goose spines into cubes, mix well with wet starch, and coat the wet starch with goose skin and set aside. Heat the wok over medium heat, heat the oil to 50%, first put the goose skin upwards, soak the end from the fire, turn it with a spoon while frying, and then bring it back to the stove after the oil temperature drops, and continue to fry until the bone is hard and crispy, and when it is golden brown, it is fished. Place the goose bones in a dish, cut the goose meat into 6 cm long, 4 cm wide and 5 mm thick pieces, cover the bones, trim with coriander and drizzle the pepper oil on top. It is served with Teochew sweet sauce. The combination of sweet sauce and "roast goose goose" is very exquisite. Goose, sweet taste, flat sex, sharp five viscera, quench the heat of the five viscera, the Lord quenches thirst. Wheat, sweet and slightly cold. Eating goose with wheat sauce, warm and cool offset, for the smell to harmonize, is a good match for health diet therapy.
Burnt geese profile picture
The "roasted goose" served on the table is ruddy in color and crispy in texture. Served with sweet sauce, it has a strong sweet flavor. Eat roast goose, and then drink two handfuls of liquor, wine is not spicy, goose is not greasy, the two complement each other, "roast goose goose" can be called a good dish to drink. This also made me understand a phenomenon: when we go to eat in Restaurants in Guangzhou, we see that almost all the larger restaurants have "roasted geese" in the market, it turns out that Chaozhou "roasted geese" does have extraordinary places, and Cantonese people who can eat and enjoy how can they give up enjoying such a delicacy?
This article was published in Nostalgia on the Taste Buds (by Zeng Qingwei, Beijing Daily Publishing House)
About author:Zeng Qingwei, a native of Wuhan, writer and food critic, is currently the director of the Food Culture Committee of the Wuhan Yanhuang Culture Research Association, a distinguished professor of the Wuhan Research Institute of Jianghan University, and the deputy secretary-general of the Wuhan Catering Association. He has published many books such as "Chu Tian Talks About Eating", "Taste of Wuhan", "Nostalgia on taste buds" and so on.