(This article was first published in Beijing Youth Daily Diorama)
Written by | Wei Shuihua
Edit | Alicia
Header image | Mordor Eclipse Bureau
On June 14, 1800, in a small village called Marengo, the army of Napoleon, the chief consul of France, met unexpectedly with the austrian imperial army and launched a historic decisive battle.
No one expected that the passive French army, after more than half a day of fierce fighting, actually turned the tables against the wind and crushed the main force of the Austrian army. For Napoleon, this was not only the victory or defeat of a battle, but also the national fortunes of the First French Empire and his own political status.
On the night of the victory, the ecstatic Napoleon ordered a feast to be held to celebrate. The main course of the feast is intriguing: chickens collected from the farmhouse are slaughtered, chopped into small pieces and fried, added with garlic, tomatoes, fried eggs and brandy, and finally the crayfish fished from the nearby river are added to the chicken soup to enhance the flavor.
A premium version of the farmhouse smorgasbord.
The most interesting thing is that Marengo is not a poor and remote, wilderness village. It is only 30 kilometers from Lake Garda in the foothills of the Alps, rich in a variety of delicious cold-water fish; only 25 kilometers away from Verona, the hometown of cheese, so rich in dairy products that any foodie can make a big move; and only 70 kilometers away from the famous Palma, which is one of the best ham producing areas in the world.
Although Napoleon was proud of his aristocratic lifestyle throughout his life, often saying that "oysters are my weapon to conquer enemies and women", at important banquets, he chose farmhouse chicken, tomatoes, fried eggs and crayfish as his staple food, and enthusiastically named it "Marengo Stew chicken".
A phoenix man from a civilian background said no, but his taste buds were very honest.
In terms of ingredients themselves, from marengo chicken stew in the early 19th century to spicy crayfish in China's supper map today. This ugly and abominable appearance, soft and delicate freshwater arthropod has always been labeled civilian, cheap and marketable. It proves the common pursuit of protein by all human beings regardless of gender, age and class; it also witnesses the different expressions of different languages, nationalities and cultures under the earth's large table for the same kind of food background.
The entanglement of the tip of the tongue with the crayfish rises in the strange and gushes in the rivers and lakes.
No.1 壹
What is the difference between lobster and crayfish? I believe most people will answer without hesitation: lobsters are big, crayfish are small; lobsters live in salt water, crayfish live in fresh water.
But in fact, both answers are inaccurate. Chinese terms "lobster" and "crayfish" are difficult to define by biological classification. The "crayfish" that chinese people call it generally refers to freshwater crawfish, or more narrowly refers to the protocrayfish that has been cultivated in large quantities.
Image source | Food station
In a scientific sense, "lobster" and "crawfish" are the two major populations that are more distinguished: lobsters have only one family, generally sea-dwelling, large, but also small, freshwater migratory species; crayfish include three families, more species, although most of them live in freshwater, small size, but there are also marine species, such as the famous Boston lobster, which is actually more closely related to the "crayfish" often called Chinese. The important symbol that distinguishes lobsters from crayfish is not the size of the head and the living waters, but whether there is a pair of large pliers - "claws".
Lines from the hit documentary "Flavor of the World" say that crayfish originated in the Americas. This is not very accurate, even if the scope is limited to the freshwater crawfish, it is still a worldwide creature that is distributed all over the world.
Even in mainland East Asia, there are its own native crayfish: Northeast Black Crawfish, Nanjing Black Crawfish, Shi's Crayfish and Korean Black Crawfish. Among them, the northeast black crayfish is the most famous. In ancient Chinese texts, it has a slightly pejorative name "蝲蛄".
The viper, which describes the ugly, lumpy scars of the creature's shell, describes its resembling of an insect—apparently, in the eyes of the ancient Han Chinese, this thing was not food.
The only record that can be found is that in some Chinese medicine texts, the stomach stone of the cockroach is used as a medicine for anti-diarrhea and the treatment of rickets. For the people in the core area of Han culture, the northeast region was a distant frontier of the rule of the Qing Dynasty before the Qing Dynasty, and the creatures living there naturally carried a mysterious medicinal color.
But the fact that the Han people do not eat does not mean that the ethnic minorities in the place of origin do not eat. Ethnic minorities in the northeast, such as the Xianbei, Jingbei, Jurchen, and Manchus, have a history of eating clams in limited written records. At nurhaci's founding banquet, there was a taste of "clam tofu". This is not real tofu, but a bean blossom-like food that crushes fresh cockroaches, filters out the shell residue, and then puts the juice into the boiling soup and instantly condenses.
In Jilin, there are still many folk proverbs about tofu, "the tofu is fragrant, often eat the body strong" "there are caddisflies in the Longgang Mountains, smash it to make tofu, the five-flower soup water is immortal, who wants to eat who is blessed", blunt sentences, perhaps from the creation of civilians who broke into the Kanto, or translated by Manchu. Between the lines, there is no complex rhetoric and flowery rhetoric of Chinese literature, and it is full of bottom-up and thriving vitality.
Another food that can be compared to tofu is tofu from Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu Province. The so-called cockroach is a crab that is only the size of a copper coin, and it is not only troublesome to eat alone, but also fishy. However, after breaking the filter residue and adding ginger juice to remove fishiness, it can be cooked into a tender and delicious "tofu".
Although there is no literature to prove the correlation between tofu and tofu, but referring to the highly similar production process between the two, compared with the contemporary Han cooking has never appeared similar cases, it can be speculated that this may be the "traditional food" invented after the Manchu Qing Entering Customs, the Eight Banners army and civilians in the south went to the area where there was no crayfish production, and invented it on the spot.
Born of taste, passed down from habit. The flavor of crayfish rheological processes, more or less.
No.2 贰
In northeast China, when people are hunting for cockroaches, at the other end of eurasia, in Central and Eastern Europe at almost the same latitude, another freshwater crayfish is popular: the Aosta European crawfish.
"Astacus" means "purple" in Latin, while in Swedish it means "big pliers.". This is a native European freshwater crayfish that was once widely distributed from Scandinavia to the Balkans, and due to its high latitude and slow growth, this crayfish has a tighter and more elastic teeth than the protocera crawfish that is popular today.
However, from the ancient Greek and Roman times, Europeans were accustomed to sailing offshore in the Mediterranean, so their choice of food was also more inclined to seafood with less fishy taste and thick flesh. Aosta crayfish has long been just a marginal food that is not on the table.
The change began in the early 16th century: in 1523, under the leadership of the brilliant Gustav I, Sweden became independent from Denmark and became the largest independent kingdom in Scandinavia. At the same time, Sweden began to look at Western European countries and carry out all-round reforms of religion, land and finance, thus opening up the history of civilization in the barbaric lands of Northern Europe and laying the foundation for Sweden's future domination of the Baltic Sea.
More importantly, Gustav I also tried his best like the Yue King, taking the lead in reducing the use of the use and engaging in production. He mobilized the people to hunt the Ubiquitous Aosta European crayfish, and decided to celebrate the "Crayfish" festival every August, which opened the shrimp eating carnival of the whole people.
The Swedish crayfish cooking method at that time was simple, washing the shrimp, putting it in salt water, adding onions and dill to cook. Dill is native to India because it looks like cumin, and Chinese call it "onion.". In Old English, it is called "dilla", which means tranquility and elimination. Obviously, this is a vanilla that emits a peaceful fragrance and can eliminate the fishy smell of freshwater aquatic products.
Since then, dill has become a fixture for Westerners to eat freshwater crayfish.
After that, the brewing technology of Swedish dark beer gradually matured, and the locals improved the crayfish method, boiled it and poured a large amount of dark beer to seal it, so that the flavor of dill and onion was further impregnated into the lobster meat, and played the role of alcohol sterilization and degreasing Titian. After a few days, the shrimp meat is crisp and refreshing, and it is a good thing to drink.
In the 17th century, the increasingly powerful Sweden defeated its fierce rivals Russia, Denmark and Poland, and the former Nordic "barbarians" became one of the most powerful countries in Europe. The Aosta European crayfish, which has always been revered by the Swedish royal family, has received a playful title of "noble lobster". Among them is the fear of the new power Sweden by the countries of the continent and the stereotype of looking down on "barbarian food".
But for more European civilians, Sweden's rise to the top of the country is a legend that can be praised. Aosta European crayfish has also become a common home dish on the table of more and more ordinary Europeans.
Hundreds of years later, Napoleon invented the Marengo stew, which is a typical continuation of this civilian aesthetic.
No.3 叁
In contrast to Western Europe, Eastern European countries were more receptive to Aosta European crawfish in that era.
This is related to the fact that many parts of Eastern Europe are far from the open seas and people are generally accustomed to eating freshwater and aquatic products; it is related to the weakness of elite culture and the prosperity of civilian culture; and it is also related to the long-term conflict and integration of local and Islamic worlds, forming an inclusive style.
In Russia, Poland, and the Balkans, crayfish became the Slavs' dish. What is even more interesting is that the country that raises the most crayfish in Europe today is Turkey, the original sworn enemy of Europe. Therefore, people also call this popular crayfish in Eastern Europe "Turkish crawfish". In fact, it is also a subspecies of the European crawfish.
In Turkey's famous Lake Eridir, crayfish are also known as the Three Treasures of the Lake District together with meatballs and dates, which is a must-eat punch card food for tourists.
Turks eat crayfish in a style distinct from Thatuel: no dill, no dark beer, no onions, but cooked with plenty of lemons, and worse, modelled on the flavors of the South Asian continent, braised with curry and cream. Although the fishy smell is suppressed, the original deliciousness of the shrimp meat is also invisible in front of the thick spices.
This is actually quite similar to the Chinese's thirteen spices, spicy and other crayfish cooking methods.
In parallel with the spread of the Aosta European crayfish to the east, this native European crayfish has suffered a catastrophe in its "base camp". At the beginning of the 20th century, Europeans began to discover that the Nordic crayfish suffered from a strange disease: black ulceration of the carapace, perforation of the body, dyskinesia, rapid onset and high fatality rates – because the cause was unknown, people called the "lobster plague".
To make up for the lack, many European farms have begun to import some more disease-resistant crayfish species from the Americas, such as the large Pacific crawfish and the protocrayfish that we are more familiar with today.
But what people did not expect was that the crayfish from the Americas were the initiators of the lobster plague. The causative agent of this disease is the fibrous filamento, and the American freshwater crayfish is the carrier of the mold.
European crayfish thus began to be infected on a large scale and are today endangered species. In Sweden, where it originated, every year during the lobster season, a kilogram of proto-crayfish costs only 3 euros, while a kilogram of Aosta European crayfish has exceeded 100 euros, and the price difference between the two is as high as 30 times.
What's more, apart from the small size of the protocrayfish, there is almost no difference in taste between the two.
As a result, under the common pursuit of taste by human beings, protocrayfish krabi began to become popular on a large scale.
Image source | Shanghai Food Raiders
No.4 肆
Most people know that crayfish are native to the Gulf Coast of North America, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, but in fact originate from the origin of the protocrayfish.
As a low-latitude organism, this freshwater crayfish does not have a large size, no unique taste, and no biological population advantage. The reason why it is popular has a lot to do with its ease of rearing and adaptability.
More importantly, the origin area of the shrimp is the earliest French colony in the Americas.
Today, louisiana, New Orleans and parts of northern Mexico are still traditionally cooked with potatoes, corn and flavored with spicy carragee powder.
The so-called Cajun originally meant "descendants of the French". The recipe for cajuna powder is complex, including chili peppers, garlic, onions, black pepper, celery and white pepper, and it was first invented not by French colonists, but as a compound paprika used by Indians for barbecue seasoning.
But the French, who were good at cooking and eating and drinking, came here, added a variety of Old World spices to the Indian paprika, and fixed the recipe of kagan powder through iterations of taste from generation to generation.
In the New World, where dill cannot be found, carjan powder is not only a weapon for the French to get rid of the fishy smell of crayfish, but also reflects their determination to make this place their home and their endless pursuit of eating and drinking.
No.5 Wu
Like China, the cultivation methods of protocellfish in the United States are also diverse, which can be roughly divided into two types: free-range pond culture and rice field culture. Unlike Chinese, who are reluctant to raise crayfish that burrow everywhere in rice fields, Americans do not use rice as a staple food, so many paddy fields are completely fed for crayfish. This kind of behavior that Chinese farmers saw as a kind of cruelty and waste of food once put Louisiana and New Orleans in crayfish production ahead for a long time.
But this advantage has been wiped out by the rise of China's crayfish industry. Due to religious and other traditional reasons, many people in Europe and the United States have the habit of "only entering and not leaving" and are not willing to bother eating food with shells or bones, so at least 60% of the farmed crayfish in the United States are in the form of shrimp into the market.
However, due to the inability to standardize the shelling of crayfish, the process of extracting shrimp kernels requires a lot of labor, which directly leads to the high cost of the crayfish industry in the United States and its rapid decline after the development of China's lobster farming industry. In the current American lobster market, there are more and more shrimp from China.
In 1927, Japan introduced 20 protocellfish from the United States with the aim of breeding and breeding them as feed for bullfrogs. According to the Hokkaido Agricultural Chronicle, the introduction of the original crayfish to Japan led to the extinction of the Japanese slug, a close relative of the local Tohoku slug.
After the introduction of crayfish to Japan, it has not been favored by Japanese consumers, after all, it is "bullfrog feed"; at the same time, the island country has rich marine aquaculture conditions, and seafood is very rich; in addition, the Japanese believe that the meat yield rate of crayfish is only 15%, and the meat quality is not enough to make people's food.
Image source | Brad Bowie
A few years later, the original crawfish was introduced to China, and the earliest breeding site was near Nanjing, although the literature today can no longer restore the purpose of the introduction at that time, but it is likely to be used as feed.
Chinese, like the Japanese at first, was not interested in this ugly-looking creature, and there was a series of rumors about dirty crayfish, eating corpses, and enrichment of heavy metals, which made people reject crayfish thousands of miles away.
But in fact, in the era when crayfish first entered China, the degree of domestic industrialization and agricultural modernization was not high, and clean water bodies could be seen everywhere, which also made many wild crayfish in the early days of extremely high quality. Until 1993, a spice shop in Xuyi, Jiangsu Province, launched the "thirteen spiced crayfish" eating method, under the blessing of complex aroma, people were surprised to find that this thing was so delicious!
The so-called thirteen spices, is a kind of compound seasoning prepared with spices such as peppercorns, peppercorns, cloves, grass fruits, fennel, cinnamon, wood, sand kernels, baizhi, galangal and other spices, the earliest did not originate from Jiangsu, but was born in Henan, people often use it to stew meat dishes, can get a strange flavor.
Will eat Chinese quickly applied it to crayfish, after the spicy sweet sauce "tuning", the red shrimp shell is peeled off after the fingers also leave a fragrance, soaked in spices of shrimp meat is more appetizing, and the crayfish seasoned with Kajiang powder has many similarities.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the trend of eating lobster on the street set off from Nanjing and quickly swept across the surrounding shanghai, Anhui, Suzhou and other places. When the summer sky is spread out, the strings of light bulbs in the street stalls are also pulled out, reflecting the people who have been busy for a busy day, drinking ice beer, talking and laughing about delicious crayfish.
Image source | Visual China
-END-
Crayfish lit up the midsummer night, and the hot pot burned red on the cold winter day.
From the Old World, to the New World, to the Old World; from dill, to Kagan powder, to thirteen spices. The global flow of crayfish tells the story of how the food of this world has never been an island. Whether it's an invasive creature or a delicacy of origin; whether it's a greedy colonist or an orderly craftsman. As long as the crayfish are there, the world won't be too bad.