Red Chamber cuisine "Rouge Goose Breast" exploration

Red Chamber cuisine "Rouge Goose Breast" exploration

Ding Zhiyong

"Dream of the Red Chamber" is a real encyclopedia, in addition to the rise and fall of the family, the whole book also involves poetry, Traditional Chinese medicine, gardens, costumes, tea ceremonies and many other aspects, and food is also the highlight of it. Someone once did statistics, and there are as many as 186 dishes written in "Dream of the Red Chamber", which is really a food book. Among them, "Rouge Goose Breast" is a very beautiful and poetic dish, which is unforgettable.

This dish of rouge goose breast comes from the sixty-second time of "Dream of the Red Chamber": saying, I saw that the fruit of the Liu family sent someone to send a box. Xiao Yan then unveiled it, and inside was a bowl of shrimp ball chicken skin soup, a bowl of steamed duck stuffed with wine, a plate of pickled rouge goose breasts, a plate of four creamy pine rolls, and a large bowl of steamed green rice japonica rice. Xiao Yan put it on the case, went to take the small dish and bowl it over, and dialed a bowl of rice. Fang Guan then said, "Greasy, who eats these things." "I only ate a bowl of soup and rice, and picked two pieces of pickled goose and didn't eat it." Readers who read this paragraph will involuntarily tongue the bottom of the tongue, all because Cao Gong wrote these dishes are too beautiful and too tempting, shrimp ball chicken skin soup, wine brewed steamed duck, rouge goose breast, cream pine roll crisp, hot steaming green rice japonica rice, just from the literal point of view, it is very film and television effect, seemingly simple three dishes and a soup and a meal, but it is ingenious and poetic, as if people are immersed in the food finger, can't wait to taste. The other three dishes in this recipe are relatively common and the method of preparation is not controversial, but this rouge goose breast, the red academic community and the gastronomic community have not yet formed a unified opinion. Some people say that this dish is marinated with goose meat, others say that it is air-dried, and others say that it is made by taking fresh goose meat stew and coloring red yeast rice.

Rouge goose breast, as the name suggests, refers to the carmine goose breast meat. Rouge, a natural pigment used by ancient Women in China to color the face and lips, presents a very beautiful deep red color. There is a description of rouge in the forty-fourth episode of "Dream of the Red Chamber", which is very graphic: this rouge "is not a sheet, but a small white jade box, which contains a box, like rose paste." Bao Yu smiled: "The rouge sold in the shop is not clean, the color is also thin, this is the best rouge wringed out of the juice, cleaned up, steamed with flower dew." As long as the thin hairpin is picked up a little and smeared on the lips, it is enough; with a little water, it is enough to pat the face. "Ping'er made up according to her words, and the fruit was bright and abnormal, and it was sweet and fragrant." As we all know, Baoyu has a problem, that is, he likes to steal rouge, and he does not change it no matter how much persuasion he returns, which shows how beautiful and irresistible the red color of this rouge is. Wang Renyu's "Testament of Kaiyuan Tianbao" records: "Every summer month, the noble concubines often wear light clothes, so that the attendants hand over the fan and blow the wind, and they still do not understand its heat." Every time there is sweat, red and fragrant, or wiped on the towel, its color is like peach also." It is Yang Yuhuan, because of the rouge, even the towel that wipes the sweat is dyed red. Because of the important role played by rouge in women's makeup, the literati of the past generations also had many chants, such as Li Yu: Rouge tears, stay drunk, when heavy, since people grow and hate water to the east. Zheng Banqiao: Ten years of Yangzhou painter, the chief general Hemo Dai Rouge. In "Dream of the Red Chamber", the first society of the Begonia Poetry Society, "Wing Bai Begonia", Xue Baochao also did: Rouge washed out the autumn step shadow, and ice and snow attracted the soul of the exposed. Carmine, is an extremely beautiful deep red, with a moving beauty, people can't help but admire and yearn. So, how amazing and delicious is the goose breast meat that presents this rouge?

In the "Dream of the Red Chamber" a variety of dishes, there are several with geese as the ingredient, in addition to this rouge goose breast, there are "bad goose paws", "pine goose oil rolls", Wujin Xiaolai Ningguo Mansion to send the annual routine also impressively listed "two hundred live chickens, ducks and geese, wind chicken ducks and geese each two hundred", it is conceivable that the frequency of geese appearing on the Table of Jia Fu should be very high. The Daoxiang Village where Li Yi lived also raised geese, and the sisters such as Bao Yu and other sisters in Yuanchun Province gave poems with the title of each scene in the garden, and Lin Daiyu also chanted in "Apricot Curtain in Sight": Lingjing goose water, mulberry elm swallow beam. Even when Lin Daiyu first entered Jia Province to meet the sisters, the face of Yingchun was also quoted from the goose: the first skin was slightly plump, the body was in shape, the cheeks were condensed, the nose was greasy goose fat, gentle and silent, and the view was amiable. It is not difficult to find that the goose not only occupies an important position in the cuisine of the Red Chamber, but also occupies an important position in the heart of the author Cao Xueqin, and has even extended to many fields such as home decoration, poetry and music, and face metaphor, forming a unique red chamber goose culture.

Goose meat is flat and sweet, has the effect of replenishing qi and deficiency, and quenching stomach thirst, especially suitable for physical weakness. Qi and blood are insufficient, and malnourished people eat it. The history of the breeding of domestic geese can be verified for at least two thousand years, and it is recorded in the ancient Chinese book "Zhuangzi": The old people are happy, and they order the pipes to kill the geese and cook them. The shaft asked: "One of them can sound, and the other cannot sound, please kill?" The geese here obviously refer to the captive breeding of domestic geese, and it can be said that the history of raising domestic geese has been as long as the history of chinese people eating geese has been long. There are many people who love geese in history, the most famous of which is the book Saint Wang Xizhi, who has left us the story of the book "Huangting Jing" to exchange geese for Taoists, as well as the popular poem of Luo Bin wang, one of the four masters of the early Tang Dynasty: goose and goose, song xiangxiang to the heavens, white hair floating green water, red palm plucking Qingbo. After a long period of development and evolution, today people eat goose in a variety of ways, the more famous are salt water goose, spicy goose, brine goose, roast goose, pickled goose, wind goose, drunken goose 、、、、、、, due to regional differences to form a unique local taste and production methods. It is difficult to explore the origin of rouge goose breast in so many tastes and preparation methods, this time, we have selected one of the most distinctive "goose cities" in China to trace the traces of rouge goose breasts from the representative goose meat delicacies of this "goose city".

This "goose city" is Yangzhou. The ancient city of Yangzhou is a famous city of food, one of the four major cuisines in China, the birthplace of Huaiyang cuisine, Yangzhou fried rice, three-headed feast, crab yellow soup buns, large hot dried silk, Wensi tofu, steamed crab powder lion's head, etc. are the representative cuisine of Yangzhou, but if you say that the ingredients that occupy a dominant position among the ordinary people in Yangzhou are no more than geese. According to the reporter's investigation statistics, there are more than 2,100 saltwater goose stalls in Yangzhou City, about 20 million geese are sold a year, and Yizheng and other places in Yangzhou have to process about 60 million wind geese every winter, most of these geese have also entered the stomach of Yangzhou people, and the number of salted geese pickled by ordinary people in Yangzhou in winter cannot be counted, and the strength of Yangzhou people to eat geese can be seen. "Goose" has become the food business card of Yangzhou city, the name of "Goose City" Yangzhou is well-deserved, and "Yangzhou Goose" has now become an intangible cultural heritage, well-known at home and abroad. Yangzhou is located at the junction of Jianghuai and Huaibei, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal passes through the city, and there are three major freshwater lakes in the territory of Gaoyou Lake, Shaobo Lake and Baoying Lake, and the river channel is densely covered with water networks, which creates innate favorable conditions for raising geese. The Tang Dynasty poet Yao He wrote in the "Spring Words of Yangzhou": "There is only bamboo planted in the land, and there is no home and no goose." It shows that the history of Yangzhou people raising geese and eating geese has been at least a thousand years old.

In Yangzhou cuisine, there are roughly the following methods of making goose ingredients: brine goose, salted goose, and wind goose. The famous Huaiyang cuisine restaurant Lion Building has developed a whole goose feast, with sixteen dishes using goose as ingredients. (With lion building full goose feast menu: salt water goose, hemp fragrant goose intestine, ba wei foie gras, double flavor goose tongue, salt water goose wings, crispy goose gizzard, white cloud goose paw, old brine goose head, goose oil Wen silk jade soup, crystal original juice inlaid goose brain, eight treasure pomegranate stuffed goose neck, a pint of goose belly four treasures, baixiang old brine mud goose, crab powder goose breast lion head, Yangzhou crispy gizzard egg fried rice, Lion Lou goose meat bun) These dishes belong to the restaurant's own development, and there is no rouge goose breast dish, so it is not for examination. We also have an understanding of the production methods with local characteristics of Yangzhou, such as saltwater goose, salted goose and wind goose, in order to find out the original face of the dish of rouge goose breast.

Yangzhou characteristic saltwater goose originated from Huang Jue on the shore of Shaobo Lake in Yangzhou, and HuangJue Old Goose is also the signature and business card of Yangzhou saltwater goose. Since the middle of the Qing Dynasty by the Zhang invented so far has a history of more than three hundred years, Huang Jue old goose selected the local Shaobo Lake stocking white goose, with a variety of Chinese herbal medicines and secret ingredients, boiled with water, the finished product shape seems to be alive, rotten but not scattered, golden color, fat and tender meat, salty and delicious, long-term food. Because local officials in the Qing Dynasty once used Huang Jue's old goose to entertain the Qianlong Emperor who came to Yangzhou in the south, and became famous in the world, the old goose of Huang Jue was also designated as a tribute. However, although the Yangzhou brine goose is famous and delicious, it is by no means the prototype of the rouge goose breast. After the brine goose is stewed for a long time by various ingredients and traditional Chinese medicine, its goose skin is golden, and the goose meat is pale red, which is far from carmine, and the brine goose is generally divided into anterior blade, hind legs, head and neck, claw wings, liver, blood intestine, and there is no practice of eating the breast meat separately, so the brine goose can be excluded. In fact, from the point of view of the requirement of carmine alone, braised goose, brine goose and other practices can also be excluded. I have seen on TV that in order to rub the heat of the Red Chamber cuisine, some restaurants take the goose breast meat out of context, take the goose breast meat separately, cook it with various ingredients, and then add red yeast rice to color, which is called rouge goose breast. As everyone knows, this method is colored together with goose skin, and the color of red yeast rice is bright red, which is very different from carmine, and only one color is seen after the goose meat is chopped and plated, so that the dish seriously loses its visual beauty, which is not advisable. In the Ming Dynasty Han Yi's "YiYa Will", there is such a record of the ancients eating geese: a goose, not broken, first salted, steamed in a soup gong, with duck bombs three or five pieces of wine, Hou cooked, apricot greasy pouring offerings, the name of apricot blossom goose. Some people think that this apricot goose is the prototype of the rouge goose breast. Regardless of the preparation method, the apricot blossoms are only light red at the beginning of the buds, then gradually fade, and finally white, how does this apricot pickled with apricot blossoms have carmine? Furthermore, as described in the text, pouring apricots indicates that the practice is to pour apricots as a topping on the goose meat, rather than the color of the goose meat itself. The most important thing is that the text of "Dream of the Red Chamber" clearly states that the rouge goose breast is the result of pickling, "a dish of pickled rouge goose breast", "pick two pieces of pickled goose will not eat", all highlight a "pickled" word. Yes, the above kinds of goose meat delicacies, whether it is the color of the dish or the preparation method, can be directly excluded.

Let's take a look at Yangzhou's other two classic goose products, salted goose and wind goose, which are also the most likely prototypes of rouge goose breasts, because both of these methods meet the requirements in the text: pickling. In fact, both salted goose and wind goose can be defined as a type of pickling, and the main ingredients used are salt, but there are slight differences in the preparation method. Yangzhou local tradition, every winter to pickle all kinds of salty goods to welcome the New Year. Li Tizhai, a Qing Dynasty Yizheng person, once recorded in the "Zhenzhou Bamboo Branch Quotation": cured meat chicken, fish and duck, Yue, Nian cuisine, boiled to welcome the age. Relatively speaking, the production of salted goose is slightly simpler and more universal, and almost everyone in Yangzhou can do it. First slaughter the live goose, bleed to remove the internal organs, clean, wipe the inside and outside of the goose with salt, and then place it in the altar, turn over several times a day after the salt is boiled, ensure that the whole goose is evenly soaked in the brine, after six or seven days, pour the salt water in the altar into the pot, add onion ginger cooking wine and water, boil, cool, and then pour into the altar, so that the goose as a whole is submerged in salt water, and then every three days the brine is poured out and boiled once again to re-soak, repeated six or seven times, the goose can be taken out, warm water washed and suspended outdoors, subjected to sunlight. In this way, the goose body fat slowly spills out, and the golden muscles of the skin appear red, which can be stored for a year as long as it is properly preserved. Before cooking, you need to soak in rice water for several hours, then wash it with hot water, add green onion and ginger cooking wine to the top of the fire and simmer slowly, and then fish out after a few hours. After being cooled, chop the pieces and plate them, but the smell of salty aroma is very appetizing. At this time, the salted goose breast shows a very special sauce red, such as pickling and drying time may appear purple-black, but either way, it is slightly more than carmine, and it is slightly far-fetched to say that it is the prototype of the rouge goose breast.

The last one is a very local wind goose. Wind goose, when represented by the Yizheng Dayi area, is a creative invention made by the Dayi people after drawing on the practice of pickling salted goose, and after long-term improvement and development, it has now become a food business card of the Yizheng area. The production method of the wind goose is relatively more complicated and more technical. After slaughtering the goose, bleed but do not remove the feathers, cut a small opening in the lower part of the goose belly to remove the internal organs, fill it with salt, carefully tie the goose body with a thin rope after the goose neck is coiled on the abdomen, and be sure to ensure that the goose belly is closed, otherwise it will deteriorate and cannot be eaten, but it cannot be tied too tightly, otherwise it will lose the effect of air drying and affect the taste, and this process must be completed by experienced people. After the bundling is completed, the goose is suspended in a cool, dry and ventilated place to allow it to dry naturally, a process that takes at least a month. After the air drying is completed, it can be eaten after dehairing, soaking and stewing, this special preparation technique and special air drying method give the Yizheng wind goose a unique taste and flavor, and also give the Yizheng wind goose a unique color - carmine. Unlike the salted goose sauce red, the wind goose meat presents a very authentic, very natural carmine, after the wind goose chopped pieces are plated, but the muscle red fat white fragrance is delicious, which is perhaps the closest dish to the rouge goose breast. Admittedly, the method of preparation and color alone cannot conclude that the wind goose is the prototype of the rouge goose breast, so let's take a look at how it is eaten. Today's Yangzhou and Yizheng areas, every winter and spring, is the peak period of eating wind goose, there are generally two ways to eat, one, the goose breast meat and goose leg meat are separately plated as cold plates to eat, because these two parts of the meat is the thickest and tightest, and eating alone can maximize the special taste of the wind goose. The goose head neck, claw wings, dorsal bones and other parts, because of its small meat will be used to stew soup, and then add lettuce to make a wind goose lettuce open stove, is a unique flavor, this dish is also a must-have dish for large and small restaurants in Yangzhou Yizheng area, and there are many fans of food.

Production techniques, dish color, eating methods, these three aspects of the wind goose are in line with the description of the rouge goose breast in the text of "Dream of the Red Chamber", and there are also wind geese in the annual rent sent by Wu Jinxiao, although we cannot conclude that the wind goose sent by Wu Jinxiao is the Yizheng wind goose, but there is no difference in its preparation method, and the cooked wind goose goose breast meat is the rouge goose breast in Cao Gong's pen. We all know that Cao Gong's creation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is a fusion of many deeds of his fathers and grandparents, such as "borrowing provincial relatives to write about the southern tour" and "a hundred years of lonely tombs to bury peach blossoms", etc., so can the rouge goose breast find clues in the deeds of his fathers and grandparents? Yes! Cao Xueqin's grandfather Cao Yin worked in Jiangnan for a long time as a weaver in Jiangning, and in his later years he focused on supervising the salt affairs of Lianghuai, staying in Yangzhou and Yizheng for a long time, of course, it was inevitable to taste the local delicacies of Yangzhou and Yizheng. Cao Yin is elegant, likes to make friends with celebrities, knows poetry and Xiaoyin rhythms, and of course does not let go of food, not to mention his "Record of Habitual Drinking", which is described in his "Neem Pavilion Collection". The Neem Pavilion Collection is a collection of personal poems published by Cao Yin during the Kangxi Dynasty, which is the most direct record of his life experience and a direct reflection of his life and thoughts. Cao Yin's poetry creation has a certain status among the literati of the Qing Dynasty, but the reason why we pay attention to it is because of Cao Xueqin and "Dream of the Red Chamber". From the "Neem Pavilion Collection", we can see that Cao Yin's good and multi-faceted cultivation of literature and art and deep love has its important academic research value, and more importantly, from the perspective of red studies, the Neem Pavilion Collection has extremely valuable historical data value. The content contained in the Neem Pavilion Collection is extremely rich, including Cao Yin's personal feelings and thoughts, social singing, hobbies, experience records and other fields, this article focuses on the gastronomic aspects of its records, and the rest do not explore.

"Neem Pavilion Poetry Banknote Volume II" has a poem "JuLu and Wine", the poem is: chamomile yellow and white hair, chewing on the jade face. Although Fang Shu was full of signs, he was ashamed to eat. Heavy lead thought guo, ding instrument through the entrance 、、、、、、。 Cao Xueqin was able to write rose dew so vividly in "Dream of the Red Chamber", and there is an objective background, that is, Cao Yin is also good at steaming flower dew. In the summer of the thirty-sixth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1697), Cao Yin once presented eight jars of rose dew to the Kangxi Emperor, and the poem "Chrysanthemum Dew and Wine" describes the process of homemade flower dew very specifically: fresh flowers are plucked in the morning, sealed in the still, cooked on low heat for a day and a night, until after nightfall, the condensation can be seen dripping from the mouth of the still. "Dream of the Red Chamber" points out through Madame Wang's mouth that the two bottles of "Muxi Qinglu" and "Rose Qinglu" were originally "entering" things, and what is told here is actually Cao Xueqin's own family history. "Neem Pavilion Poetry Volume IV" has a poem "After the medicine to avoid food taboo Xie Fang Nan Dong feed the chicken erpin, when there will be a trip to the Jingjiang River": medicine erbium through the winter tired of bamboo shoots and vegetables, every time you see good food to remember the mackerel. When it is hardy, it wants to be stubborn, and the irritability is comparable to crabs. A hundred hobbies are not as good as a double-planted soup... In this poem, mackerel, wild duck soup, crab sauce, and double-planted feet (chicken paws and goose paws) are written in one go. Coincidentally, Cao Xueqin also wrote in "Dream of the Red Chamber" that Jia Baoyu tasted the bad goose paws made by You's family in Ningguo Mansion. There is also a famous poem "Anchovy" in the "Neem Pavilion Poetry Volume VII": Holding a thousand threads in his hand and laughing in the air, the night tide once recognized the fish wind. Ripe plums in the rain of the Shu River, and guo gong in the dark spring mountains. In March, there is no order of salt, and the shrimp dishes in the Five Lakes are the same. Ordinary house food is always on the season, most of which contain peach injection cheek red. From these poems, it is not difficult to see that Cao Yin has a very deep study of various ingredients, and he is also a person who likes food. So, is there a record of "goose" in his poems? In the poem "Neem Pavilion Poetry Volume VI", it is written in the poem "Crossing the Sea House Li Daygong To Leave a Drink for the Monks": "I have not resigned, and I know that the king has mercy on me." The red goose rushed to send wine, and the falcon relieved the people. The red goose in this poem is most likely the Yizheng Wind Goose, because only the special delicacy and color of the Yizheng Wind Goose can make Cao Yin, a literati who has tasted all the food, use poetry and wine to accompany it. This pen was incorporated into "Dream of the Red Chamber" by Cao Xueqin, and took a very poetic name - rouge goose breast.

Three glasses of light wine are far away, two plates of rouge are slanted to the west, and a rouge goose breast is just one of the drops in the sea of "Dream of the Red Chamber". The exploration made in this article is not to conclude that yizhengfeng goose is the prototype of rouge goose breast, but to use the existing information to restore the original appearance of the red chamber cuisine to the greatest extent, so that more people pay attention to the red chamber cuisine, and further use the origin between local cuisine and red chamber cuisine to promote the development of the red chamber culture, and thus study and understand the author's family life.