Vegetarian can be healthy, plant integration cooking delicious; The feast can be beneficial to longevity, and the guests of the fragrant feast of vegetable roots.
Mention this couplet, may be a little older Guangzhou locals, still remember that it is hung in the hall of the Cai gen Xiang Vegetarian Restaurant. It's just that the roots of the vegetables that used to be fragrant have completely completed around 2004. When I was shopping for vegetables today, I stumbled upon a new small shop and named it "Cai Gen Ji". Only then did I think of this once-glorious vegetarian restaurant again. Feel free to write and count as a souvenir.
▲ The aroma of vegetable roots from the 1990s to 2004
Buddhism abstains from meat, so the root incense was originally opened to adapt to the life and eating habits of Buddhists. The name is also based on the Diamond Sutra: "The heart is at peace and the hut is stable, and the sexual stillness is fragrant". In the past, the shop was in the Liurong Temple, and it was moved to Shaoguan after the fall of Guangdong in 1938. It was not until after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War that it was moved back to the Rongyin Garden of the Liurong Temple, and later moved to Zhongshan Sixth Road.
The raw materials for the production of vegetable root fragrant food do not use meat, eggs and animal fats, but only mushrooms, fungus, lotus seeds, olive kernels, bamboo shoots, raw tendons and other beans, hair vegetables, silver needles, and various green vegetables and other plants and seasonal vegetables. These materials are very low in fat, while the plant protein and vitamin content are very high and rich in nutritional value. Easier to digest and does not burden the body.
Vegetarianism is now gaining popularity
Although it is a vegetarian dish, it can be made hundreds of refreshing, sweet and non-greasy dishes through the chef's clever hands, and the price is relatively low. Therefore, there are many people at home and abroad who patronize vegetarian restaurants, and most of them are not Buddhists. Among them, the writer Han Suyin has been a guest many times. At the same time, since the 1980s, the wave of vegetarianism has been growing in the world, and a group of European and American merchants at the Canton Fair every year often eat here for a few days, and the dishes are different every day. They were all captivated by the abundance of vegetarian food and couldn't help but marvel at the "oasis of food".
Historically, there have been more than a dozen vegetarian restaurants in Guangzhou. Such as "Tianzhen Garden" (Hui'ai Road), "Jieyuan" (Guangda Road), "SugenXiang" (Tenth Fu), "Buddha Has a Fate" (Xiangyang Road), "Dinghu" (Eighteen Fu), "Bodhi Garden" (Twelve Fu), "Quanzhen" (Baohua Road), "Zizhu Forest" (Fifteen Fu), "MingxinTang" (Hongde Road), "Rongyin Garden" and so on. Vegetarian chefs have accumulated a wealth of experience and developed innovative recipes. And most of the painstaking works of these vegetarian restaurants are ultimately concentrated in the aroma of vegetable roots.
▲ Dinghu Shangsu, the famous Dinghu
"Dinghu Shang vegetarian" is used as the signature dish of the root flavor. Using "three mushrooms" (northern mushrooms, fresh mushrooms, mushrooms), "six ears" (snow ear, yellow ear, stone ear, wood ear, elm ear, osmanthus ear), as well as hair vegetables, bamboo sheng, fresh bamboo shoots, silver needles, olive kernels, white fruit, lotus seeds, raw tendons and other raw materials, simmered with sesame oil, rice wine, sauce one by one, and then arranged in turn into a twelve-layer mountain bag type dish. Its color is elegant, layered, fresh and smooth, fragrant and beautiful, and has great nutritional value.
"Dinghu Shangsu" is said to be the first creation of Qingyun Temple in Dinghu Mountain, one of the three ancient temples in Lingnan. Once, a monk from Qingyun Temple came to Guangzhou to visit the Six Banyan Trees Temple, ate at the West Garden Restaurant at that time, and taught the preparation of this dish to the chefs of the West Garden. Since then, West Garden has used it as a signboard, and the banquet has been listed as the first course of the table, and its status is higher than that of the second course of shark fin soup.
▲ West Garden Restaurant in the 1940s (left)
"Dinghu Shangsu" can basically be regarded as the highest skill in vegetarian cuisine, and it is also the crowning work of the West Garden restaurant at that time. Legend has it that at that time, the wife of the Guangdong warlord Chen Jitang, Mo Xiuying, ate a good dish, and when he heard the fame of "Dinghu Shangsu", he had to make it at the door of the West Garden chef. However, the earliest "Dinghu Shang vegetarian" used meat oil broth, and The West Garden was not a vegetarian restaurant. Therefore, Mo Xiuying was afraid that the chef would bring meat food, and he also stated that the vegetarian raw materials and kitchen utensils entering the door, including the chef's, should be checked and searched.
The boss was shocked to hear the news, worried that if this dish is not seasoned according to the original recipe, the taste will be greatly reduced, and the umami taste is not good; if the original seasoning is used, it is inevitable to "leak the bottom", which is equivalent to self-dismantling the signboard. Later, the chef had a plan, using a white towel to absorb the thick broth, dry it and put it on his shoulder. At that time, the soup in the towel was soaked with water to taste, and it was successfully passed. Later, the "Dinghu Shangsu" of "Vegetable Root Fragrance" still generally followed the West Garden method, but it was simmered in soup purely with vegetarian raw materials such as soybeans, although it maintained its vegetarian color, but the fresh flavor did not decrease that year.
▲Various vegetarian dishes were the best dishes at that time
Speaking of the aroma of vegetable roots, the materials of vegetable root incense pay attention to "color, aroma, taste, meaning, and shape", with The flavor of Buddhism. The chef stuffed the fresh mushrooms with "hundred flower fillings (seasoned with mushrooms, horseshoes, lotus seeds, potatoes, etc.)", shaped like yellow bells, and then matched with white fungus, egg white and other raw materials, made into a famous dish "Snow Accumulation Silver Bell", the silver bell rings, the temple door is long. The "Six Treasures Platter" is based on the theme of the Flower Pagoda and the Six Banyan Temple, and is made of various vegetable screens that have been processed and cooked, and the temple gate flower pagoda has a realistic image. Many of the names of dishes can also be used as a joke during the meal. "Rulai Shangsu" is said to be the cooking dish of The Buddha Shakyamuni of Rulai Buddha; "Fahai Buddha Futon", there is a story of the Fahai monk fighting with the white snake, "Lan Ren Xiang Ji Roll" is in the Buddhist kitchen "Xiang Ji Kitchen"...
The Buddhist precept is not to kill, but long-term fasters sometimes want to change their tastes. Vegetable root incense can be used from plant raw materials such as gluten to imitate meat dishes. The vegetarian chicken, vegetarian duck, vegetarian pigeon, vegetarian osmanthus fish, vegetarian flower sparrow, and even vegetarian grass insects, etc., the image is similar, almost chaotic, and the taste is still excellent.
There is another feature of the ingredients of the root flavor. Because Cantonese cuisine pays attention to not eating from time to time, that is, the dishes and flowers should often change at any time. Therefore, the root fragrance of vegetables also has this tradition: for example, when lychees are listed, lychees are used to make "hanging chlorophyll clothes"; when pineapples are ripe, they make "diced pineapple mushrooms"; in the production season of sub-ginger, "ziwei rooting" is also made and so on. The shop's refreshments are also vegetarian, about 300 models, full of flavor.
▲The streets of Guangzhou used to be full of long-established brands
When I remember this, it's basically over. Cai Gen Xiang was closed around 2004. When I passed by two years ago, I found that the original site had become a pharmacy, which should be a microcosm of the entire era. I don't remember when I read a data, since the founding of the People's Republic of China, more than 16,000 old brands, more than 1,300 cash, and only about 10% are profitable, the rest are struggling to support. And guangzhou's long-established brands that have closed down over the years are not only cai gen xiang family?
West Garden, Yun Xiang, Hui Ru, Da San Yuan... One by one, the old brands have disappeared, and the economic tide has overturned these symbols and symbols that represent the city's culture, replaced by the ever-changing innovation of the catering industry and the birth of Internet celebrities. Fortunately, compared to these dead and completely old brands, the life of Cai Gen Xiang is not over.
Nowadays, there is also a "vegetable root fragrant family of Jai Brine Flavor" operating near Longjin East Road in Guangzhou, selling vegetarian brine flavors such as Jai Roast Goose, Jai Za Hoof, Vegetarian Ham, etc., which is also a continuation of the root incense, and it is also a kind of self-redemption of the old brand.