For flour, we have too many ways to eat: noodles, steamed buns, flower rolls, fritters, mashi, baked cakes, dumplings, buns, wontons, twist flowers...
Have you ever thought about how people in the Tang and Song dynasties would eat noodles?
China's food culture has a long history, and the Tang Dynasty is the most prosperous dynasty in China. Datang prospered, and its openness and prosperity were comparable to those of an international metropolis. In the Tang Dynasty, which was extremely open to the outside world, people introduced crops, food and other cultivation techniques of the Hu people in the Western Regions. The Tang Dynasty had a wide area of wheat cultivation, and chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, was a typical place where noodles were the staple food.
New Book of Tang Dynasty: "Noble people's imperial food, do your best to provide food." "Noodles cooked with the Hu method were very popular among the Tang aristocratic class.
Compared with the Han Dynasty, the Tang people's cooking technology for pasta has greatly improved, and in the Tang Dynasty, there have been pasta with fillings, such as wontons, dumplings, twist flowers, etc., which we are familiar with, and there are countless pasta snacks of all colors.
There is a reason behind each phenomenon, and the Tang Dynasty people loved to eat steam for their own reasons.
Outside: Tang Dynasty pasta cooking methods to bake-based, mainly by the Influence of the Hu people, since the opening of the Han Dynasty Silk Road, tea, silk, walnuts, wine, horses, etc. on this road frequently, especially prominent is the Hu cake, because the Tang Dynasty and the Hu people frequent interaction, the legacy has not changed, prefer Hu food, so the most important cooking method of Tang Dynasty noodles is baking.
Folk customs: Tang Dynasty people are bold and enthusiastic, noodles are mainly based on hu cake, hu cake is actually a bun, the bun is baked with fire, and then sprinkled with sesame seeds and oil, baked and eaten directly, there is no very complicated process. The Tang Dynasty achieved the second great national integration in China's history, and the people's customs were open, and this open folk customs further promoted the development of gastronomy.
Fuel: The Tang Dynasty was relatively rich in resources, firewood was plentiful, and people had sufficient natural conditions to provide fuel for cooking pasta.
The Tang Dynasty people loved to grill and eat noodles, and in the Song Dynasty, they have developed to refinement. The steamed buns we eat now can be traced back to the Northern Song Dynasty, and the noodles of the Song Dynasty were varied and exquisitely made: the buns alone had a variety of fillings, including goose meat, duck meat, pork, bamboo shoots... There are even more varieties than in modern times.
In the Song Dynasty, steamed buns were also stuffed, filling more than noodles is buns, filling less than noodles is steamed buns; cakes have boiled and steamed, different production methods have different names such as burnt cakes, soup cakes and steamed cakes, steamed cakes are renamed cooking cakes. There is the word "cooking cake" in "Water Margin", and what Wu Dalang sells on the street is "cooking cake", and "cooking cake" is actually the current steamed bun.
"Wontons and bandits, vegetarian and multi-product this is high"
—Song Chen
"Steamed bread can still be crossed, and wontons can be five like five"
—Song Luyou
Wontons were very popular in the Song Dynasty, up to the emperor and nobles down to the common people, wontons were a delicacy on the table of people at that time, dumplings in the Song Dynasty were named "horns", scones in the Song Dynasty were not as popular as the Tang Dynasty, boiled cakes are the darlings of the Song Dynasty, close to the current noodles, as early as the Song Dynasty, there were three fresh noodles, as early as the Song Dynasty, as well as chicken noodles, Yunying noodles and so on.
Compared with the Tang Dynasty, the Song Dynasty tended to treat pasta cooking as a culture and pasta as a work of art, which was not only a food full of hunger, but also a symbol of culture. The noodles of the Tang and Song dynasties were "grilled" and "steamed", which not only revealed the difference between the two cooking methods, but also reflected the unique characteristics of the Song Dynasty.
Personality: The personality of the Tang Dynasty people is more rough, and the Song Dynasty people are weaker, so compared with the Tang Dynasty, the noodles of the Song Dynasty are more sketchy, while the Song Dynasty people are just the opposite, the Song Dynasty emphasizes literature and light martial arts, advocating reading.
Climate: In ancient China, the northern sand and dust weather was frequent, and there was no such a strict protection system as modern times, so the grain at that time was mixed with dust and made it difficult to swallow, so the Song people thought of wrapping meat with dough to prevent meat from being polluted by dust, and the prototype of the bun appeared.
Culture: The development of science and literature in the Song Dynasty made the Song Dynasty more contemporary while developing economically. The successive appearance of literati and inkers has made people more inclined to rationality while pursuing a better life, and compared with the Tang Dynasty, it is more relaxed, so it is not difficult to understand that the noodles of the Song Dynasty tend to be "steamed".
To this day, we can still find the shadow of pasta in the Tang and Song dynasties from modern food, since ancient times, we Han People have fused our own food with Western food, taking its essence and discarding its dregs. The Chinese nation has inherited this traditional trait well, not abandoning the inheritance of traditional cuisine or the pursuit of foreign food.
The cooking method of ingredients is largely related to the degree of civilization and economic development of a society, and with the development of the economy, we can eat a variety of things, cooking methods are various.
There are not only simple pasta, but also steamed lamb, steamed bear paw, steamed deer tail, roasted duck, roasted chicken, roast goose, boiled salted duck, sauced chicken, bacon, pine blossoms, small belly, dried meat, sausage, assorted su pan, smoked chicken, white belly, steamed eight treasure pig...
There are too many kinds of people who can eat, and too many people who love to eat.
Although the Chinese people love stir-frying, the steaming and roasting of the Tang and Song dynasties have continued to this day and have gradually been loved.
Living at home, most people think that having a gas stove is enough, usually stir-frying to eat, want to eat steamed or grilled to go to the restaurant, but their own personal cooking, is the most beautiful taste in the world. So some people's kitchens have bought steamer ovens in addition to range hoods and gas stoves – in fact, don't bother! One device can do this, and it does even better.