[Editor's note] "Chinese cuisine is immortal, thanks to the development of Chinese food culture for thousands of years. "The gourmand Ermao has been collecting old recipes for more than 30 years, and the documents he has collected spanned the Ming and Qing dynasties to the 1980s.
The "Ermao's Old Recipe" column will explore the history and changes of food culture in different eras, regions, cuisines, events, and celebrities as clues.
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Ermao (formerly known as Mou Zhenzhen) was born in Youyang, Chongqing in the 1960s. Famous poet, gourmet, gastronomic consultant of "China on the Tip of the Tongue", expert of the Research Group on non-genetic inheritance and protection of Chinese cuisine (Ministry of Culture and China Cuisine Association), collector of Chinese food literature. From 1987 to the present, he has successively founded cultural catering brands "Chuandong Laojia" and "Tianxia Salt" in Chongqing, Chengdu and Beijing. He is the author of "Jiangshan in the Bowl", "Mother's Firewood Stove", "The Tao of Taste", "Republic of China Eater" and other gastronomic works.
Dictation/Di mao
Finishing/Cover News Reporter Xue Weirui
I just went to Yunnan to shoot the documentary "Food into Yunnan", and visited three major vegetable markets in Yunnan, namely Shangri-La, Kunming and Xishuangbanna.
I think there are five things that best represent Yunnan, namely wild mushrooms, steam pot chicken, bridge rice noodles, cloud legs and flower cakes. These things can be "taken out and gone out", which is the representative of the self-confidence of today's Yunnan food culture.
Yunnan Recipes, July 1982, 1st edition
One of the most lamentable is the fungi of Yunnan. July and August is the time when Yunnan wild mushrooms are on the market, this time to Kunming to specialize in the sale of wild mushrooms distribution center, its variety is rich, the number of people trading, I am afraid that in Asia and even the world are rare, can be described as extremely shocking.
I estimate that there are as many as seventy or eighty varieties of fungi, and chicken fir mushrooms, matsutake mushrooms and bamboo shoots are everywhere. Other fungi that are only known from books can be seen there. For example, "see hand green" porcini mushroom, I touched it with my hand, and the place I touched would indeed turn indigo blue.
It just so happens that I have a copy of Yunnan Edible Mushrooms, which was published in 1984. It is mentioned that due to the different climate, soil and terrain of Yunnan, it is suitable for the growth of various fungi. One of the places is from the Kagbo Peak in Deqin County to the Xidan Chain Bridge on the Lancang River, the straight-line distance is as short as 12 kilometers, but the climate difference is equivalent to the change of thousands of miles from the north to the south, equivalent to the difference from Heilongjiang to Hainan, including subtropical, tropical and cold climates. This special climate and environment makes Yunnan's ingredients appear ever-changing.
Yunnan edible mushrooms have 2 classes, 11 orders, 35 families, 96 genera, more than 600 kinds of edible mushrooms in the world, and 350 species in Yunnan, accounting for more than half of the world's edible mushrooms. At the same time, there are more than 500 kinds of edible mushrooms in China, and Yunnan accounts for two-thirds.
"Edible Mushroom Cultivation Law", first edition in June 1935
Taking the fungus genus as an example, there are 8 species in China, and Yunnan accounts for 7 of them; 8 species in the genus white fungus, and 6 in Yunnan. There are 36 species of porcini mushrooms in the world, 26 species in China, and 23 species in Yunnan, of which 22 are edible.
The vastness and diversity of Yunnan cuisine is inseparable from the richness of its products. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were as many as 70 or 80 kinds of edible mushrooms, which provided a premise for cooking with fungi. In the Ming Dynasty, The Southern Yunnan Materia Medica, written by Lan Mao, a Songming man in Yunnan, records that there are many kinds of fungi in Yunnan, which can be eaten and used medicinally. It is proven that as early as 2,000 years ago, fungi have been widely used in food.
In my collection of "Chinese Famous Recipes" of the 50th generation of the last century, many of the famous dishes in Yunnan in the 50s are made of various mushrooms, including chicken silk tiger palm, pear nest chicken diced (that is, Beifeng mushroom chicken diced), raw fried chicken fir, morel mushroom stewed fire meat, net oil chicken fir, stuffed bluehead mushroom and so on.
Many countries, including Japan, have wanted to domesticate these wild famous mushrooms more than a hundred years ago, from wild to domestic fungi, and finally achieved very little success. It is said that there is now an advance in technology, and some of it can be cultivated artificially. I have a copy of The Cultivation of Edible Mushrooms, published in 1935. This book is the earliest textbook on the cultivation of fungi in China, but the domestication of wild mushrooms such as chicken fir and matsutake mushrooms has not been recorded at that time.
There are many famous bacteria in Yunnan. Matsutake mushrooms, which were once on the "Tip of the Tongue of China", have made the matsutake mushrooms of Shangri-La in Yunnan popular because of the effect of dissemination. "Yunnan Edible Mushroom" records that the scientific name of matsutake mushroom, also called pine mushroom, kunming in some places also called eagle fungus, Dali called bigfoot mushroom, Lijiang Naxi tribe called Yumulu and so on, there are many different names. Matsutake mushrooms are "thick and fine", and have a strong special fungal flavor.
If you want to eat the original flavor of matsutake mushrooms, the more basic method is to fry them in oil. There is also a method of eating sashimi, with fresh matsutake dipped in mustard to eat, which is now a more common way to eat in Yunnan restaurants. Matsutake stews and stir-frying, not to mention, have always been a very popular practice.
Chinese Famous Recipes, 11th Series, 1st Edition, April 1965
Matsutake is known as the "King of Mushrooms", and in this "Yunnan Edible Mushroom", it ranks first among the "precious edible mushrooms". Matsutake mushrooms grow at an altitude of 1600 to 3200 meters above sea level, in temperate and cold Yunnan pine, Huashan pine and oak trees, rhododendron and other mixed forests in dense forests. Like Shangri-La, the altitude is just over 3,000 meters.
After introducing matsutake in "China on the Tip of the Tongue", many people may think that matsutake is only in Shangri-La. In fact, more than 20 places in Yunnan, such as Lijiang, Zhongdian, Weixi, Dali and so on, produce more matsutake mushrooms.
Among the precious edible mushrooms, the second most popular is bamboo thorn. There are also many poetic names such as long-skirted bamboo thorn, veil fungus, fairy kasa and so on. It grows at altitudes of 200 to 1500 m and parasitizes the roots of dead bamboo. On the Sichuan recipe, there is also a famous dish called "Bamboo Sun Liver Cream Soup".
Another precious fungus in Yunnan is chicken fir. Chicken fir is also called ant fir, umbrella fungus, chicken foot mushroom and so on. The flesh of the chicken fir is thick, white in color, and extremely delicious in taste.
Chicken fir grows specially, in the middle of summer, high temperature and humid season, termite nests grow small white cocci, and then regenerate protruding young firs, and finally break through the cover and protrude from the ground, becoming a common chicken fir. Interestingly, chicken fir uses ant dung and termite secreted hormones to promote growth, while termites feed on the white mycelium of chicken fir. If the termite nest is artificially or naturally destroyed, the termites will move in swarms, and the chicken fir fungus will not exist.
There are many historical records about chicken fir, and its medicinal value is particularly high. Li Shizhen of the Ming Dynasty wrote in the "Compendium of Materia Medica", "Chicken fir out of Yunnan, raw sand, high umbrella head." During the Qing Dynasty, Chen Zizhong wrote in the "Journey of Dian Qian": "Chicken fir is also produced in Qian, but it is not as good as the Self-Cultivation of Dian." ”
Yunnan Edible Mushroom, June 1984, 1st edition
In addition, Lion's head fungus, morel mushroom, Ganoderma lucidum, cordyceps, etc. are all precious mushrooms in Yunnan.
Dishes made from fungi account for nearly one-third of Yunnan's famous dishes. A 1981 "Yunnan Recipe" in my collection mentions that there are more than twenty kinds of mushrooms for cooking, and they are listed separately as one category. I did not find any special "fungi" in the recipes of other provinces.
Some of these dishes are now lost, but can be reconverted and creatively transformed into new dishes through recipes. For example, the first dish "net oil chicken fir", many local chefs in Yunnan are no longer aware of this dish. "Mesh oil" refers to a layer of oil mesh on top of lard, and then use two pieces of chicken fir fungus to clip a cloud leg, wrap it in a lard net, and then seal it with egg paste and fry it. You can imagine that this dish is crispy on the outside and tender and crispy on the inside, and it is worth restoring.
The eleventh series of another "Chinese Famous Recipes" is composed of famous dishes from Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi, and collects 59 dishes in Yunnan, of which there are more than ten kinds of fungal dishes. There is a dish called "Chicken Silk Tiger Palm", which is made with chicken shredded chicken and tiger palm fungus. I saw tiger palm mushrooms in the Yunnan wild mushroom market, which is very large like tiger palm, with yellow and black, and it is said that black tastes better. Chicken shredded can be made into tiger palm fungus, and fish shreds, duck shreds, and abalone shreds should all be cooked according to this method.
In short, Yunnan has a unique ecological environment, in the past because of the inconvenience of transportation, for the survival of many animals and plants to create advantages, many ancient cooking methods have been preserved to this day, and Yunnan food and drink is also promising.
Comes with a recipe
Raw fried chicken leaves
Chicken silk tiger palm