Sichuan salt gang dish "cold eat rabbit"
Among the eight major cuisines, Sichuan cuisine is perhaps the most well-known and covers the most extensive area. In the streets and alleys of Various Cities in China, the shadow of Sichuan restaurants can be seen everywhere. It is said that where there are Chinese, there may not be Jin Yong, but there must be small restaurants of Sichuan cuisine.
Most people's first impression of Sichuan cuisine is often the impression of heavy hemp, spicy and heavy oil, but most foreigners understand Sichuan cuisine is to see flowers in the fog, and they do not observe the most authentic appearance of Sichuan cuisine through the phenomenon.
Sichuan cuisine is actually not without spicy and unpleasant!
In fact, the formation of the Sichuan cuisine system was in the pre-Qing Dynasty, and the pepper was only transmitted to Sichuan during the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty, which also had a branch of Sichuan cuisine. In Sichuan cuisine, in fact, 70% of the dishes are "outliers" that are not spicy.
In Sichuan, you can still see a very spectacular scene, that is, a very grounded dam banquet. In the dam feast, there are nine bowls of three steaming and nine buckles and ten bowls. The first bowl (crispy meat, meatballs, egg roll meat) from salty, sweet roasted white to tamales, mainly based on soft sticky and fresh flavor, is not the spicy and heavy mouth that outsiders think today.
Sichuan Dam Feast
Among the three major gangs of Sichuan cuisine, Chengdu Mansion cuisine is not spicy, not spicy, not heavy oil. The method is complex, the knife skill is exquisite, pay attention to small frying and stir-frying, good at playing bowls, fiercely stir-frying. Hot waist flowers, liver waist stir-fry, garlic belly... And so on are not spicy, not spicy, not oily, high-end dishes that take treasures from the fire.
Sichuan famous dish "hot waist flower"
Sichuan cuisine pays attention to knife work, and the high-end place of high-end cuisine is here. A good Sichuan chef, without decades of experience, can not come out at all, and its difficulty is comparable to that of the Shaolin Xiaoshami to the first seat of the Moyuan.
To take a simple example, the state banquet dish is boiling water cabbage. Without good ham, native chicken, native duck, grain pork bones, elbows, lean meat and other materials careful patience for up to four or five hours of stew soup and hanging soup can not be made at all! The ingredients should be fresh and the skills should be exquisite, but boiled water cabbage is rarely heard of today. Modern life is getting faster and faster, and these authentic Sichuan dishes have gradually disappeared in the tide of the times.
State banquet famous dish "boiled water cabbage"
Using examples of Nantang Sichuan cuisine such as yellow braised hare, steamed green eel, dry steamed shellfish hen, cordyceps duck, etc., it is not easy to find a few peppers and peppercorns from it. Hundreds of dishes and hundreds of flavors, one taste and one grid, pay attention to the freshness of ingredients, exquisite skills, this is the essence of authentic traditional Sichuan cuisine.
What makes the world misunderstand Sichuan cuisine?
But now the foreigners can be said to know nothing about Sichuan cuisine. No spicy and unhappy, has become the people's cognition of Sichuan cuisine. So, how is Sichuan cuisine labeled spicy? This is inseparable from the local economic situation and the climate.
Peppers can brighten up and improve color, in the poor past, meals are always dull and tasteless, add a little oil, choke a little pepper, which also makes the poor people's lives have a little bright color. Just like the bean blossom rice that is very popular in Sichuan and Chongqing, it is also like this.
Kawanishi authentic dried chili peppers
Nowadays, the spicy and heavy Sichuan cuisine in the impression of outsiders is actually opened by people who work in other places, and most of them are salt dishes and jianghu dishes. There is no need for more exquisite craftsmanship, nor does it pay attention to the freshness of ingredients, high efficiency, heavy taste, cheap and affordable, and cost savings. This also formed an embarrassing situation in which Sichuan restaurants bloomed all over the country, but Sichuan cuisine itself was declining.
Flowering jianghu vegetables everywhere
In addition to the economic situation, Sichuan's topography and climate also have an impact on the local diet. Sichuan is located in the middle of the basin, the climate is humid, and the pepper and pepper can dispel dampness and cold. So-called: "Vegetables should be three points of grain, and sea peppers should be clothes." "Every time the local boatman goes out to salvage, he will consume a lot of peppers to keep warm and cold. It is just that now that the economy is developing rapidly, it is no longer necessary to use peppers to drive away the cold, and this eating habit has also been passed down to this day.
Sichuan peppercorns
Most of the Sichuan cuisine in the modern people's impression is to cater to the FMCG of economic development, but with the steady rise of people's living standards, today, the tradition has begun to return. The cuisine of the Lower Riba people will be more in line with the tastes of the public, paying more attention to quality and taste. And those Sichuan dishes that are white in the spring and snow will also reappear in front of people and be well known.