As one of the eight major cuisines, Hui cuisine has a long history and rich cultural heritage. Article 20 of the "Catering Service Technician Promotion Assessment Encyclopedia and Catering Fascicle" issued by the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China points out: "Hui cuisine is composed of three kinds of local flavor dishes in southern Anhui, along the river and along the Huai, with Anhui Nanlai as the main representative, known for cooking mountain rare game, and is one of the famous Lai clans in China." "Local dishes based on traditional folk cooking techniques and the absorption of the skills of other cuisines are mainly salty and umami.
Features of Hui cuisine:
Hui cuisine is characterized by "mild corruption, strict (salt) heavy lust". Nowadays, these eight words seem to have become the consensus and common sense of gourmets, and most of them believe that Hui cuisine has "four folds", heavy oil, heavy color, heavy fire, and heavy original taste. The main flavor characteristics of Hui cuisine are mainly salty and fresh, highlighting the original taste, paying attention to fire skills, and paying attention to food supplements. In terms of cooking methods, the main techniques are burning, stewing, stewing, steaming, and smoking. The main dishes are feast dishes, five gui eight plates and ten bowls, nine bowls and six, eight bowls and twelve plates, six large pots, public and vegetables, etc. Hui cuisine pays attention to food supplements, but it is different from the "medicinal diet" cooked with medicinal herbs in the dishes, thus forming the major characteristics of Hui cuisine.
In Hui cuisine, braised braised is a large category, and the "red" of braised braised is manifested as sugar color, which is harsh on fire power. The oil used for stir-frying is self-grown and self-squeezed rapeseed oil, and it uses a large amount of wood as fuel, and there is a warm stew with charcoal fire, a rapid burning of firewood, and a slow burning of tree blocks, which is more exquisite. The traditional heavy oil, heavy color, heavy fire gong, there are special conditions in Huizhou. When Hui cuisine goes to the whole country, it still maintains heavy color: the power of color grading; heavy oil: the work of seasoning; heavy fire power: the power of tempering. Such as old or tender, hard or soft, knotted or loose, etc.
The Northern Song Dynasty's "Tokyo Dream Liang Record" records that during the Northern Song Dynasty, Hui cuisine had already left Huizhou and came to Bieliang City. In The Northern Song Dynasty, Tokyo had many southern food restaurants opened by Huizhou people, and the representative of Hui cuisine, "sand horseshoe turtle, snowy day oxtail beaver", became a treasure on the table of the Northern Song nobles and became an essential dish for the royal banquet. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Hui restaurants were all over the world, and together with the "four major cuisines" of Suzhou, Lu, Guangdong and Sichuan, they became the mainstream of restaurants.
Cooking Skills:
Emblem dish cooking method
The first is to use local materials and win with freshness.
The natural environment of Huizhou with green trees, ravines and pleasant climate provides inexhaustible raw materials for Huizhou cuisine. Huidi is rich in mountain treasures and wild game river fresh poultry, and local materials make the local characteristics of the dishes stand out and ensure freshness.
The second is to make good use of fire, and the fire is unique.
According to the texture characteristics of different raw materials and the flavor requirements of the finished dish, it is cooked on high, medium and low heat.
The third is to be adept at stewing, and the thickness is appropriate.
In addition to the techniques of frying, stir-frying, boiling, frying, braising, boiling, roasting and so on, it is especially famous for its cooking, stewing, smoking and steaming dishes.
The fourth is to pay attention to nature and nourish the body with food.
The raw materials of Hui cuisine are rich in resources, excellent in texture, inexhaustible and inexhaustible. Huizhou has a mild climate and moderate rainfall, four distinct seasons, abundant products, rich in tea, bamboo shoots, shiitake mushrooms, fungus, chestnuts, yams and so on.
Hui cuisine cooking techniques, including knife work, fire and operation technology, Hui cuisine heavy fire is a traditional tradition, its unique features are concentrated in the good at burning, stewing, smoking, steaming kung fu dishes, different dishes using different fire control techniques is an important sign of the depth of achievement of Huibang chefs, but also the emblem cuisine can form a crisp, tender, fragrant, fresh unique style of the basic means, Hui cuisine commonly used cooking techniques about 20 categories of more than 50 kinds, of which the most emblematic characteristics of the emblem is slippery, red, stewed and raw smoked.
It is the imprint of Hui cuisine's pursuit of "fresh fragrance extreme", and it is like splashing ink in painting in Hui cuisine. Hui cuisine dipping sauce with fresh, fragrant, crisp, fresh, sweet and other additional taste senses for the dish to add brilliance, reflecting the Hui cuisine "teacher law natural" cooking concept, inheriting the subjective understanding of Hui cuisine on the senses of the dish, reflecting the essence of Hui cuisine as a literati dish, kung fu cuisine ideological essence, is the highest pursuit and highest realm of Hui cuisine cooking skills.
Traditional dishes such as a pot, knife plate incense, pickled stinky mandarin fish, tiger skin hair tofu, Qingzheng bamboo shoots, ham stewed turtle, steamed stone chicken, bayberry balls, phoenix stewed peony, lotus leaf powder steamed meat, snail stewed duck, and Zhonghe soup are preserved in the Hui cuisine that has been handed down to this day.
Stinky mandarin fish is a traditional dish in Hui cuisine, in fact, the real name of the stinky mandarin fish should be called "pickled fresh mandarin fish", "pickled fresh", although it is a Huizhou dialect, the meaning is straightforward and easy to understand, meaning "to pickle fresh ingredients". Somehow, it spread to other places, and the name was changed to a "stinky" word. Unexpectedly, the name was changed strangely, but it attracted many diners who hunted for curiosity and "chased the smell", and the smell also became a strange smell.
Traditionally made marinated mandarin fish, the fish meat is delicious and prominent, the meat quality is similar to the high-grade yellow fish, and the juice is full of water. It is best to choose a pound of two or two mandarin fish, too big and too small is not good, the chef first fried and then burned, heavy hands soy sauce, supplemented with bamboo shoot slices, ham, onions, ginger, garlic and red dried peppers, the end of the coriander Tixiang color, on the table is a plate of scenery, salty spicy and sweet, killing wine and slaughtering rice, happy to the extreme.
A pin pot:
This one-pin pot looks unassuming, it is indeed difficult for professional chefs to copy, on festive days, each family cooks the taste of each family, and the pot contains nostalgia and joy that cannot be dissolved. On top of the firewood, in a somewhat old-fashioned iron pot, dried bamboo shoots, chicken, duck, pork, oil tofu, egg dumplings are stacked in layers... Open the lid and it's steaming hot and fragrant. Some people say that the origin of a pot is related to the pot dish in Cantonese cuisine, the pot dish may be the originator of the pot, both are a pot of dishes that gather several flavor delicacies, rich ingredients layer by layer into the large plate, the juice blends, the taste is rich and fragrant, but this can not be verified.
Speaking of a pot, I have to mention Mr. Hu Shi. During Hu Shi's overseas residence in the United States, he was homesick and repeatedly entertained guests with the name of "Yipin Pot" in the name of his hometown flavor, thus making it internationally famous, and Yipin Pot was also named Hu Shi. Liang Shiqiu went to Hu Shi's house for the first time, and Hu Shi's wife, Jiang Dongxiu, personally cooked and cooked for him, huizhou yipin pot. Liang Shiqiu was full of praise after eating, and wrote a description: "A large iron pot, two or three feet in diameter, served hot, and it is still boiling inside." A layer of chicken, a layer of duck, a layer of meat, a layer of oil tofu, dotted with some egg dumplings, as well as radishes, green vegetables, the taste is very good. ”
▲ Keemun word bean candy. The principle is that the two colors of syrup solidify and roll out the pieces, and spell out the words through the superposition of different angles and orders before hardening.
Keemun word bean candy
Long strips of bean sugar made of syrup and soybean flour look ordinary, cut open only to find that there is a dry kun, each piece of sugar is embedded with words, usually "Wang", "囍", "Fu" and other auspicious words. If you don't see it with your own eyes, it's hard to believe that this is a handmade candy that has been passed down for hundreds of years.
Hui cuisine is self-contained, both the crystallization of life wisdom, but also the influence of hedonistic luxury, more is a homely taste shaped by one side of the water and soil, called tasteful, interesting and material, ranked among the eight major cuisines, it is deserved.