Text/Ice Brick
Following the traceability of Lu cuisine, this article tells about the great development of Chinese cuisine in the Tang and Song dynasties, and the continuous improvement of Lu cuisine as a representative of "northern food" from the Tang and Song dynasties. In addition, it will involve some specific dishes, such as various lake fresh dishes in Daming Lake, special requirements for pulling silk, sweet and sour, meat and other dishes, so that everyone can eat and see full.
The prosperity of the Tang Dynasty contributed to another leap in the development of China's diet. Dietary monographs such as "Wei Juyuan Recipes" and "Records of the Chef's Scriptures" have appeared in large numbers, and some of them have been handed down to this day. Some records scattered in historical books and novel notes can be seen that there were many night markets in various places at that time, and the variety of food and drink was even more varied.
Due to the development of transportation, in some bustling cities, you can already eat the cuisine of different regions, such as Chang'an and Yangzhou have many "South Food Shops", "North Food Shops", and more specifically "Sichuan Food Shops" and "Lu Food Shops". The dishes in the nectar soup, the elixir of the spirit, the plum soup, and the dishes in the roasted tail feast can represent the highest standard of the fine work at that time.
Duan Chengshi of Shandong also recorded many food customs in the land of Qilu in his famous "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks", and entered a more interesting one here:
In the north of Licheng, there were envoys Junlin, Wei Zhengshizhong, and Zheng Gongzhong, who were three volts, and each guest led his staff to escape the summer here. Take the large lotus leaf on the lattice, hold three liters of wine, prick the leaves with hairpins, make it pass with the handle, and bend the stem on the chakra fungus such as the elephant trunk, pass it on, called the bi-flute cup.
The envoy Junlin in the text is the shore of Lianzi Lake, and about Lianzi Lake, it is also described in the "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks":
Two miles north of Licheng, there is Lotus Lake, and the ZhouHuan is twenty miles. The lake is full of lotus flowers, red and green, and it is suspicious of the brocade. And the fishing boats are hidden, the city is sparse, and the one who looks at it from afar, if the cobweb floating cup also.
Lianzi Lake, the predecessor of Daming Lake, because of its large size and frequent floods, was treated and locked in its pattern when Zeng Gong was in Charge of Qi Prefecture Taishou, and its pattern was locked to this day. The north side of Daming Lake forms a dense river network of paddy fields and lotus ponds, no less than the water towns in Jiangnan, and the Song Dynasty poet Huang Tingjian has a poem saying: "Jinan is like Jiangnan".
Therefore, Jinan people have always liked to eat lotus seeds, lotus roots, and rice. Even lotus leaves can be eaten. For example, the cold porridge lotus leaf porridge eaten in summer is to cover the porridge with fresh lotus leaves that have been boiled in boiling water as a pot cover when cooking porridge, and after the porridge is cooked, it is left to cool and add sugar to eat, and the lotus leaves that have been used before can also be chopped and mixed into it.
As for steamed meat, steamed chicken, as well as making crispy fish and soup buns, they are all wrapped in lotus leaves. Lotus flowers can be fried to eat, after the lotus petals are washed, filled with bean paste filling, wrapped in batter and fried, sprinkled with some sugar, that is, a sweet dish, with a unique aroma, you can also fry out without filling the batter and sprinkle with pretzel to eat.
In addition, the lotus flower has a special use, because the lotus flower will close at night, many people in Jinan who live by the water will wrap the tea leaves with gauze in the evening, put it into the lotus, take it out when the lotus flowers bloom again in the morning, and brew it with spring water to drink, which is a natural flower tea.
Among the Lu cuisine, aquatic crops such as zibai, pu cai, lotus seeds, and lotus roots have always occupied a place. Badly fried russet white, bad simmered white, stir-fried tenderloin; milk soup cabbage, pot collapsed cabbage, stir-fried shrimp, pu cabbage dumplings; honey wax lotus seeds, honey seared lotus seeds, plucked silk lotus seeds; ginger root, crispy root, boiled lotus root, boiled lotus silk, etc. are all common dishes in the past, and the fresh dishes of the lake such as fish, shrimp and crab are more abundant.
Here we need to talk about the dish of boiled lotus, the name of the dish sounds ordinary, but it represents a famous dish of Lu Cai knife worker, you must cut the lotus root into the same filaments and then add the stew. What is the standard for filament? Each filament must be threaded with a thread needle, which is the most common sewing needle.
When making it, the lotus root is first cut into lotus slices as thin as cicada wings, and the lotus slices should be placed on the page to see the handwriting below, and then cut the fine wires. Chefs who are good at making this dish can also cut the lotus strips blindfolded.
But this dish must also have requirements for the lotus root itself, and it must be made of crisp lotus root produced in Jinan, which is as white as jade and has no dregs, in order to cut so delicately.
Thread threading needles
Unfortunately, with the development of the city, the paddy field lotus pond that was originally densely packed north of the city has disappeared. In addition to Daming Lake, which has become a scenic spot, there is finally a lotus pond with local lotus roots, which has been filled in by the development project in 16 years. With the advancement of the project, the 800-year-old Yunjin Pond will also be filled, and the Yunjin Pond is the pond in Zhang Yanghao's former residence, and its name is also derived from Zhang Yanghao, and the tomb of Zhang Yanghao across the road can be preserved and survived.
The last lotus pond
The dense water network makes the food customs of the Jinan people different from other parts of the north, and the staple food ratio is half rice and half pasta. In the old days, fast food restaurants on the streets of Jinan were named after "xx rice shop" and "xx dry rice shop", and it was necessary to write eight big characters: "good dried rice, put the seed big meat".
First of all, there are two kinds of "good rice", one is produced by the "big paddy field" (that is, the living water paddy field, the water flows in from one end and the other end flows out). One is the "Yellow River Rice", which must be produced along the Yellow River for miles along the Yellow River in the Wujiapu area of Jinan, and if it is close to the Yellow River, it must not be named after the Yellow River water irrigation.
As for the large meat, it is pork belly with skin, a pound of square meat cut into eight pieces, and tied in the middle with puddle skin. Simmer in four condiments of soy sauce, sugar, star anise and green onion, and melt in the mouth. As Dongpo said: "Slow fire, less water, when the fire is enough, he is beautiful." "Originally, it was derived from the sharing of sacrifices after the sacrifice, and the simple cooking method also has the legacy of Tai Tang Gen sake.
Its name is derived from the fact that it is made with pu cai, and now some merchants have invented it as "eaten when worshiping the handle", and attached to the Liu Guan Zhang Taoyuan Knot. This is also a common problem of folk snacks. It is just that there is no such thing in the history of Lu cuisine's serious cuisine, and the Qianlong Emperor was spared from going down to Jiangnan and abducting the people's women to eat donkey whips and longyan dayue.
Good dried rice, put the seeds of large meat
Similar to the meat of the shochu, there is also a jar of meat, but it is more elaborate and can also be served at the feast. The preparation method of jar meat is to cut the pork belly with skin into small meat cubes, cook it in a large pot, boil it with boiling water and skim off the foam, add onion ginger, soy sauce, rock sugar, spices to the pot, pour it into the narrow mouth belly jar after opening the pot (the jar must be extremely large to keep warm, often about one meter high), and stew the meat inside for one night with the insulation effect of the jar itself (the jar is often covered with insulated quilts or take other thermal insulation measures, especially in winter), the next day there is still residual temperature, and then use the small altar to pack, and slightly heat it up before serving. The taste is extremely tender but crispy.
The making of jar meat
During the Song Dynasty, Shandong cuisine gradually became a representative of "northern food" and has many records. Here we select two records for summary analysis.
One is a passage from "Dream Creek Pen Talk":
The southerners of the Great Bottom are salty, and the northerners are salty. Fish and crabs with molasses, cover convenient for the northern custom also.
Seeing these two sentences, you must think, is it the opposite. In fact, this was a custom at that time, which was quite different from today. As far as Lu cuisine is concerned, although it does not highlight the sweetness, it is extremely dependent on sugar. The most obvious is of course the sweet and sour and pulling of silk, two cooking methods that are now popular throughout the country.
Sweet and sour carp and sweet and sour tenderloin are still the representative dishes in Lu cuisine, and the preparation method of sweet and sour juice in Lu cuisine is also quite exquisite, first of all, the use of tomato sauce sauce is regarded as "heretical", and secondly, the sauce cannot be mixed in advance (the recipes and videos on the Internet are mostly like this), and the vinegar must be cooked in hot oil after the onion, ginger, garlic and garlic pot, quickly tumbling and boiling, and then adding sugar and other ingredients after the flames.
After this process, vinegar can be cooked "alive", its taste is sour and slightly caramelized, this taste is in front, quite a precursor. The sweetness of sugar is a step later, just to neutralize the strong acetic acid. In this way, the taste of sweet and sour is three-dimensional and layered. This is a technique unique to Lu cuisine.
The cooking vinegar process has evaporation loss, and the vinegar used is more than it is, so the color of the precipitation is darker, and a sweet and sour dish is served on the table, whether it is authentic or not, it can be seen at a glance. Bright yellow (uncooked vinegar) and reddish (pigment or ketchup) are not advisable and must be amber to be on the right track.
Lu cuisine recipe for sweet and sour tenderloin
As for when the silk pulling dish arose, it is impossible to verify, until the beginning of the Qing Dynasty. Pu Songling once said: "Nowadays, the north is picking fruit, and nothing can be used for sugar stickiness." "According to Pu Songling, he was born in the thirteenth year of Chongzhen and died in the fifty-fourth year of the Kangxi Dynasty." The meaning of "plucking" is plucked, and the word "sugar sticky" is undoubtedly referred to as a beet of plucked silk.
Originally a Lu cuisine technique, it quickly became popular throughout the country after it was introduced to Beijing, and by the time of the Republic of China, it had become popular throughout the country. As the birthplace of the silk drawing technique, Shandong's production of silk pulling dishes is of course different from other dishes, with some unique features.
Here I will talk about the three characteristics of authentic pulled silk dishes.
First of all, the production of pulled silk vegetables needs to boil the sugar to cool down before it can be made, and when frying, a large water basin is often placed on the stove, and the bottom of the pot is immersed at any time according to the actual situation to cool down. The temperature is not enough, the sugar is not boiled, the fragrance cannot come out, and the actual drawing effect requires a lower temperature, so repeated boiling and cooling and drawing, and finally make the taste and the drawing effect reach the best.
Second, the stir-frying method of turning the spoon must be used (which will be explained in detail later when describing the spooning techniques).
Third, the cooking process of the pulled silk dish pays attention to "one pot out", that is, a pot of oil at the same time to fry the raw materials for pulling silk, the following at the same time boiling sugar, and finally made into a pot together, which requires a strong control over the oil temperature and heat. The purpose is to eliminate the need for a two-step process of first frying and then drawing silk, saving time and increasing kitchen efficiency.
Pluck the yam
In fact, pulling silk is only one of the several stages of "stir-fried sugar" in Lu cuisine. The different stages of change in fried sugar can be represented by the following figure:
After the hanging frost dish is made, the outside of the dish is wrapped in a layer of white frosting, and in the past, the more representative dish was the hanging frost balls (balls made of fat diced meat, hung with frosting... Please understand this dish in conjunction with the past standard of living... Of course, there are many such candies sold outside now, such as fried peanuts with frosting.
Pulling silk has already been said and will not be repeated.
The representative of glass vegetables is glass meat (still fat meat strips hanging glass shells... It is still necessary to understand this dish in the context of past living standards... The visual effect of the glass can be compared with the rock sugar gourd (it must be authentic, the sugar shell is transparent with a slightly burnt yellow, and the cape is thrown out by the water plate or stone slab, limited to the length and theme, the attention of the sugar gourd is not described in detail here, interested friends check it out for themselves).
The tender juice is a change of caramel color, light and dark. The production of sugar color in Lu cuisine is called "stir-fry sauce", is the most natural pigment used in cooking, according to the color requirements of the dish, used separately, can make the dish achieve bright red and jujube red visual effect. And after the sugar becomes caramel, the sweetness is reduced, and the taste of the dish will not be particularly prominent in sweetness, and the appropriate sweetness can be freshened.
In Lu cuisine, the words "braised", "red grilled", "red stewed" and so on must be colored with stir-fried sauce. In addition, some dishes do not appear red in the end, but also use sugar color to increase the brightness and taste, such as "yellow braised duck liver". In fact, many dishes of Lu cuisine have sugar involved in the cooking process, but in the end, they can't eat the taste of sugar.
It just so happened that Chinese New Year's Eve needed to stir-fry the juice when preparing the Chinese New Year's Eve rice, and considering that I needed to use it when I was writing this article, I took a picture of several stages of stir-frying sugar.
Hanging cream (stir-fried)
Plucking (stir-frying)
Tender sauce (fried in oil)
Sugar color (fried in oil, also need to add hot water to dilute and boil well)
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