Chinese Eight Cuisines
Chinese Medicinal Cuisine – Chinese Folklore
Chinese Medical Cuisine is along standing tradition. This is not a simple combination of food and traditional medicine, but it is a distinctive cuisine made from food and medicinal ingredients following the theory of Chinese medicine.
According to its respective functions, medicinal cuisine is classified under four categories: health-protection dishes, prevention dishes, healing dishes and therapeutic dishes.
Health-protection dishes refer to reinforcement of required nutritional food correspondingly to maintain the organic health. A soup of pumpkin and almond can help lose weight; soup of angelica and carp can add beauty; and ginseng congee can give more strength.
Prevention dishes build resistance to potential ailments. “Mung bean soup” is considered helpful as a guard against heat stroke in summer. Lotus seeds, lily, yam, chestnuts, and pears can assist in the prevention of dryness in autumn and a strengthening of resistance to cold in winter.
Healing dishes are the medicinal food for rehabilitation after severe illness. “Broiled sheep’s heart with rose” or “braised mutton with angelica” will help to rebuild a healthy constitution.
Therapeutic dishes aim at the specific pathology. “Fried potatoes with vinegar” can adjust the organ and restrain hypertension and carp soup with Tuckahoe may enrich the strength of blood albumen to help reduce swelling.
Hu’nan Cuisine – Chinese Folklore
Hu’nan cuisine lays a stress on the use of oil, dense color, and techniques that produce crispness, softness and tenderness as well as the savory flavors and spices. Stewed fins, fried fresh cabbage with chestnuts, Dong Anzi chicken, immortal chicken with five elements, are of the highest reputation. Chairman Mao, together with other leaders praised the Hu’nan cuisine in 1958.
“Stewed fins”—it had been famous during the Qing Dynasty. Choice fins, chickens, pork are stewed in chicken soup and sauce, tasting really fresh and mellow.
“Immortal chicken with five elements”—a dish made by putting five elements, litchi, longyan, red dates, lotus seeds, and medlar, into the body of a chicken, then to braise. The taste is rather peculiar and it is said to have the effect of strengthening the constitution.
Sichuan Cuisine – Chinese Folklore
This combines the cuisines from Chengdu and Chongqing, famous as early as Qing Dynaty 91644-1911). It features pungent seasonings which were famed as “Three Peppers” (Chinese prickly ash, pepper and hot pepper), “Three aroma” (shallot, ginger, and garlic), “Seven Tastes” (sweet, sour, tingling, spicy, bitter, piquant, and salty), and “Eight Flavors” (fish-flavored, sour with spice, pepper-tingling, odd flavor, tingling with spice, red spicy oily, ginger sauce, and home cooking).
Stir-fried tofu with minced beef in spicy bean sauce—A real feast of tender bean curd, minced beef, pepper and bean sauce. It is said that it was made by a pock-marked but ingenious woman. Hence the name Ma Po Tofu (pock-marked woman’s bean curd).
“Lamp-shadow beef”—the beef is cut in very thin sheet. When a piece is carried, it looks like translucent paper, slippery and reddish. When put under the lamp or light, a red shadow will appear.
“Lung pieces by the couple”—a quite popular in Chengdu. It got the name because the dish was ever sold be a couple and today it remains the original savor, tender meat, tingling and spicy.
“Gong Bao Ji Ding”—This is a tender chicken dish, tender as the meat is quickly fried. Flavored with peanuts, this is tasty and very popular.
Zhejiang Cuisine – Chinese Folklore
As Zhejiang cuisine consists of hundreds of small delicacies from its main cities, it takes in Hangzhou’s fineness and diversification, Ningbo’s softness and originality, and Shaoxing’s pastoral interests. The chief techniques of cooking lie in the methods used such as frying, quick-frying, stir-frying, braising, and steaming thus rendering the dishes both salubrious and savory.
West-lake braised fish in vinegar—a traditional delicacy in Hangzhou. It is said that there was once a boy who made his living by fishing. When he fell ill, his sister-in-law fished him and braised the fish she caught with a marinade of vinegar and sugar. He was said to have made an immediate recovery after eating it. The boy’s story aroused the attention of the emperor and the recipe has been used ever since.
Shelled shrimps cooked in Longjing tea—as the Longjing tea is taken as the best tea in Hangzhou, which is reputed for greenness, fragrance, pure taste and elegant looks, when the living shrimps are stir-fried in the Longjing, the dish sends a refreshing aroma and is quite delicious.
Jiangsu Cuisine – Chinese Folklore
The main cooking techniques of Jiangsu cuisine are braising and stewing, thereby preserving the original flavor and sauce. The elegant color, novel sculpts, with salt and sweet taste will soothe your stomach. The most highly recommended courses are:
Three sets of ducks—on interlinking dish, that is to put pigeon into wild duck, then put the wild duck into a fowl duck. When stewed, the fowl duck is tender, the wild one crisp, and the little pigeon delicate!
Boiled dry thread of Tofu—thanks to the exquisite skills of chefs, the tofu can be cut into very thin threads which have chances to absorb the savor of soup. When chicken pieces added to the soup, the dish is called “chicken dry thread”; likewise, when shrimp added, it makes “shrimp dry thread”.
Lion’s head braised with crab-powder—there is a metaphor in the dish name. In actual fact the Lion’s head is a conglomeration of meat that is shaped like a sunflower and resembles a loin’s head. It can be braised in a clear soup, or be red-cooked in a dense soup. A seasoning of crab powder enhances the flavor.
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