Prose Master Wang Zengqi's Food Prose

Wang Zengqi's prose does not pay attention to indoctrination, but it is thought-provoking. There are many articles about food in his prose. The following is my essay for you: Wang Zengqi's essay on food for your appreciation.

The great essayist Wang Zengqi wrote an article about food: Kunming cuisine.

I wrote this article for foreigners, not for Kunming people. It would be a joke to talk about Kunming cuisine with Kunming people! Actually, it's more for myself. I have been away from Kunming for forty years, and I can't forget the delicious food in Kunming.

Kunming cuisine has its own characteristics. Kunming cuisine Yunnan cuisine does not belong to the eight major Chinese cuisines. Many people think that Kunming cuisine is close to Sichuan cuisine, but it is actually different. Sichuan cuisine is characterized by hemp and spicy. Pixian watercress and pickled peppers should be put in most Sichuan dishes, and Sichuan pepper must be the one with a large amount of peppers. People in many provinces of China like to eat spicy food, such as Hunan and Jiangxi, but there are not many places like Sichuan that like to eat Chili. There are many small noodle restaurants in Chongqing, and the white wall of the facade is painted with three big characters in black paint? Hemp, spicy and hot? You can see it from a distance. Kunming food is not as spicy as Sichuan food. Generally speaking, Sichuan cuisine is strong, while Kunming cuisine is light and pure. Sichuan cuisine is complicated in seasoning, while Kunming cuisine emphasizes the original flavor. Compare the chicken with steamed chicken, and you will know the difference between them.

Yunnan steamed chicken

China people are good at eating chicken. Brine chicken in Guangdong, exotic chicken in Sichuan, beggar chicken in Changshu, fried eight pieces in Shandong, Dong 'an chicken in Hunan and braised chicken in Dezhou. If all kinds of chickens in the country come to a grand prix, which chicken should win the gold medal? I thought it should be steamed chicken in Kunming.

Who came up with this very unique way to eat? It is estimated that there must be a steamer to steam the chicken. Boilers made of water are the best. Nowadays, all places producing pottery in China can make steamer, such as Yixing, Jiangsu. But I don't think the chicken steamed in a foreign steamer is as delicious as the chicken steamed in a Jianshui steamer. This may be my prejudice. Since the boiler is made of Jianshui, the steamed chicken in Kunming may be made of Jianshui, right?

It turns out that there is a store specializing in steamed chicken in the west of Zhengyi Road near Jinbi Road. I don't know if this family has a house number, but there is a plaque hanging at the door, and four big words are written on the book: Xiuyi? . So everyone calls this restaurant? Cultivate righteousness? . In the past, Kunming people said: Are we going to cultivate healthy qi today? An obedient person will understand that it is eating steamed chicken. ? Cultivate righteousness? Our chicken is very tender and always delicious. I said, I haven't eaten once. What happened to the chicken today? ! Therefore, the quality can be maintained permanently. It is said that all his chickens are Wuding fat chickens. Lean chicken is meat and firewood, and fat meat is tasteless. Du Wuding chicken is extremely fat and delicious. Uncover the lid: the soup is clear as water, but the chicken smells delicious.

Do you hear me? Cultivate righteousness? It's gone. The steamed chicken sold in Kunming Hotel is no longer the taste of that year, because it is not Wuding chicken, and there are all kinds of chickens.

Recover? Cultivate righteousness? It is not difficult to choose Wuding chicken again, is it?

The boiled chicken in Kunming is also great. On the copper pot of the wonton stall in Yuxi Street, there is a thin iron grate with two or three white cooked chickens on it. You can cut a small dish if you like. Do Kunming people call it white-cut chicken? Cold chicken? . We often go to eat and drink, because we eat on the bench. A classmate gave this practice a name, called. Sit (eat) a good (cool) machine (chicken)? . The chicken sold in Yuxi street is said to be Yuxi chicken.

There used to be a restaurant at the junction of Huashan South Road and Wucheng Road. Ying Shichun? The fried chicken is very good. Large pieces of chicken were fried raw, and a twelve-inch plate was piled high. Dip in pepper and salt. Twenty-something young men, seven or eight people, each 35 yuan, porcelain plate instantly bottomed out. Eating chicken like this is a fast life.

Kunming used to sell chicken offal, with round lunch boxes slung around his waist, all over the street. Chicken gizzards and chicken livers are strung together with sticks, such as Sugar-Coated Berry. Chicken intestines are as tight as vegetarian chicken. Slice them when you buy them. Chewy, delicious and cheap, it is an excellent match for tea and wine. It is estimated that there are no snacks like Kunming. I chatted with old Kunming, as recorded in Meng Yuan's Tokyo Dream China Record.

ham

Yunnan Xuanwei ham is as famous as Zhejiang Jinhua ham, and it is hard to tell the difference. Jinhua ham is known to many people and has many grades. What is more famous? Jiang Xuefang's leg? . More advanced, smoked with bamboo leaves, what is it called? Bamboo legs? . Xuanwei ham doesn't seem so particular, but it's always called ham. Ham is produced in Xuanwei. It is said that every family in Xuanwei is pickled, and the centralized sales place is in Kunming. In the past, there was a ham restaurant on the east side of Zhengyi Road archway, which not only sold whole ham and sliced ham, but also sold ham bones and ham oil. Does the south store in Shanghai that sells Jinhua ham sometimes sell it? Ham claws? I sell ham oil alone, but I have never heard of it. Ham bone soup and stewed tofu with ham oil, I think they must be delicious.

As a seasoning ingredient, ham is often eaten alone. There seems to be only one way to eat, steamed and sliced. There used to be honey baked ham. I wonder if it's delicious. Jinhua ham is divided into oily head, upper waist, middle waist and below feet. Kunming people eat ham from extra-large calves to elbow sticks. What is it called? Money legs? Because it is cut into a circle with lean meat in the middle and fat around it, the skin is thin. There is a local restaurant outside Daximen. It is small and untidy, but it has many dishes, and it needs money and legs. Because Ma Guotou, who drives horses, likes this dish best, the main customer of this restaurant is Ma Guotou. As soon as Brother Ma Guotou came in, he didn't order anything else. Call first. Cut a plate of money legs! ?

A Kunming dish is not based on ham, but it can't live without ham, can it? Fried mullet? . This is a famous dish of Dongyue Building. In this paper, two pieces of mullets (the mullets must be killed alive and the fillets must be approved by rotation) and a piece of ham with fat and thin in the middle are roasted on a flat pan with slow fire without any other seasoning. Delicate and delicious, indescribable.

Dongyue Building, located on Huguo Road, is an authentic old restaurant in Kunming. Besides fried mullet, there are chicken legs with sauce, which is also great. I heard that the East Moon Building is gone now.

Kunming Jiqingxiang's ham moon cakes are very good. This year's Mid-Autumn Festival, Beijing shipped a batch and bought it. The taste is still the same as that of that year.

beef

I have never eaten such good beef as Kunming in my life.

The special feature of Kunming Beef Restaurant is that it only sells beef, take-away rice and wine, and does not sell other dishes. As far as I know, there are three such beef restaurants. There is one in Fengxiang Street outside Daximen. Because it is close to the National Southwest Associated University, we often go there. I come from this family? Study? People who eat beef. One is at the small east gate. Majia beef restaurant outside Xiaoximen is the largest. Upstairs and downstairs, dozens of tables. Beef in beef restaurants is sold in different categories. The most common ones are soup slices and cold slices. Slice the white beef, pour in the boiled broth, and make soup slices. The cold slices are the same thin slices, but they are neatly placed on plates and dipped in sweet soy sauce (sweet soy sauce is unique to Kunming). Soup and cold slices are very soft and won't spread. I heard that the meat cut into soup slices and cold slices is steamed from one side of the cow. I don't believe it: where can there be such a big steamer and such a big pot? But the beef slices are really big. The beef is tender and needs to be cooked. I was told that I had to steam (or boil? ) All night. What's next? Braised? . ? Braised? Braised beef has not been stewed in other places, but it is also clear soup, but it is likely that the beef has been dyed red, so the meat is rouge red. ? Braised? It was cut into small pieces. You don't need it from cows? Okay？ Meat, such as breast meat and leg meat, take some? Stubborn? Compared with soup and cold chips, it is a kind of taste. There are several special parts of cattle, which are also sold separately. But they all have alternate aliases, don't they? what's up People who eat don't understand and don't know what it is. Like tripe? Lead the liver ; Cow tongue barking? Qingqing? . Many places sell tongues without saying anything? Tongue? Word, because? Tongue? With what? Erosion? Homophonic Wuxi land manuscript recommended selling pig tongue to change its name? Profit? . Guangdong restaurant is called Niu Tongue? Cattle? Actually, ben. Niu Li? Just add a piece of meat beside it to show that it is meat. Is this all against? Erosion? Use it for good luck. Call your tongue? Qingqing? I haven't heard of it anywhere else. It makes sense to think for a while. Cattle eat grass with their tongues in their mouths. This nickname is very vivid, but it is too confusing. Beef restaurant also sells beef tendon. Once I went to eat Majia beef restaurant with a female classmate. She asked me: What is this? I really can't answer that. I have eaten beef tendon many times in Kunming, just because it is delicious, not for aphrodisiac. ? Lead the liver 、? Qingqing? 、? Tendon major? It's all soup The beef restaurant doesn't sell stir-fried dishes. In fact, the beef restaurant is mainly for soup, which is very good.

The cows used in Kunming Beef Restaurant are all small oxen, instead of old cows and waste cows.

It doesn't cost much to go to the beef restaurant once, which is cheaper than ordinary small restaurants, delicious and affordable.

Majia Beef Restaurant often has an enamel tea tray to sell side dishes, including head, pickled garlic, pickled ginger and bad pepper. You can buy a small dish for twenty or thirty cents, which is very appetizing.

I wonder if Majia beef shop still has it? It would be a pity if it was gone.

Kunming also has beef jerky, which is cut into long strips, pickled and dried. A small restaurant sells fried beef jerky. It is said that this thing can be eaten raw. When the horse pot head is on the road, it always takes dry beef and slices it with a knife, which is suitable for drinking and eating.

Steamed vegetables

Kunming still eats steamed vegetables. There used to be one on Zhengyi Road. Steamed chicken, steamed bones and steamed meat are all steamed in a small steamer with a diameter of less than half a foot. Small cages are stacked one by one, dozens of cages are stacked together, and a few are stacked on a large steamer for steaming. Steamed vegetables are crisp and rotten, and steamed chicken can even chew bones. Steamed vegetables have a substrate. The substrates of steamed vegetables in other places are mostly sweet potatoes, potatoes and white radishes, while the substrates of steamed vegetables in Kunming are saponin. I know stylists. Girls in our place often use small porcelain plates to steam a dozen honey locust kernels for embroidery. Light? Velvet makes it smooth and adds luster. I didn't expect this food to be delicious. It looks good, too It is as clean as jade. So many steamed vegetables, how much saponin do you need, and how much saponin do you need to peel so many kernels? There is one on Yuxi Street that also sells steamed vegetables. Among the steamed vegetables sold in this house, there is a kind of small pumpkin: pumpkin, which is dug out and steamed with meat. It is very unique. Many places have rūng vegetables, rūng winter melon and rūng eggplant, all steamed with minced meat. Rūng doesn't know how to write, and this word can't be found in the dictionary. Or in writing? Brewing? Both sound and meaning are wrong. When we arrived in Beijing, we often cooked rūng melons, but they didn't taste like Yuxi Street. Probably, this family steamed with many other steamed vegetables. Chicken, bones and meat went from vapor permeation to the cage where the small melons were steamed, so the meat in the small melons had melon flavor, while the melons wrapped with meat had umami flavor. Single melon is not beautiful.

germ

A friend went to Kunming for a meeting. I told him to go to Kunming to eat mushrooms. He stayed at an old friend's house and ate all the mushrooms. See me in Beijing and say. How nice! ?

Chicken soil is the king of bacteria. There is a restaurant specializing in local chicken on Yongdao Street. This family also sells bitter vegetable soup, which is boiled in a big pot. It's cheap and delicious. People from other provinces say that there are three monsters in Kunming: the girl is called the old lady, and mustard is bitter. People in Kunming say that bitter vegetable is not mustard, but a mustard.

A few months ago, an old classmate who had been living in Kunming came and said that chicken soil came from enriching the people. Once they had a meeting, they brought a car full of chickens from Fumin and had a good time. Chickens are everywhere, and enriching the people may produce more.

I have written about mushrooms, boletus, dried fungus and chanterelle in other articles, so I won't repeat them. Bacteria in Kunming should always be fresh. Chicken soil can never be made into oil chicken soil, and dried mushrooms can be dry and far-reaching, but the flavor is reduced.

Milk fan and milk cake

The milk fan is dried milk skin, and the milk cake is milk tofu. I doubt very much that this dairy product was introduced to Yunnan by Mongolian soldiers in the Yuan Dynasty. But Mongolian dairy products are only used to match milk tea, while Yunnan is used as a dish. These two can only be? Eating and playing? Don't eat.

scrambled eggs

Scrambled eggs are found all over the world. Scrambled eggs in Kunming are especially soaked. You turn the pot once and twice, but don't move the shovel. When served on the table, it is hot, fragrant and bright, which makes people appetite.

Scrambled eggs with tomatoes, until the tomatoes are cut off, they are still fragrant, not light, and the eggs are big but not dead. Tomatoes and eggs mixed together, the color is still distinct, unlike scrambled eggs with tomatoes in the north. A mess? .

There are snowflake eggs in spring, so egg white and warm cooked lard are put on a small fire, and lard and egg white are mixed together. Tender as a fish's brain, white and bright. The entrance has reached the throat, and it is impossible for the tongue to tell its taste. It is really necessary. Another osmanthus egg is made of egg yolk in the same way. Snow eggs and osmanthus eggs are sprinkled with a thin layer of ham powder, but not too much, most of which cover up the fragrance of eggs. The practice of eggs is nowhere to be found. I used this method to entertain guests in Beijing, boasting? Is this the practice in Kunming? . The guests even said after tasting? Not bad! Not bad! ? And publicize it everywhere. In fact, I made neither snowflake eggs nor osmanthus eggs, which is a bit like Shandong's? Fake crabs? Yes!

Fried vegetables

Yuan Zicai's Suiyuan Food List points out that it is reasonable to use meat oil when frying vegetables and vegetable oil when frying vegetables. Fried vegetables in Kunming all use lard. The vegetables in Kunming are fried well because they are fresh, oily and spicy. Use soy sauce with caution. Generally, there is no water or little water when cooking, and there is no cover (many dishes are fried in restaurants), or the cover time is very short. The vegetables fried in this way will not lose their taste or change color, just like they were picked from the garden at first.

Cauliflower Kunming is called coconut cauliflower. Beijing cooking flowers should be blanched in water before frying. In this case, it is better to simply add water and cook it into beef milk rape flower soup. The fried cauliflower in Kunming is raw, crisp and clean. If you add ham, it will be especially wonderful.

Fried buns are only available in Kunming. Every year when Beijing tender corn comes on the market, I will buy some, dig out the corn kernels and fry them with minced lean meat. It's strange to have relatives and friends: corn can cook. Have you tasted two chopsticks? Does it taste good？ . The practice of frying corn is simple and has been popularized in a small area in Beijing. An alumnus from The National SouthWest Associated University invited some old classmates to a party at home and made a special statement: There is a Kunming dish today! ? What was served was fried corn. Bao Gu is old. He put too much meat, a lot of soy sauce and a lot of water in it. I said to him:? Fried corn like you can kill the popularity of Kunming. ?

Before leaving Kunming, Zhu and I ate a plate of fried spinach with meat in a restaurant. It was amazing at that time, and I still remember it. Spinach is extremely fresh and tender (Beijingers like to eat spinach that looks like a small tree, which is really insoluble). It is extremely oily and even has fire, and its taste is extremely fresh and tender. Stir-fried spinach should use as little shovel as possible. If you often turn over the pot, spinach will turn black and taste very astringent.

Black mustard? Leek flower? Eggplant vinegar

Kunming calls black kohlrabi black mustard. Yuan Zicai thinks kohlrabi is more suitable for frying meat, and he is quite right. Kohlrabi needs meat to give off its fragrance. We sometimes eat in Kunming restaurant. When we saw that there was not enough food, we quickly ordered a plate of fried meat with black mustard. First, this dish comes quickly; The second is to eat a lot, just eat it.

Leek flowers come out of Qujing. It's called chives. In fact, the main ingredient is finely cut and dried shredded radish. Is this China kimchi? God product? . This kind of side dish should be low in cost, but it is quite expensive because pickling is very labor-intensive. Kunming people also have their own pickled leeks. This kind of leek flower is different from Beijing's leek flower with instant-boiled mutton as seasoning. Beijingers should not misunderstand it.

Eggplant retting is to cut eggplant into filaments, air dry, seal the jar and ferment. I very much doubt that this belongs to ancient dysprosium. Guo Moruo thinks it may be kimchi. Shuo Wen Jie Zi? Hey? The word Duyun:? Amaranth? I think it might be eggplant or something. Other places in China also have dishes in the name of Qiang, but what about Hunan? Red pepper? . Every word in ancient books is related to wine. Eggplant and pepper are mellow and delicious.