The food behind the sea cucumber route

Zhu Youxiao, who will be called the "carpenter emperor" tomorrow, is not only a simple craftsman guide, but also a skillful craftsman. "Axe a catty, and it is a bow. Although you are a skillful craftsman, you can't cross the line. "

We found that the emperor was also a super foodie of seafood hotpot. The cooking of sea cucumber is described in detail in Ming History (sixteen to twenty volumes of Ming History selected by Amin Eunuch Lu Ya, extracted from twenty-four volumes of Liu Ruoyu's Proceedings). According to the explanation, Xizong likes to eat moxibustion clams, fresh shrimps, bird's nest, shark wings, sea cucumbers and more than ten kinds. Come to think of it carefully, isn't this a very popular seafood hotpot?

At that time, sea cucumber hot pot was just a court delicacy. Because in the many diet charts in Jin Ping Mei during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, we have never seen the dish of sea cucumber.

"Suiyuan Food List" describes 326 kinds of northern and southern dishes popular in China from14th century to18th century.

Author Yuan Mei (1716-1797), who was called "Nanyuan in Beiqi" during the reign of Qianlong in Qing Dynasty, was a gifted scholar as famous as Ji Xiaolan. Yuan Caizi is a gourmet. He lived for 8 1 year, accumulated 40 years of unremitting efforts, and wrote a unique book in the history of China's diet, Menu with the Garden. This miniature version of China Dietetic Encyclopedia includes all the foods that people in China have eaten in the Yangtze River valley for 1000 years.

"Eating with the Garden" describes the sea cucumber entering the dish. Its "Three Laws of Sea Cucumber" says that sea cucumbers are tasteless and the sand is full of fishy smell, which is the most difficult to please. However, sex is strong, clear soup can not be simmered. To investigate the small stichopus japonicus, first soak it in sand and mud, roll it in broth for three times, and then simmer it with chicken and meat. Lentinus edodes and auricularia auricula are used as auxiliary materials, and the color is similar and black. Generally, if you treat tomorrow, you have to simmer the sea cucumber the day before it rots. Seeing the money watcher, cold shredded sea cucumber with mustard chicken sauce is very good in summer. Or cut into small pieces and simmer diced bamboo shoots and mushrooms with chicken soup. It is also good for assistant minister Jiang to stew sea cucumber with tofu skin, chicken legs and mushrooms.

In Yuan Mei's account, senior officials in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, such as Qian Wei and Assistant Minister Jiang, used sea cucumbers to entertain guests at home and praised mustard in chicken sauce and shredded sea cucumbers.

"Suiyuan Food List" mentioned: sea cucumber is tasteless, and the sand is full of fishy smell, which is the most difficult to please.

Indeed, the sea cucumber, an ancient marine mollusk, survives tenaciously with a unique means of self-defense: when the enemy attacks, the sea cucumber will spray its internal organs into the sea, forming a "fake target" to attract hunters, and it will take the opportunity to escape without a trace. After about 50 days, it will grow a brand-new pair of internal organs and continue to live on the bottom of the sea. This is one of the key factors that sea cucumber can reproduce for more than 600 million years.

Sea cucumber has been excluded from human diet for a long time because of its rough skin.

As early as the Three Kingdoms period, Kuloko Shen recorded a coastal specialty called "local meat" in the Record of Foreign Bodies in Linhai, which may be the earliest record of sea cucumber in China literature. However, at that time, domestic cooking was mainly based on roasting (barbecue), and sea cucumbers would be as hard as rubber after being directly roasted by open fire, and they could hardly bite.

During the Song Dynasty, there was no record of human eating sea cucumber. Wu's Dream only records scallops and bird's nest. In the Song Dynasty, Li Fang and others compiled Taiping Guangji, which included 500 volumes of unofficial history from the Han Dynasty to the early Song Dynasty. Among 10 aquatic animals, 6 1 species of aquatic food were mentioned, but no sea cucumber was found.

China people's understanding of the edible value of sea cucumber began in the Ming Dynasty. Li Shizhen, as a Chinese herbal medicine, is not mentioned in Compendium of Materia Medica published by 1590. A detailed description of sea cucumber is Edible Materia Medica edited by Yao Kecheng at the end of Ming Dynasty. In Zhao Xuemin's Compendium of Materia Medica, it is also recorded in detail that the medicinal value of sea cucumber is enemy ginseng, hence the name sea cucumber.

It was not until the late Qianlong period that sea cucumbers gradually became popular. This is precisely the first time that Yuan Mei described in detail the three practices of sea cucumber in his "Suiyuan Food List".

One of the reasons why sea cucumber can enter the seafood babao and become a high-end restaurant is the prevalence of Shandong cuisine. The representative work of Shandong cuisine is roasted sea cucumber with onion. However, many of the essence of Shandong cuisine comes from Confucius. In Ge Shoutian's China Confucius Recipe, there are 170 kinds of dishes in Qing Dynasty, among which 39 kinds are rare. There are 28 kinds of seafood and 4 kinds of sea cucumber, including bamboo shadow sea cucumber, roasted sea cucumber, milk soup gold and silver sea cucumber and fish skin roasted sea cucumber.

Manchu-Han banquet was originally the commercial title of large-scale traditional banquet from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China. Its early prototype is Li Dou's Manchu-Han Banquet in Yangzhou in Qing Dynasty. When Qianlong went down to the south of the Yangtze River, the local chefs specially learned some Shandong dishes and court dishes to please the emperor, making the reception banquet a new kind of banquet, which was integrated with the imperial cuisine of Beijing and the local southern cuisine. Yangzhou Manchu-Han banquet, there are already three braised tendons in the sea.

Later, birthday banquets were held on the eighth floor of old Beijing, and banquets were often made based on this recipe, which was called "Man-Han Banquet" to attract guests. Among the 2 17 dishes handed down from the Manchu-Han banquet, sea cucumber appeared 12 times, and the main course was: the 55th dish, braised black ginseng.

1978 at the request of Japan's Fuji Trading Company, a Manchu-Chinese banquet was made by Fangshan Restaurant, in which the main course was Butterfly Sea Three.

/kloc-After the 0/8th century, sea cucumber became an indispensable variety in the "Maritime Silk Road" trade after silk, porcelain and spices, and also closely linked Australians in the southern hemisphere with Makassar and China people in the northern hemisphere. The once famous Maritime Silk Road Makassar-Guangzhou-Macau has become a sea cucumber route.

Makassar strait, located in the middle of Indonesian archipelago, is an important intercontinental sea passage between Asia and Europe, an important passage between China and the Philippines and the South China Sea to Australia, and a shortcut to interregional routes in Southeast Asia. It is known as one of the eight straits of great military and economic significance in the world.

More than 300 years ago, Makassar was the largest city, the largest port, the most open free trade port, the transit station of the Maritime Silk Road, the gateway to the spice islands and the trade distribution center in Southeast Asia. During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the Maritime Silk Road became increasingly prosperous, and Guangzhou-Macau-Makassar became a fixed route for maritime trade: every autumn and winter, Portuguese merchant ships set sail in Macau and arrived in Makassar in the northeast monsoon, loaded with silk and porcelain. Pepper, sandalwood and other spices will be shipped back to Macao next spring and summer. According to historical records, there were about 10-22 merchant ships in China at that time. During the period from 1637 to 1644, 800- 1200 tons of pepper were transported to China every year, with the largest annual transportation volume reaching 2,000 tons, accounting for one fifth of Indonesian total output.

The rising demand for sea cucumbers in China in the Qing Dynasty was firmly grasped by Indonesian Makassar, who made a living by maritime trade. /kloc-around 0/666, the Makassar discovered sea cucumbers in northern Australia and started the first export trade in northern Australia-sea cucumbers.

The Makassar people go to northern Australia once a year, and return along the return air in June of 12 or next year 10. It is the Yungu people in Australia who trade with the Makassar people in northern Australia.

Gu Yong people are the local aborigines. They don't eat sea cucumbers and think that unprocessed sea cucumbers are poisonous. Even the whole set of sea cucumber processing technology was brought from Wang Jiaxi. In the exhibition, historical photos recorded the sea cucumber processing station at that time: Wangjiaxi people cut sea cucumbers, cooked them, dried them in the sun, smoked them, and then transported them to ports in South China to exchange money from China.

The Makassar brought trade opportunities to the Yungu people. Men in Gu Yong will voluntarily work on Makassar's boat, while women in Gu Yong are willing to marry Makassar. This situation is reflected in the bark paintings of Yungu people in Australia: the rainy season has just arrived, and the cumulonimbus clouds in the sky are triangular, which not only means the arrival of the rainy season, but also means that the ships of Makassar people are coming soon.

With the development of trade year by year, the cultures of China people, Indonesian Makassar people and Australian aborigines gradually spread to each other. For example, in Australian aboriginal music and language, we can find some traces of Makassar. Today, the extensive exchanges between China and Australia are the continuation of the sea cucumber trade more than 200 years ago.

Australian aborigines communicate with the outside world because of international trade-they sell sea cucumbers, and the Makassar people who trade with them not only bring knives, shirts, hats, rice, sugar and other commodities, but also bring outside culture and entertainment, such as card games. Cards, which are now popular in most parts of the world, have also witnessed the history of cultural exchanges between people on two continents.

China people regard sea cucumber as one of the four "seafood": abalone, ginseng and tripe with wings, which is a kind of precious food.

China sea cucumber consumption is limited to festivals (China Spring Festival), wedding banquets and banquets. 90% of the global sea cucumbers are processed into various dried products for consumption in Asian markets, among which Chinese mainland, Hongkong, Taiwan Province Province, Singapore and Malaysia are the main markets. Sea cucumber is not a very popular food in Japan, with an annual import of only 3 ~ 4 tons, and freeze-dried products are its import type. South Korea imports/kloc-0.5 to 20 tons of dry sea cucumber products every year. In Thailand, eating sea cucumbers is limited to tourism, and Thais don't like sea cucumbers very much. Western countries (such as the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Belgium, etc. ) Import sea cucumbers for China people to eat.

Half of Chinese mainland's sea cucumber imports come from Indonesia, while the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand (55 tons) are other major importers. The annual import volume of Chinese mainland sea cucumber market is about 5,500 tons, which shows the importance and leading position of Chinese mainland in the international sea cucumber market. It is worth noting that due to the uneven purchasing power of consumers, the sea cucumber market in Chinese mainland covers all kinds and grades.

Part of the information and pictures in this paper are from the first exhibition "The Story of Sea Cucumber-China People, Makassar People and Australian Aborigines".