Huizhou Cuisine in Ancient Huizhou City

Ancient Huizhou is surrounded by mountains and water, rich in products and people, and has been rich in culture since ancient times, with extremely rich cultural relics. Huizhou's geographical environment, humanistic environment and eating habits contributed to the formation of Huizhou cuisine. The natural environment of Huizhou with green trees, gullies and ravines, and pleasant climate provides inexhaustible raw materials for Huizhou cuisine, and at the same time, it also captures the beauty of the fusion of landscape and humanity through Huizhou cuisine.

"Peach Blossom Water Mandarin Fish", the most classic representative of Hui Cuisine is Mandarin Fish, also known as Pickled Mandarin Fish. In Huizhou dialect, the word "chuixin" means "stinky". This dish is characterized by the tenderness and freshness of the fish, and the contrast between the "aroma" and the "stink" is what makes Mandarin Fish unique.

In Huizhou, there are many streams running through the mountains, and the unique landscape allows the Huizhou people to have a wider choice of ingredients. However, the closed transportation makes the transportation of food difficult. In order to preserve the fish, the clever Huizhou people remove the scales and internal organs of the fresh Mandarin fish, cut it with a few cuts and put it into a wooden barrel, then sprinkle it with salt and put it in layers, and finally press something heavy on top of the Mandarin fish to tighten it down.

The fish is slightly fermented on the way, and by the time it reaches its destination, its gills are still red, its body light green, and its scales intact and lifelike. It smelled a little foul, but in fact, it was the odor produced by the fermentation of lactic acid bacteria, and it had a strange and delicious taste after being burned. Nowadays, with the change of time, transportation is no longer an obstacle, but the stinky Mandarin fish is still famous at home as the representative dish of Hui cuisine.

The meat of Mandarin fish becomes firmer after marination, forming the unique texture of "garlic clove meat", which is similar to that of the finest yellowtail. Once the fish is in the mouth, you can feel its unique "pickled fresh" flavor, and it also maintains the original flavor of Mandarin fish, so once you eat it, you will be enchanted with one bite after another, and you just can't stop eating it.

The Mandarin fish is first fried and then burned, heavy under the soy sauce, spicy and mellow braising sauce, like most of the Hui cuisine, not only to enhance the delicious food, but also very suitable for dinner, on the table is a plate of scenery, salty, spicy, fresh and sweet, to kill the wine and slaughter the rice, the pleasure to the extreme.

Chinese millennium of farming civilization, soybean occupies an important position, Huainan is the hometown of tofu, and Hui people are especially good at making tofu. Under the never-ending exploration of the Huizhou people, tofu has become an indispensable dish in every household. Unlike the stinky tofu of Hunan cuisine, the hairy tofu of Huizhou cuisine is a representative of the characteristic of Huizhou cuisine, which is "mildly rotten".

Maotou tofu is made by artificially fermenting the surface of the tofu to grow long, thin, plush mycelium (vegetable protein), which is inspired by the humid climate of Huizhou. The fermentation of the tofu converts the vegetable proteins into amino acids, which gives it an extraordinarily fresh flavor after cooking. This rich flavor is called the "taste of home" by Huizhou people.

After frying, the surface of the fluff disappeared, a layer of golden crispy skin wrapped around the curd in general, semi-solid, soft and woolly, slightly bitter, dipped in sauce to eat will be difficult to eat out of the bitter taste, but the mouth has a lingering fragrance, the love of the love of the cut. Whether in the authentic Hui cuisine restaurant or in the streets of the old streets of Tunxi, you can easily find the figure of Mao Tofu.

The most interesting way to eat is to meet the street street walkers, a small stove, one end of the pick hairy tofu, doused with sesame oil, drizzled with chili pepper paste, on the frying pan while eating and chatting, both fresh and tasty, but also a unique flavor. Huizhou people who have lived abroad for a long time, when it comes to hairy tofu, it will stir up a strong sense of homesickness.

About Mao Tofu, there is such a legend. According to legend, Zhu Yuanzhang Zhu Yuanzhang took down the city, and then waved his troops to the north, Jixi. The people in this area often water tofu to engage in labor, and then water tofu sent more than a moment to eat, the heat, the tofu grew white, brown fuzz, in order to prevent waste, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the cook to deep fry and then a variety of condiments simmering, which produces a distinctive flavor of the hair of the tofu. After Zhu Yuanzhang ascended the throne, had this dish to entertain his Hui strategist Shexian Huitang people Zhu Sheng, this dish will be passed back to Huizhou. After generations of workshops to improve the production process, the formation of the current characteristics of Hui dishes.

YiPinPan originally originated in Jixi County, Anhui Province, and is also known as Jixi YiPinPan. Some people say that the origin of yipin pot and Cantonese cuisine in the pot of vegetables related, pot of vegetables may be the originator of yipin pot, both are a pot of vegetables in a collection of several delicacies, rich ingredients layer by layer stacked into a large plate, the juice mingling, the flavor of the rich and fragrant, but this is no longer proved.

Mr. Liang Shiqiu, after tasting the "Yipin Wok," praised the dish and wrote an article describing it in detail: "A large iron wok with a caliber of almost two feet, served hot and still boiling, with a layer of chicken, a layer of duck, a layer of meat, a layer of oily tofu, garnished with some egg dumplings, radish and egg dumplings at the bottom. egg dumplings, immediately underneath are radish and green vegetables, the flavor is excellent."

Hui merchants are on the move all year round, and in order to find the feeling of being home, they make a special "Yipin Pot". Ingredients are carefully selected and stacked up in layers, seeking a red-hot, reunion. On happy days, each family cooks its own flavor, and the pot contains a sense of hometown and joy that cannot be melted. On top of the wood fire, in a somewhat rustic iron pot layered with dried bamboo shoots, chicken, duck, pork, oil tofu, egg dumplings ...... open the lid, steaming, fragrant.

When it comes to Yipin Pot, we have to mention Mr. Hu Shi. During his stay in the U.S., Mr. Hu Shih, who was homesick for his hometown, served his guests many times with his hometown flavor called "Yipin Wok," making it internationally famous, and Yipin Wok was also named after Mr. Hu Shih, called Hu Shih's Yipin Wok.

When a smoking hot iron pot was brought to the table, mellow and rich soup is still boiling and rolling, with a variety of ingredients painted in a variety of colors like embroidery Huizhou, filled with meat dumplings and oil tofu juicy, lining the bottom of the pork such as marinated meat as fat and sticky, the soup is more simmering the more thick, on the soup can even eat several bowls of rice.

The soup is an authentic traditional Qimen dish, clear and flavorful, tender and not greasy, moderately thick, suitable for both young and old. Whenever Qimen people organize banquets, they can't do without Zhonghe soup, and it is the first dish on the table. Zhonghe was originally called "in the river", is the Qimen County into the Poyang Lake of a river, in the Qimen territory for the Yangtze River.

Legend has it that during the Southern Song Dynasty, Fang Yue, a scholar of Qimen nationality, was an official at Poyang, and in his spare time, he used to go boating on the Poyang Lake and trace the river to the Zhonghe River, scooping up a handful of beautiful water in his hometown, and sipping tea and reciting poems in the green mountains, which could more or less comfort his unfulfilled heart. Fang Yue is fond of tofu, once in the boat cooking tofu lack of spices, see the river shrimp is very much, then fish some in the pot and tofu with cooking, did not want to unintentional willows into a shade, with shrimp out of the tofu soup is more fresh and delicious. Since then, Fang Yue will deliberately go to the middle of the river to fish some shrimp as a common condiment, in order to prepare for the cooking of tofu use, and will be the dish named "middle of the river soup".

Since Fang Yue will be this bowl of "tofu soup" into the Qimen, Qimen people to join the local mountain ingredients, into the mountain people's dietary preferences, but also some literati implanted Huizhou and the elements of the culture of harmony, to change the "river" for "", "and", "river" for "", "and", "and", "and", "and", "and", "and", "and", "and", "and", "and", "and". and "Zhonghe Soup" became the representative of Huizhou cuisine soup. After improvement in the soup, soup and soup, soup clear taste fresh, oil and not greasy, in the winter months, drink a small bowl before meals, appetizing to drive away the cold, the whole body through the Thai, has become a Qimen area of the wedding banquet, family get-together of the special dishes.

Huizhou cuisine is represented by a large number of dishes, not only the above four, but also such as ham stewed turtle, braised civet, pigeon stewed in the Huangshan Mountains, steamed stone chicken, ask for bamboo shoots, Huizhou round, knife plate incense, Li Hongzhang chowder, Cao Cao chicken, stone kuey teow, and other traditional delicacies. Native ingredients, unique and imaginative processing, cooking, creating the Hui cuisine.

Huizhou cuisine, seemingly simple and heavy dishes, contains a soft and delicate reasoning. Local ingredients, to fresh win; good use of fire, fire unique; skillful in burning stew, thick and thin appropriate; focus on natural, food for health ...... every scene, every dish, are full of love of life and expectations. Both make people full of taste, but also the crystallization of Huizhou style culture.