Chapter 9 The Ninth Imperial Dining Room

The queen mother went out this time, "clothes", "living", and "travel", which can be considered to have been satisfactorily resolved.And what about the most important problem—the problem of food?In the palace, of course, try to be as rich and elegant as possible; but on the train, I have to treat Yi a little bit worse!The first reason is that the status is not enough.But that's it, on our imperial train, there are already four full cars dedicated to the Queen Mother as a temporary imperial dining room. I can use the simplest few lines of statistics to illustrate the details of the layout of this vehicle:

(1) Fifty stoves, (2) Fifty cooks, (3) The cook has fifty men, (4) The details of miscellaneous incidents such as washing husbands are unknown, (5) Prepare a total of 100 kinds of main dishes, (6) One hundred kinds of cakes, fruits, confectionery, and dried fruits. After reading these, it is not difficult to know the general situation.In China, the issue of "food" is very particular. If you write it carefully, you can really write a "recipe" in one or two thick volumes; so what the author records in this chapter is really very small. part of it! The whole life of the empress dowager can be said to be for "eating" and living!This is not insulting, even myself,--a lady of Iraq--as well.No matter when we are, we always dislike eating too much, and we don't dislike eating too little.Not only is the food in the inner court so rich, but in our own home, although not all of the precious things prepared are as precious as those in the palace, the quantity is also relatively small, but each of us can eat as much as possible and lose the taste. Next time It gives me a headache when I see this thing.

There is another special habit in the palace: the origin of this habit is not a matter of a hundred years ago, so no one can explain its purpose anymore.All I know is that the Queen Mother or the Emperor must serve a hundred bowls of different dishes neatly every time they have a dinner.Of course, no matter how good the queen mother's appetite is, she will never eat them all, even if she tastes them, she won't be able to taste them all!Either discard it immediately, or enjoy it in turn by female officials, court ladies and those superior eunuchs. Every meal, the queen mother always sits alone and enjoys it alone, but sometimes, Yi also teaches me to accompany her to eat. ——But I can only eat standing up, not sitting like Yi. —— Yi's dining table is not a whole table, in fact, it can't have such a big table, even if there is a whole hundred bowls of food, it is too stupid, the queen mother will never be happy !So we have a set of small tables ready, and when we put them together temporarily, they are just big enough to hold the one hundred bowls of main dishes.Although the table problem is solved in this way!However, the distance between those dishes and the Queen Mother was really too far, except for some dishes close to Yi, Yi's chopsticks and spoons were not available.So is the Queen Mother really looking forward to these dishes?No!No!Readers don't need to worry about Yi, it turns out that there is also a eunuch here who specializes in serving the Queen Mother's meals!The eunuch's name was Zhang De. ——After Empress Dowager Cixi Bintian, this person succeeded Li Lianying as the chief eunuch in the Qing palace. ——If the queen mother fell in love with a certain dish and wanted to try it, she ordered Zhang De to bring it up respectfully, and asked the queen mother to serve the chopsticks.But it's really not easy to be on the job of serving food, every move of hand and every step must be very solemn.After the queen mother has finished her meal.These dishes were removed together, and we were free to take orders.Nine out of ten of them are not completely intact like sacrificial dishes removed when offering to ancestors.

Since there are as many as a hundred bowls of dishes, the cooking time is of course extremely complicated!Now we will only talk about the situation in the car: among the four cars used as temporary imperial dining rooms, one is the real dining room.On this car, there are fifty stoves on the left and right sides of the wall; these stoves are all made of white clay coated with bricks and tiles, the shelves are made of pig iron, and there is an iron plate underneath. , These two pieces of ironware are all painted with white paint, so not only can there be no danger of fire, but even in terms of appearance, they feel very clean and tidy.On each hearth two dishes must be appointed for each meal.Readers may want to ask: Why not let it do a few more things, so as to save a few stoves?There is also a layer of reason for this, because there are many dishes that cannot be prepared on the spur of the moment, and it takes a lot of time to prepare.For example, like braised and steamed duck, it needs two days of slow fire to cook before it becomes tender.

When the Empress Dowager is eating, someone must first inform the drivers and gatekeepers and order them to stop the train; however, these dishes cannot be prepared after the train stops. No matter how fast the drive is, those cooks can arrange the dishes while driving. On each stove, there is a cook on duty.These cooks are the so-called "hands-on".You have to have considerable qualifications to be able to do "hands-on".But their work is simple and labor-saving.Everyone only needs to cook two kinds of dishes for each meal, and there is nothing else to do.But I always wonder whether the two dishes each of them are responsible for are really their own masterpieces?Even if they are, it is still doubtful whether their technology has reached the pinnacle.

Just behind the car dedicated to the stove, there is another car dedicated to preparatory work; the so-called preparatory work is to put the raw materials of the dishes in order before they are put into the pot. the meaning of.Because some things need to be peeled, some things need to be truncated, and some things need to be cut into small pieces;...almost every kind of raw thing needs to be cleaned up.There are more than 20 people in charge of this work, but they are still very busy. This is not because they are too slow, but because the work of stripping, cleaning and cutting is too complicated.For example, like bean sprouts, before putting them into the pot, you must first pick off the very thin roots growing on the stems, and you have to be very careful when picking them, so that useful things are wasted.Calculated from this, even if one person is specially assigned to cook bean sprouts, there will be no idle time.What's more, other things have to be fiddled with in a normal way!

Let's go back and talk about those stoves: there are a total of fifty of them, arranged in two rows evenly on the left and right, like a group of serious guards.The fuel used in these stoves is briquettes; but because briquettes are not easy to catch fire, waste paper or wood flowers have to be used as fire starters every time.But don't use too much, or the smoke will be uncomfortable.This part of the work of lighting the fire is done by those odd jobs. For the convenience of description, it may be temporarily called the B cooker.Because in addition to them, there are also the "starter" and "lowerer" who actually do the work of cooking, which can be called Cooker A and Cooker B.There are also fifty cooks in total, that is, each of them is in charge of a stove.

Chef A does not care about the two main dishes that he is good at for each meal; cook B only needs to stand next to Chef A while he is working, mixing soy sauce, sugar, spices and so on. , and handed them to him one by one, but because of the "in order", they must also know some cooking techniques. When cook C is lighting the fire, no matter how idle the two cooks A and B are, they are unwilling to help. They would rather stare at the side with their eyes wide open, and don't bother to move, because they feel that such a humble job needs to be done. detrimental to their dignity.I think as long as there are some errands in the palace, from the chief officer to the eunuch to the cleaner, it can be said that there is no one who is not respectable, and no one is not good at putting on airs. This is probably influenced by the empress dowager. Nourishment?

After the fire is extinguished, there will inevitably be a burst of strong gas; of course, this is very unhygienic.On the way to Fengtian in the car, several eunuchs fell ill because they couldn't stand the stench.But they gradually realized that every time they lit a fire, they always opened all the windows of the car, so that they would no longer hear people with coal poisoning.In addition to opening windows, there is another way to reduce gas.It is to open a small hole on the stove, and when the fire is started, a short chimney is installed in the small hole, and the outlets of the chimney are opened to the windows, so that the strong gas can be released. More than half of it can be blown out.When the briquettes in the furnace have grown very vigorously, that is, they have all turned transparent red. (This kind of briquettes are extremely flame-resistant, and once they are vigorous, they can be used for a long time.) Then the short chimney is unloaded. Down.

In order to reduce the time needed to light the fire, those cooks had to use a sunflower fan to look in the front of the fire door of the stove and fan it as far as possible; but because the fire door was located too low, they had to bend their bodies. If it goes down, there is no way to fan it, so this kind of work is really hard. Let's do the math again: there are three chefs A, B, and C on each stove, and there are also countless eunuchs who come and go. The number of people in this group is really quite a lot!So on the four trains, which were supposed to serve as imperial dining rooms, when it was time to eat, the air immediately became tense.However, although I was busy with work, there was no delay in serving dishes, or the mistake of turning the dishes upside down.Readers, don't underestimate them!Their actions are really military-like!When it was time to light the fire, the fifty cooks started together. Because everyone's skills were equal, the coal balls in the stove were always glowing at the same time, and the other part was put on temporarily. The short chimney was also dismantled at the same time; the most beautiful thing is when the fifty cooks bent down at the same time, each using a sunflower fan, waving and fanning. The situation was as neat and rigid as the actions of the boatman on a sampan.

Although these cooks are divided into A, B, and C in status, their clothes are all equal; they all dress up like eunuchs in the palace, but they have a white cloth cover on their sleeves.Therefore, in these four cars that are used as imperial dining rooms, the colors are as bright and eye-catching as those on other cars. People in the old days, rich or poor, high or low, did not pay much attention to the cleanliness of their kitchens.The Empress Dowager is not the case. When she is in the palace, she often goes to the imperial dining room to inspect it herself, so it is always kept very clean.And this time, the imperial dining room, which was decorated by the supervisor on the train, has a small status, but it still pays great attention to cleanliness.I dare say I've never seen such a clean kitchen, and even the floor is so clean that it could be eaten. There are two regular meals a day, and the one hundred bowls of vegetables must be served neatly during these two regular meals.In addition to these two main meals, there are also two snacks; they are called snacks, of course they will not be as gorgeous as the main meals, but the Empress Dowager always refuses to be too casual, so every time there are at least some snacks. Twenty bowls of dishes, usually around forty or fifty bowls. Then there are one hundred so-called "dinner meals" and forty or fifty "snacks". What kind of delicacies are they?I really can't give you a detailed answer to this!Because there are too many dishes in the palace, even in the car, there are still a lot, which is definitely beyond the memory of ordinary people.Originally, as I said earlier, the Chinese diet was originally a kind of "practical science" with a very wide range. How can I remember it clearly? To give a few examples: For example, stewed fat duck is a dish that the Empress Dowager loves very much. Its cooking method is to first remove the duck's feathers, remove the liver and then wash it, then add some condiments, and put it in a dish. In a magnetic jar; then put this magnetic jar in a tong pot half filled with water, cover the pot tightly to prevent it from getting steamed, just let it steam with a slow fire for three days in a row , the duck is completely crispy, so crispy that you don't need to cut it with a knife, you just need to use chopsticks to pick it up, and you can also pick it up effortlessly.Then it's time for you to chew!Although the Empress Dowager sometimes ate some duck meat, most of the servings were eaten with duck skin; because that layer of duck skin was the most delicate and delicious part of this bowl of dishes. In addition to the delicacy of stewed fat duck, the following dishes are also common items in the Empress Dowager's meals, and they are also the ones that Yi likes. Smoked and roasted things seem to be the most suitable for the Queen Mother, such as roast duck, roasted suckling pig, smoked chicken, stewed leg of lamb, etc., are almost constantly offered.These things, of course, are not fancy goods.Ordinary people can also enjoy it in the restaurant outside, but the cooking method in the palace is always more sophisticated than outside.According to the Empress Dowager herself, when she was young, her favorite dish was roasted pork and then fried in lard. As a result, the skin on the meat was crispier than anything else, and its taste was Really mouth-watering enough.In the north, this dish has another name called "ring bell"; it means that it is so crisp that it can be chewed by others.Therefore, the crispier the dish, the better, but the old people can only look at it and sigh because of their broken teeth. When the Empress Dowager was in her twilight years, the cherry meat took over the place of "ringing the bell", and became a dish that the Empress Dowager particularly liked. It was made by first cutting the best pork into pieces as big as chess pieces Small pieces, with seasoning, and fresh cherries—when fresh cherries are not available, cherries that have been candied or otherwise prepared are soaked in warm water, so that they are as fresh as fresh cherries. Just as good-looking, just as fresh. ——Put them together in a white porcelain pot, add some water, and let it simmer slowly over a slow fire; after about ten hours, the meat will be crispy and the aroma of cherries will be cooked, so that it can be eaten by greedy people. The people feasted to their heart's content.Especially its soup is really beautiful to the extreme! Among the several vegetables that are often eaten in the palace, the queen mother likes "peas" the most.The peas are always picked when they are very tender, so not only their taste is very refreshing, but also their hue, like green beads piled up in a white magnetic bowl, can easily arouse your appetite Come.Things like radishes were not qualified to be mixed into the imperial diet, because people in the palace always looked down on them, thinking that they were only food for common people, or they were used to feed livestock, and they must not be used to insult the Queen Mother; What, it was thought of by the queen mother herself, so Yi ordered the eunuch who supervised the imperial dining room to get something new.Thanks to the cleverness of those cooks, they managed to squeeze out all the original smell of the radish; and then pair it with ham soup or chicken and duck thick soup, the taste will certainly not be bad!In addition, there are fresh and tender bamboo shoots and very fine ginger sprouts, which are also the favorite vegetarian dishes of the Queen Mother; no matter "dinner" or "snack", they must be taught to cook. Fungi are produced the most in China, with about seven or eight species.It is also available in Mongolia, and it is larger than those produced in other places in the interior, and the taste is also extra plump.The queen mother is very happy with mushrooms, so no matter what dishes are in, as long as it is not absolutely impossible, there will always be mushrooms or sesame mushrooms in it.But fungi don't have a special liking for me.I think the taste of Shandong Jiaocai is really the most wonderful among vegetables. Its leaves are almost pure white, tender and sweet. I often try to eat as much as possible and refuse to stop. There are so many famous vegetables like Jiaocai in various parts of China that they cannot be counted, and among them, the ones produced in Sichuan Province are the most valuable and popular.For example, the market price of white fungus is extremely expensive. Often a small box of white fungus costs one or twenty taels of silver to buy.They are an inferior plant parasitic on old pine trees, but it is not easy to find good ones, so the price has risen for no reason.Moreover, if ordinary people or officials are willing to spend a lot of money to buy it, it is not easy to get the best one; the reason is that the best white fungus has become a patented product for officials in Sichuan Province to honor the Queen Mother. They hired a lot of workers, searching for the best tremella all year round, and using them to curry favor with the Queen Mother. When the tremella is shipped, it is always dried and packed in various brocade boxes according to their value; the most exquisite brocade box is often worth Several taels of silver each.The value of the white fungus contained in it can be imagined!But although the value is so high, its taste is really not good. It is neither salty nor sweet, nor has any fragrance; in short, eating it is like not eating anything.So it is always boiled in chicken broth or other fresh soup. There is also a very rare thing called a monkey head, which is about the size of a tennis ball.It is also from Sichuan, and most of it is always presented to the palace for the Queen Mother to enjoy. (Translator's note: Hericium erinaceus is also a wild fungus. It is produced in the deep mountains of Yichang and Sichuan. But because the output is very small, it is not easy to find, so its value is expensive. It is used for cooking or Spoon, the taste is similar to mushrooms and sesame mushrooms, because its shape is like a monkey's head, so it is called "monkey's head". This kind of thing is not limited to palaces, it can often be seen in Beiping City. It is also like Tremella is generally placed in a very beautiful brocade box, and rich people buy it as a gift. However, there are so many fakes, ordinary people don't know the authenticity, and often spend a lot of money to buy fake ones. Things are only used in the Qing palace, and there are never fakes.) When presented to the palace, there is always a brocade box for every two monkey heads, and the brocade box is often set off with excellent yellow silk. Especially more gorgeous than white fungus. There are various ways to prepare Hericium erinaceus. You can also put the whole thing on a slow fire and steam it, or you can cut it into pieces and fry it one by one. Sometimes it can be mixed with various meats to increase the umami taste; especially And in mutton, it is very delicious, even if it is used to make soup, its taste is not inferior to that of chicken soup. There is also a "hair dish".In modern food, it is rarely seen.It is something as thin as hair, so it is called hair vegetable.Strictly speaking, Nostocs is actually a kind of fungus, and it is also an inferior plant that parasitizes on some kind of tree.Its origin is Sichuan again. ——Sichuan is really a prolific and delicious place!However, there is no beauty in the taste of the lettuce, and its use is not extensive. It can only be cut off and mixed with pork for frying, which has a special flavor. Among all kinds of seafood, commonly used are shark's fin, fish lip, fish maw, bird's nest, sea cucumber, etc. Their various preparation methods are roughly the same as those in other places outside the palace, so there is no need to repeat them. Generally, the value of every kind of sea vegetables is always a bit more expensive than ordinary cattle, sheep, chickens and ducks, presumably because it is not easy to obtain.But when it comes to their true taste, it is really not flattering.Even the Empress Dowager looked very uninspired towards all kinds of sea vegetables; she especially didn't like the sea cucumber.Sea cucumber is a bland and tasteless thing, and its shape is even more ugly, but most people say that it has a nourishing function, so it must be included in those real delicacies. The queen mother also has another favorite dish, which is stewed duck tongue.The duck tongues are stewed together with the duck meat, and there must be at least twenty or thirty pieces each time, floating on top of the soup.Because this is the queen mother's favorite dish, it is always served in a special apricot yellow bowl every time, and it is always the closest to the queen mother.There is also a duck's foot made of salt water, a must-have special at every "snack"; but this thing has only one kind of webbed skin that can be chewed, and all the bones are left beside it. .Duck gizzard liver, duck viscera, etc. are often prepared in various ways for the Queen Mother to eat.Judging from these points, the queen mother really has a special affection for ducks, except for the stinky duck butt, Yi simply refuses to let it go easily. In summer, all kinds of melons and fruits are on the market, and the cooks in the imperial dining room have to use them to cook some special dishes in season to serve up to honor the Queen Mother.Among them, there is one that the Queen Mother admires the most, that is "watermelon cup".Its preparation method is to dig out the pulp of the watermelon together, and put the chopped chicken, diced ham, fresh lotus seeds, longan, walnut, birch, almonds, etc. It can be stewed with a slow fire for a few hours. Its taste is mellow and delicious, which is not difficult for us to imagine. I will always be amazed at the strength of the Queen Mother's appetite.In the palace, or when Yi was walking in the imperial garden, or sitting idle in the hall, Yi often ordered the eunuchs to bring the special portable stove, and let those The cook started to cook, and Yi stood beside him waiting to eat. On the bus to Fengtian this time, as long as Yi felt a little hungry, or not hungry at all, but felt that her stomach was not very full, Yi would immediately order the car to stop; at the same time, she ordered the cooks to prepare meals.The Queen Mother's order to go is of course no small matter; the fifty cooks A immediately urged their assistants, cook C, to light up the fire in the stove quickly; so the fifty cooks C seemed to be doing something. Like a group gymnastics, they waved their sunflower fans vigorously, turning the coal balls in the stove as red as blood balls.At this moment, the Empress Dowager was leaning against the car window, gazing at the scenery on both sides of the railway.Originally, in these places, there must always be a few villagers farming or walking around, but because the queen mother's imperial train will pass by on the job, the local government office has restrained all people in advance and prohibited them Move around; so the Queen Mother can't see half of the figure. After the fire was blazing, the fifty cooks B were busy conveying the raw materials used, soy sauce, sweet and sour, etc., to cook A; cook A prepared them with their own hearts.After all the dishes are cooked, the eunuchs will take them out in food boxes.Because there are too many dishes, the eunuchs who come to serve dishes can always line up in a very long line.But by the time they brought them out, the Empress Dowager probably didn't feel hungry anymore, so the dishes were returned to the four cars that were supposed to serve as the imperial dining room as usual, and the train continued to move on.This time, the purpose of stopping the car completely lost the purpose of eating. It was just to let the queen mother appreciate the land under Yi's own control. However, the people who waited on Yi could smell the hot aroma. But everyone is salivating! I am also one of them.My stomach seems to never feel full!