Chapter 18 Living in Huangsha, don’t forget the delicious food

Zhang Daqian is from Sichuan, so he has a strong taste, preferring spicy and mellow.He often regards himself as a gourmet and downplays his status as a master of painting.As a true gourmet, Zhang Daqian was very strict with food ingredients, even in restaurants.Zhang Daqian never ate overnight vegetables, and he would not eat some dead fish, he would definitely eat live ones.He attaches great importance to the freshness of the ingredients.The taste of the current ingredients changes as soon as they enter the refrigerator, so try to bring fresh things directly into the kitchen for cooking instead of putting them in the refrigerator.Of course, some ingredients do not need to be fresh, such as bacon.The bacon in our hometown is considered fresh as long as it is made in the same year.

As a gourmet, Zhang Daqian is not only good at talking, but also good at cooking. He cooks himself.His home is often full of guests during meal time, and at most there are three round tables. The dish that appears the most on Zhang's table is steamed beef with rice flour.Steamed beef with flour was originally a Sichuan snack, called steamed beef in small cages, and a lot of watercress, peppercorns, and some dried chili noodles were added in it to make it more spicy.This dish is fragrant and delicious, and spicy and delicious.But Zhang Daqian was not satisfied with ordinary dried chili noodles. The chili noodles he used had to be homemade, pounded and coriander.Zhang Daqian also went to Niushikou to buy the famous salt and pepper pot helmet, and used the pot helmet to eat steamed beef with flour.Bite into this kind of thing, the soft pot helmet and the smooth and delicious beef make people drool.

When I make tamales, I first sauté japonica rice, glutinous rice and a little Chinese prickly ash in a pot over low heat, and then add the coarser rice noodles that are freshly ground from this kind of fried rice. The meat steamed from the powder is more fragrant and tasteful.Pork is made from freshly bought front blade meat, salt, sugar, cooking wine, and a little bean paste and steamed over high heat. Zhang Daqian travels at home and abroad, so he has mixed flavors.He likes not only Sichuan cuisine, but also Cantonese, Shandong, Suzhou and so on. In March 1941, he brought his family to Dunhuang, where he stayed for two years and seven months, during which time he painted 270 murals.Because of this experience, his painting techniques have advanced by leaps and bounds, which laid a solid foundation for his later splash-ink painting method of "ink-dyeing mountains and rivers, shaking the sky".

What people don't know is that Zhang Daqian also invented many dishes using local ingredients in the Dunhuang Grottoes.He has a food list in Dunhuang, which includes several dishes: boiled large pieces of mutton, ham in honey sauce, scrambled eggs with elm money, fried chicken slices with tender alfalfa, stewed haggis with fresh mushrooms, stewed chicken with abalone, sardines, shredded chicken and jujube paste Yam seeds.It is unimaginable that he can create these delicacies in a barren place like Dunhuang.Some of the ingredients in these dishes, such as abalone and sardines, are cans he brought over.Other fresh ingredients such as mushrooms, alfalfa and elm, yam, chicken, and sheep are all from the local area.Dunhuang is located in the desert, and it is a miracle that he can find fresh mushrooms in the desert.

There is another story about looking for mushrooms: There is a poplar tree near Zhang Daqian’s residence. Mushrooms grow under these poplar trees every July, and one plate can be picked every day.Before leaving Dunhuang, Zhang Daqian specially drew a secret map of the places where wild mushrooms grow, and gave it to Chang Shuhong, who later served as the director of the Dunhuang Art Research Institute.On the map, Zhang Daqian marked in detail the picking route and picking time of wild mushrooms, and also marked which wild mushrooms grow best and have the best taste.This moved Chang Shuhong very much, saying that this picture is undoubtedly a gift in the snow, and it is a treasure left by Zhang Daqian to the Dunhuang staff.

Zhang Daqian was also able to stew haggis and fresh mushrooms together, which can be said to be original.I also created a haggis hot pot by myself, which is to add oyster mushrooms and haggis to the hot pot, then add local pickled ginger and pickled radish, and eat it while simmering, and you can also add vermicelli and potatoes. Alfalfa is an early spring vegetable in Dunhuang, like shepherd's purse in the south, and pea sprouts in Sichuan, and its fragrance is no less than that of pea sprouts.Zhang Daqian was homesick when he saw things, so he created a stir-fried chicken slices with alfalfa, imitating the Sichuan fried pea sprouts with shredded chicken. This dish is creative and tasteful.

In the north, alfalfa is used as a wild vegetable and is often used to feed pigs, but people love to eat it when it is tender.There is a local saying: "Women in Guanzhong have three loves: husband, cotton, and alfalfa." This shows the local preference for alfalfa.Alfalfa can be mixed or fried, it can be served as a vegetable independently, or it can be paired with meat.In fact, not only people in the north eat alfalfa, but there is a famous dish in Shanghai called raw stir-fried grass head. The grass head here is alfalfa, but many people don’t know it.