Chapter 41 The delicacies of Tianfu Shangshi are not as good as Taipei Huayan

Among my friends, I'm known as a glutton. "Spring and Autumn" resumed publication, and the editor asked me to write an article about food. I have always been famous for my delicious food, so it was naturally my duty.Mr. Li Guoding said that the appetite of Taiwanese people is amazing, and they can eat up an expressway a year. If what is said is true, then of course we all have a share! When it comes to "eating", the Chinese people paid attention to the palatability and filling their intestines in the early days. As for delicacies from mountains and seas, they are luxurious and ostentatious.Let's not talk about the distant ones, let's take the three dynasties of Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties as an example. With the respect of the emperor, three meals a day may not be comparable to a modern banquet!

In the past dynasties of China, most of the records of court diet were vague.Take the "Drinking Zhengyao" compiled by Hu Sihui, the imperial physician of the Yuan Dynasty (it is a royal diet book and the only official book in Chinese diet literature), in which the diet habits are discussed, and cattle and sheep are used daily. Game buttermilk is the main dish. Later, although the Song Dynasty inherited the Datong and entered the Central Plains, because the Mongols grew up in the desert, they still kept the rough and unrestrained style of food. The daily menu in front of the emperor was only chicken, duck, cattle and sheep Roe deer deer and roe deer change their tricks, and even pork, fish and shrimp are rarely used, let alone rare water and land in the morning and evening.

In the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang was born reckless, and Empress Ma was famous for being industrious and frugal. With such a humble and self-motivated empress, the descendants of later generations did not have a thousand kinds of spiritual delicacies in terms of drinking and eating. Situation of feasting.However, in the last few generations of emperors, they gradually became accustomed to arrogance, extravagance and lust. They believed in Taoist warlocks refining mercury to seek alchemy and evil methods. Pork loin, stewed sheep’s trotters with frozen skin, ginger and angelica, and boiled carp with wolfberry and Eucommia... At that time, Yuan Zicai, an old man in Suiyuan, said: "The diet of the court in the Ming Dynasty changed from curing hunger to curing diseases. The so-called all vegetables can cure diseases. There is no medicine and no food." These few words of the old man Suiyuan almost summed up the Ming Dynasty court meal.

The diet records of the court of the Qing Dynasty, from Shunzhi to Yongzheng, are all appointments and unknown due to the beginning of the founding of the country.When Qianlong came to power, the old man Shiquan traveled to the north and south of the river several times, and prepared all the delicacies from the south, and gradually became an expert in food; he also created a unique food file.Professor Wu Xiangxiang has seen this kind of archives collected by the Forbidden City. Since Qianlong, most of them are complete. Cao Kun was elected as the President of Xinhua. The medical officer of the Presidential Palace, Cao Yuanshen from Suzhou, served as the medical officer of the Imperial Hospital in the last years of Guangxu. Save it to the Tai Hospital.This is done following the old practice of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, because food generates and restrains each other, and there are many changes and taboos. When concubines, elder brothers, and princesses suffer from illnesses, the imperial physicians go to the palace to check the pulse, and prescribe medicines based on the reference.His job is to organize and review the meal list.

He looked through old files and found that before Qianlong, the meat was still mainly roe deer, mountain pheasant, hare, pig and sheep (beef made by honest officials was not allowed to be eaten).It wasn't until Qianlong's southern tour to Beijing that the tastes of the court changed drastically. Among fish, shad, perch, carp, and abalone, and vegetables such as water shield, shepherd's chestnut, water spinach, and scallion were also recommended for meals one after another.As for the most valuable abalone fins, pai fins, black ginseng, scallops and other seafood, they have never been included in the top dishes.During the Qianlong period, Goryeo and Vietnam, small countries in Southeast Asia, were attached one after another, and there were endless tribute envoys; most of the rare seafood listed in the tribute list were rewarded to their ministers at will.As for shark's fin blindly, until Empress Dowager Cixi came down for the second time, on the menu of the imperial dining room, there was only fried shredded pork fin in the dishes.

Daoguang was the most frugal emperor in the Qing Dynasty who upheld the law and was pragmatic, unadorned and unpretentious.The trousers he wears, his knees are patched, and he eats chicken soup and fruit every morning. It's too expensive. One can imagine what his daily royal meal is! In her later years, Cixi was the most enjoyable among the emperors and empresses of the Qing Dynasty.Mu Zong (Tongzhi) ascended the throne, just in time for her longevity. The author has seen the menu of the birthday banquet served by the longevity restaurant in the Hall of Mental Cultivation. The second product of cauldron dishes: stir-fried spinach with shredded pork, game sauerkraut;

Four large bowls of dishes: red and white shredded duck with the word "Shou" in the bird's nest, three delicacies fat chicken with the word "Nian" in the bird's nest, eight immortals duck with the word "Ru" in the bird's nest, assorted shredded chicken with the word "Yi" in the bird's nest; Four medium-bowl dishes: bird’s nest duck strips, fresh shrimp balls, braised duck waist, braised sea cucumber; Six dishes: stir-fried bird's nest with shredded duck and chicken, radish in sauce, fried wings with shredded pork, duck in sauce, fried rice stem with pickled vegetables, and scrambled eggs with shredded pork.

Judging from the table of birthday banquets, in terms of the number of pieces, there are no more than sixteen items; the ingredients used, except for the six items that are served with bird's nest, all the dishes are kept spinning on the chicken and duck. It is only included in the dishes and stir-fried.From this point of view, the so-called delicacies of Tianfu Shangshi, in all fairness, are completely different from the present-day banquet in Taipei, in terms of materials, style and exquisiteness, are you right? When Xuantong came to inherit the Datong, although the imperial dining room passed the meals to the whole table as usual, he loved the dishes that the two concubines Duankang and Jingyi brought from their natal kitchens every day as tribute.After the big wedding and before leaving the palace, the dishes in the imperial dining room were almost unpalatable, but he obeyed the ancestral system and it was inconvenient to abolish it, so he was forced to take a job in Dongxing Building first, and then simply ate the "Xieying" western food.Cold baked warm soup, the meal of the last emperor, how can it be said that the food is rich and exquisite!

In 1977, in order to make a Chinese cooking film, a TV company in Japan ordered a table of Manchurian dinner worth 20,000 U.S. dollars at the Ambassador Hotel in Hong Kong. There were 72 dishes in total. Twelve Japanese ate for two days and two meals. night.Among them are elephant trunks, sparrow tongues, bear paws, humps, deer tails and other exotic treasures.A friend from Hong Kong once sent me a copy of the menu for the Man-Han banquet. The names of the dishes are like happy songs and birthday greetings.Back then, the Manchu-Han Banquet was a grand state banquet that was held only when neighboring countries paid tribute to the DPRK and offered captives in peace and chaos to celebrate the two major national events.Whether the menu is drawn up by Guanglu Temple or the Ministry of Internal Affairs, if this kind of nondescript and nondescript menu is written by them, it will make people laugh!This menu, at a glance, is known to be the masterpiece of Guangdong master chefs in Hong Kong restaurants, and everything else can be imagined without going into details.

This spring, another group of Japanese tourists want to come to Taipei to have a full banquet of Manchu and Han, and open up foreign meat.In order to promote tourism, some people expressed their approval.I also think that if I eat a highway, I can earn back a highway, even half of it is good.However, I think the term "Manchu Banquet" is too outdated, and it is too mysterious and unrealistic. It seems that it is not bright to use this method to attract tourists.I think it's better to order several kinds of sightseeing feasts with different price tags according to the seasonal quality and other conditions of the famous dishes in China's mountains, south and seas. They are exclusively for foreign guests, and Chinese people are not allowed to order dishes.If it is properly arranged, there are a lot of foreign households now, and let them spend a few pennies to earn back a highway within a year. Although it is not as easy as breaking branches for the elderly, I am afraid it is not as easy as relying on Mount Tai to surpass Beihai. Difficult!