Chapter 59 Bak Kut Teh

I have heard the name of "Bak Kut Teh" in Singapore for a long time, and I have always been puzzled. How can "Bak Kut Teh" be cooked with "tea"?Or there is a kind of tea with the same name as "Oolong", "Pu'er" and "Tieguanyin", but the name is "Bone Bone"? Taipei also sells "Bak Kut Teh". When I went there, I found it was just pork ribs stewed in soy sauce. I was very disappointed. I always thought that Singapore's Bak Kut Teh would go bad when it arrived in Taipei. Therefore, when I traveled to Singapore, I invited friends that night Take me to the "food street" everywhere, the purpose is to eat Bak Kut Teh.

It turns out that the so-called Bak Kut Teh, Bak Kut Teh and tea are fundamentally separate and have nothing to do with it.Bak Kut Teh’s Bak Kut Teh is made from the best pork ribs. It is boiled with sugar cane until the flavor of the Bak Kut Teh and sugar cane are mixed together. It has a special flavor. It also adds a material that Hokkien people like to use – fried shallots. . After eating a large bowl of meat and bones, followed by a small cup of Chaozhou Kung Fu tea, the tea cup is very small, and the tea is made of very strong and slightly bitter Pu'er; the reason is that the meat and bones are very greasy, and there are thick oily flowers on the soup. Pu'er has the effect of clearing the oil and appetizing, and it can be full of oil after eating.

Bak Kut Teh is not a specialty of Singapore, it is from Chaozhou, China, and most of the Bak Kut Teh food stalls in Singapore are Teochew people.However, Bak Kut Teh has a great influence in this area. It is not only the breakfast of ordinary citizens, but also indirectly affects the cooking of other foods, such as the famous "Hainanese Chicken Rice", "Teochew Porridge", and "Curry Fish Head". After eating, there is always a cup of warm Teochew tea. Even Malay and Indonesian satays are served with tea before serving.The reason is that eating these greasy foods in the tropics will make the mouth dry, and a pot of tea will immediately make people feel extremely refreshed.

I'm not saying that Bak Kut Teh is such an amazing delicacy, it is even a very common food in southern Fujian and Nanyang regions.But I think it is a kind of artistic creation to be able to think of food that combines meat and bone and tea as one. When I was eating Bak Kut Teh, I remembered reading Qian Zhongshu’s "Writing on the Side of Life" a long time ago. There is a passage in it: "Delicious dishes are still worthy of praise. This world is confusing and upside down. , everywhere is friction and conflict; there are only two most harmonious things, which are artificial after all: music and cooking. A bowl of good food is like a piece of music, and it is also a consistent diversity, blending flavors, making opposite molecules complement each other The simplest example is boiled crab and vinegar, roast duck and sweet sauce, or roast pork and apple puree, sea turtle fish and lemon slices. Horns, completely irrelevant things, but have a predestined fate, like a beautiful woman and a talented man, a sow and a leprous, forming a spouse created in heaven and earth, and a family that complements each other."

When it comes to cooking and art, the emphasis on seasoning is like "a piece of music". Chinese cooks have always advertised that they are full of color, fragrance and aesthetics of color.Further up, the knowledge of harmony between heaven and earth is nothing like cooking. Lao Tzu said that "governing a big country is like cooking small fish", and Yi Yin said that being a prime minister is like "making peace with soup and cooking a cauldron". In the West, although the imagination of cooking is not as good as in China, there are also sayings such as "one person eats the world hungry", "hope is like salt, if you put a little less, you will feel relish, and if you put too much, you will not be able to eat it", etc., let us all understand The knowledge of cooking is great!

I think that there are always similarities between human emotions, anger, sorrow, joy, and animal desires. The biggest difference, apart from clothing, is the art of cooking.Apart from humans, there is no beast that knows how to cook. I have some friends, every time they pass by a food shop selling fried chicken and hamburgers, they always call it a "savage house", because the people inside just want to fill their stomachs quickly, and the food is all made by machines. If you use a computer in your hand, speed is speed, but progress may not be. Every time I see recipes, I feel the same. Recipes are always the beginning of human beings. It would be sad if a person cooks according to recipes all his life. How to find new recipes from the inherent recipes and create a unique style Only then can it be beautiful enough to make simple food enter the land of art.

From "Bak Kut Teh" I think that people are not only looking for food to fill their stomachs, but also have a great knowledge of eating besides filling their stomachs.The first person to eat meat and bone with tea, and the first person to eat crab with vinegar, duck with sweet sauce, and grilled fish with lemon are all geniuses, no less than artists.As mortals, if we can enjoy art while eating, its subtlety is sometimes no different from listening to a good piece of music, seeing a good painting, or reading a good book. If a person can't appreciate food, I think such a person must have nothing to do with art.

— March 9, 1983