Chapter 5 Taste Cantonese

Step on the ladder to pick eggplants, and eat wontons with fans.This is the description of the food culture in Lingnan by Gao Yi of the Tang Dynasty. It should be a hot word. Because the seasons in Lingnan are the same, the eggplant trees can grow for two or three years and become very tall.Eating wontons is the same as Chang’an, squatting in the streets or alleys, which is a kind of open-air ready-to-eat behavior. The difference is that even if Lingnan people eat wontons at food stalls in the "cold winter", they still have to eat while eating. Shaking the fan, his forehead was dripping with sweat. ("Food Fun" by Jiang Li, published by Xuelin Publishing House)

The vastness of China's territory is incomparable to other countries. It is hot to the equator of Zengmu Shoal, cold to Mohe in the Arctic Circle where the aurora can be seen at night. On such a "gourmet map" with vast, diverse geography, peculiar climate and myriads, using a taste guide to find the perception of life and the joy of living is an act that is easy to arouse interest. Many years ago, I had a colleague named Mo Canji, a graduate of the Geological Exploration Department. We called him Guangguang, and we had a very good relationship.Lao Mo first popularized some Lingnan food knowledge, gym fitness and so on to me.Lao Mo said that fish should be eaten in three parts, head, tail and body.At the beginning, I laughed at Lao Mo’s segmented fish eating, and had a super superior historical prejudice against Lao Mo. What I meant at the time seemed to be that Guang Guang was not tall, so his appetite was small, so he ate a fish It should be divided into three sections, if so.That kind of delusion, as the name suggests, reminds me of when I was a child in my hometown, I saw the farmer's uncle plant two kinds of rice in one field, and when flowering, he used a bamboo pole to pollinate the flowers, trying to produce high-quality hybrid rice. .It wasn't until the new century, when I suddenly met scientists from the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, that I realized that rice is homogamously pollinated, so it is not easy to hybridize; and cross-pollination, if conditions permit, plants can do it by themselves.It seems that misunderstandings are always as broad and magnificent as Kunlun Mountain.

I mean, people in Lingnan have a particularly fine sense of taste, with light summers and autumns and rich springs and winters. They follow a light and fresh gourmet route, and their aestheticism goes quite far, with a huge characteristic being its The spirit of reformism means that any recipes brought to Lingnan will be renamed and created.For example, wontons have evolved into "wontons" that northerners have never understood.In Cantonese cuisine, there is a name change that resonated with me greatly. This dish is "chrysanthemum fish". This fish evolved from Su cuisine, and Su cuisine is called "squirrel mandarin fish".In the past, I lived in the southeast of Hubei Province. I was about ten minutes away from Xisai Mountain on the Yangtze River. Zhang Zhihe had a poem: "Egrets fly in front of Xisai Mountain, peach blossoms flow in the water and mandarin fish are fat." It can be seen that mandarin fish is based on Southeast Hubei or Xisai Mountain is authentic, so eating this dish always has the meaning of this dish.However, I can't understand why it is called "squirrel mandarin fish", and it doesn't look like a squirrel at all. I think it looks like an angry flamingo.

Chrysanthemum fish looks so beautiful, and the autumn color is golden. If you look for it in the taste guide, it can be regarded as a high dish, although it is in the south of Lingnan and not in the southeast of Hubei.