Chapter 25 Pickled Duxian

Pickled Duxian is a root dish of Shanghai cuisine, a typical product of the farming civilization of the Han nationality.Xianduxian means salted and stewed fresh. The original place of this dish includes the land of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. It is also called Xianduxian in Hangzhou. Salty, generous and mellow.To use an intuitive example to describe it, it is similar to the aesthetic appeal of Suzhou garden bonsai, old roots and new shoots, long-lasting time and fresh growth complement each other, the two poles are integrated, salted and fresh is a better way to combine Chinese Confucian philosophy of the mean in cooking techniques on the expression.

Fresh pork, fresh bamboo shoots and marinated pork are used as the ingredients of pickled Duxian. It is seasoned with rice wine, and a little ham is also good.Before stewing, marinated meat is soaked to desalt, fresh meat is hoof meat, and fresh bamboo shoots are freshly dug from the mountain. The cured meat and fresh meat can be stewed together in a casserole, or they can be stewed separately and then added to a pot with bamboo shoots over high heat. Stewed together, the taste of the finished product is "thick, white and mellow, the meat is crispy and the bamboo shoots are crispy, hot and delicious".It is extremely important to master the heat. The natural blend is the highest state of salted Duxian, and the soup is taken from salted Duxian.In the south of the Yangtze River where the rainy season is continuous and the cool wind is soaked, if you take a sip of salted, fresh, salty and rich soup, you will experience the wetness and coolness of the whole body. The soup is hot and warm, and it is different from wine It is a kind of warm-up food, and it tastes salty, fresh and mellow quickly, which really reflects the gentle and honest character of the people of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai.

The combination of the name of the dish and its content has a moderate and harmonious value orientation without extremes. It is almost the ideological core of Chinese cooking. The same is also the taste combination of fried bacon with fresh bamboo shoots, crucian carp with watercress, and stewed chicken with mushrooms. , old and fresh against restraint, new and old blend, in the process of canceling each other's characteristics, a new environment is merged, generous and decent, and expand the taste range.It is also the culinary expression of the accumulation of geography, climate, products, farming and lifestyle.

Pickled Duxian should be a local dish in Shanghai. I once had a conversation with Ah Wen about Shanghai cuisine in Dabei Kiln in Beijing.Ah Wen has opened five Arwen restaurants in Beijing. He classifies the local dishes and Shanghai style dishes of the Shanghai cuisine in detail, and Ah Wen promotes local dishes.Judging by Awen’s classification method, salted Duxian should belong to the local cuisine. First, the local cuisine originated from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, and Shanghai style cuisine was improved by transplanted Cantonese cuisine; Haipai cuisine focuses on seafood.At the second CCTV National Cooking Competition, I asked Jiang Li, a Shanghai food critic who was a judge, that there are now countless schools of Shanghai cuisine, and various reformist flavors appear frequently. This situation is just like Beijing and other metropolises. The beginning of the new century is an era of great cultural integration.Judging from the unintegrated situation, pickled Duxian is also a local dish.Regarding the investigation of the affiliation of the salted Duxian’s gang and the Shanghai School, I want to take the opportunity to say that there is a trend in the food industry to classify the salted Duxian into the Shanghai School. Even if Shanghainese agree with this classification, I think the reasons are still insufficient. It is unquestionable that Duxian has the roots of Shanghai cuisine, so it has secured a seat for local dishes.