Chapter 37 Chinese chop suey

In the eyes of some Americans whose knowledge of China is limited to Chinatown, "chop suey" is a typical Chinese dish.And American English has already absorbed the transliteration of "Chop-Suey" (which seems to be based on the pronunciation of Taishan dialect).I don't know why, but in the United States, this dish has some relationship with Li Hongzhang, so its full name is "Li Gong offal".I haven't eaten chop suey in Chinatown, but "Hong Zhang" and "Chop Suey" look absolutely the same-if chicken breast or drumstick is the "Hong Chapter" of chicken, then chicken head, chicken feet, chicken buttocks, etc. It is chicken offal; for another example, a novel is "Hongzhang", while a column is like offal, infer other things from one instance, and so on.Lu Xun wrote in the novel "Zhao Ziyue": "Some foreigners talk nonsense, calling all dirty smells 'Chinese taste', and calling all messy and unclean foods 'Chinese offal'." In fact, " The reason why some "foreigners" have this kind of understanding is that on the one hand, it is because of the sense of superiority of the nation with abundant food supply over the nation with food shortage. The ability of things cannot correctly understand the philosophical relationship between the whole and the part.

"When the first minister unraveled the ox, he saw nothing but a whole ox. Three years later, he had never seen a whole ox." According to Mr. Zhang Yuanshan's explanation, "After three years, he no longer saw the abstract, ambiguous, indivisible, and heartless. A complete cow body without lungs, but individual parts that are independent, well-defined, and daring." Ignoring the whole cow, when the whole cow didn't arrive, there was a miscellaneous one.Many years later, the British metaphysical poet John Donne expressed this Chinese-style whole/part and abstract/concrete view: "Britain is not an isolated island, but a small piece of the European continent as a whole." Land.” In fact, any Guangzhou person who loves beef offal has always been aware that beef offal is not an isolated meat that has nothing to do with cattle, but a small piece of meat from a big cow.

In fact, the focus of Chinatown's "chop suey" is not on "broken" but on "mixed". It is a very collaged cooking and eating attitude, which is different from the "chop suey" under discussion here. The twigs and twigs outside the main body and the fringes and alternatives outside the mainstream.In addition to eating and drinking, I think "choice" may also include those words and phrases in daily life that I don't know if they have meaning, some voices and smiles that I don't know whether to remember, and so on. The mainstream and overall beef, the most commonly eaten parts are steak (like rib eye steak or sirloin steak), rib meat (country-style ribs), short ribs (shortribs), plate tendon (chucktail flap) And beef rump and thigh meat (knuckle), no more than ten kinds.As for the types of beef offal, it’s amazing, from beef A to beef B, from beef Y to beef Z, it’s almost like a sea.Let's put it this way, from cattle head (including brain, beef head meat, cheek meat lip, beef tongue, eyeballs, salivary glands), to beef internal organs (including breast wire, lung, heart, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, pancreas, spleen, rumen, honeycomb Stomach, biblical stomach, small intestine, large intestine, rectum) to the buttocks (including bull testes, bullwhip, and oxtail), there are as many as 33 kinds of people who can eat them.

In fact, in Europe, countries that are famous for their delicacy, such as France and Italy, also use offal for cooking, but their interest is mainly concentrated in beef liver and kidney.The reason why Chinese people have a wider choice of beef offal is nourishment is a reason that cannot be ignored.Chinese nourishment is actually "shape tonic", and those who want to "shape tonic" have to go to the poor and the blue to go to the underworld to search for those viscera and organs that are similar to us.For example, you eat a can of stewed beef brain rich in cephalin and vitamin B1. Although you are already very satisfied, in order to achieve the purpose of aphrodisiac, you only "adopted" the vigorous brain power of the cow. It is far from enough, the weapon of criticism cannot replace the weapon of criticism—Cuihua, put on the bullwhip!Of course, our enthusiasm for these fragments does not mean that we have voluntarily given up the pursuit of the "whole".This is still a big question of right and wrong.There are beef offals for cows, and chicken offals for chickens. Although chicken offals are delicious, but the so-called small belly chicken intestines, compared with those plump and fat chicken breasts and chicken thighs, after all, there are not many miscellaneous items.Recently, Gong Li's mother said in the newspaper: "Don't look at everyone calling Xiao Li an international movie star. In fact, she is too simple and is often deceived. Our family has a large population and there are many people coming and going. Once Xiao Li went to buy burning I picked a big chicken, but when I went home and cut it open, there were three chicken heads and four chicken feet in the belly. She didn't think it was cheating her, but asked me: "Mom, what's wrong with this chicken?" So many heads and claws?'”

Gong's mother sighed because of this: "It is because of Xiao Li's simplicity that she is often fooled in social interactions." When did you go to the street to buy chicken?That's what parents do. The beef offal made by Guangzhou people is a representative work of Chinese beef offal.If one day it wants to compete with Italy’s Venetian beef liver slices and French red wine sirloin, Guangzhou beef offal will be the only representative of China. The content of Guangzhou beef offal can be said to be really complicated. Of course, it still mainly consists of beef brisket, tripe, beef intestines, and beef lungs, and occasionally there are bladders and tendons.These things are either tubular or spongy. The stall owner cut them into small pieces with scissors, and carefully threw them into the foreign country's bubbling old soup and cooked them slowly. There are some white radishes.Beef offal and radish, the best match in the world.

Regarding the street food in Guangzhou, Huang Aidongxi wrote: "(Xiguan) street food stalls also have salty sour, beef offal, aircraft olives and pecking sugar. There are always such stalls near the school. In a transparent glass jar, sweet and sour, made of papaya, radish and mustard greens, a string of one or two cents, poked with a toothpick, and eaten while walking. The beef offal does not need to be sold, the aroma of the braised beef offal smells ten miles away If you like it, just smell it.” Indeed, the more you cook the offal, the more fragrant it becomes. Apart from the aroma of the meat itself, Zhuhou sauce and chili oil are the most commonly used condiments.Of course, every beef miscellaneous stall will claim that they have their own "secret seasoning".In Hong Kong, there is a well-known beef miscellaneous point Jiuji in Sheung Wan. It claims that its cooking method is a secret family recipe with a history of more than 60 years. It is said that someone once wanted to buy this secret recipe for 30 million, but failed.

If you want to eat a small bowl of beef offal deliciously, you must first put yourself in the right position, that is, bring a belly that is neither full nor hungry, and maintain a calm mood, and then, between yourself and the beef offal Choose the right location at the right time - that is, eat the right bowl of offal at the right time and place.As I just said before, a belly that is not full or hungry and a mood that is not in a hurry, in terms of meal time, usually means four or five o'clock in the afternoon. As for the correct location, go in and out of different places in Guangzhou city Almost everyone in Guangzhou has a different holy place for beef offal in their own minds. However, on the road, there are many and densely packed beef offal stalls on Beijing Road, but it’s okay to eat.As for the best beef miscellaneous shop in Guangzhou, I recommend the one diagonally opposite to the main store of Guangzhou Restaurant on Shangxiajiu Pedestrian Street. Half of the intersection is a pedestrian street, so you can enjoy eating and drinking in the open air without being disturbed by dust.The most important thing is that there are one or two poles in front of this grocery store. Although you can’t lean on the railings, you can still hold a bowl of beef offal, lean on the pole comfortably, and chew on the best food in the city. Niu Za, looking at the most beautiful intersection in all of China.