1. Excellent material selection
Choosing ingredients is the primary skill of China chefs, and it is also the basis of making a good Chinese food. It needs rich knowledge and skilled application skills. The raw materials used in various cuisines include main ingredients, ingredients, auxiliary materials and seasonings. There is a lot of pressure and certain rules. In a word, it is the word "essence" and "essence", which is what Confucius said: "Fine food never tires, fine food never tires". The so-called "refined" refers to the selected raw materials, taking into account their varieties, producing areas, seasons, growth periods and other characteristics, with fresh, tender and excellent as the top priority. For example, Beijing roast duck is produced in Beijing and weighs about 2.5 Jin. Too big is old, too small is not fat. Sometimes the ingredients are specially treated according to the flavor of the dishes. For example, Hangzhou's famous dish "West Lake Vinegar Fish" uses live straw-wrapped fish produced in the lake. Although delicious, the meat is loose and earthy. It must be put into a special bamboo cage and "starved" in clear water for 2 days. Once the meat is firm, the earthy smell will be removed, and then it will be tender and delicious, and it will taste like crab meat. Another example is Beijing famous dish instant-boiled mutton. It's a castrated ram from Inner Mongolia, weighing about 20 kg. After slaughter, bury it in an ice pool for 2-3 days, and then slice it, so that the color can be tender and not fat. The so-called "essence" means choosing the best raw materials. For example, the famous dish "kung pao chicken" should use the freshness of chicken breast with bamboo shoots to ensure the freshness of the meat. "Sliced pork" must be made of pork tenderloin, which meets the standard and tastes tender, smooth and delicious. "Steamed pork with lotus leaf powder" should choose pork belly to make the juice moist and the meat tender and fragrant. Excellence is based on richness. China's diet covers everything, including heaven, earth, water, earth, plants and animals. For example, besides chickens, horses, cows, sheep, pigs, meat, donkeys and other ordinary animals, there are also ants, mice, snakes, cats, even scorpions and even maggots (such as the so-called "meat tooth vegetables"). Not only daily chicken intestines become delicacies, but almost all parts of animals can be eaten, and the more bizarre and unique they are, such as elephant trunk, scarlet lips, bear's paw, deer tail, snake gall, monkey brain, and even various animal's * * devices have become aphrodisiac and tonic delicacies, such as deer whip, dog whip, money meat, tiger Dan and so on. Some foods with strange tastes have also become delicious, such as sauerkraut and bitter gourd, while stinky tofu that violates the diet rules smells bad and tastes good. During the Han and Tang Dynasties, it was customary to call delicious things "eight treasures". Regarding the Song Dynasty, Bazhen refers to eight precious cooking materials. There are many series of "Eight Treasures" in Qing Dynasty, which mainly refer to banquets of eight kinds of precious raw materials. For example, the "four treasures" of the "Manchu-Han banquet" refers to the banquet of four groups of eight treasures. Four treasures or eight treasures, namely, eight treasures of mountain, eight treasures of sea, eight treasures of poultry and eight treasures of grass, each refer to 32 precious raw materials, specifically:
Eight treasures of the mountain: hump, bear's paw, monkey brain, scarlet lips, elephant, leopard fetus, rhinoceros tail and deer tendon.
Eight treasures of the sea: bird's nest, shark's fin, Sichuan aconite, fish belly, fish bone, abalone, seal and pike (giant salamander).
Eight treasures among birds: red swallow, flying dragon, quail, swan, partridge, colorful finch, turtledove and red-headed eagle.
Herb eight treasures: Hericium erinaceus, Tremella, Dictyophora dictyophora, decoction, donkey's nest, Morchella esculenta, flower mushroom, day lily and Yunxiangxin.
2. Skilled knife work
Knife work, that is, the chef knife-works the raw materials to make them into a uniform shape for cooking, so as to adapt to the heat, heat evenly, facilitate eating, and maintain a certain beauty, which is one of the keys of cooking technology. As early as ancient times, China attached importance to the use of knife-cutting. After repeated practice by chefs of past dynasties, he created rich knife-cutting methods, such as straight knife-cutting method, slicing knife-cutting method (marking knife marks on raw materials without cutting them off), carving knife-cutting method, etc., and processed raw materials into pieces, strips, silk, blocks, diced, granules, velvet, mud and other forms and pills and balls. In particular, the combination of knife skills and hand waving makes clinker and edible raw materials into artistic and lifelike fancy platters of flowers, birds, insects, fish, flowers and plants, such as Prosperous Dragon and Phoenix, Proud, Magpie in the Plum, Lotus Crane and Double Phoenix Flower Basket. For example, "Proud as a Peacock" is made of fifteen kinds of raw materials, including duck meat, ham, pig tongue, quail eggs, crab claws, cucumber, etc., and it has been completed through twenty-two fine knife work and assembly processes.
In the writings of ancient writers, sentences praising the chef's superb knife skills often gushed out. Zhuangzi, Master of Health Care, describes the understanding of bovine essence. After three years of hard training, skilled scalpers have reached the point of "overstepping all cows" and "being comfortable". "The touch of the hand, the leaning of the shoulder, the trip of the foot, the squatting of the knee, the sound of the knife. Seeing him understand cattle is like watching ancient dance; Smelling his knife is like smelling ancient music. It is also an art from the point of view. In the Tang Dynasty, there were indeed artistic performances with knives. " "Youyang Miscellaneous Notes" said, "Those who have filial piety in the south are good at cultivating and repairing, and thin can be lightly blown; Whether the knife is sharp and rhythmic. Show off your skills because you meet people. "
Words describing ancient swordsmanship can also be quoted as follows:
Fish raised in the pond will spoil its carp. A small part of the wound, such as hair awn; Scattered like a valley, accumulated like red. Residual aromatic odor, syncope and difference.
-Yi Fu's "seven excuses"
Cut the wings of cicadas, cut off fibers and analyze them. Tired as a pile of valleys, away from the snow. Light flies with the wind, but the blade doesn't cut.
-Cao Zhi's "Four Wonders"
Life is fragmented, flying frost, red tendons scattered, plain skin falling snow. The building can't go to the toilet, so Qiu Chan's wings are not thin enough.
-Zhang Xie's Seven Lives
It is not only writers who regard exquisite knife work as a perfect artistic appreciation, but also ordinary people often see it at a glance. In ancient times, in order to broaden their horizons, someone specially organized a fencing performance, which caused a sensation. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Zeng Sanyi said that one year Mount Tai held a unique performance, and "the best art in the world" naturally included people who were good at cooking. "There was a man who asked a man to bow down to the ground with his bare back, carrying a catty of meat on his back as several, and carrying it with a knife. Try to withdraw the meat, the soldier's back is not hurt at all. " Taking a person's back as a chopping block, cutting pork and shredding it without hurting his back, this move cannot but be amazing.
3. Unique temperature
Temperature is one of the keys to form the flavor characteristics of dishes. But the temperature changes quickly, and it is difficult to get it right without many years of practical experience. Therefore, mastering the proper temperature is the stunt of chef China. Chef China can accurately identify different firepower such as strong fire, medium fire and weak fire, be familiar with the heat resistance of various raw materials, skillfully control the time of using fire, and be good at mastering the properties of heat transfer objects (oil, water and gas). They can also determine the cooking order according to the tenderness, water content, shape and size of the raw materials and the thickness of the whole block, and use them flexibly to make the cooked dishes tender and crisp. As early as ancient times, chefs in China had made a special study on heat, and expounded the changing rules and main points of heat: "Five flavors and three ingredients, nine boiling and nine changes, will win with it, without losing its reason." Su Shi, a great poet in the Northern Song Dynasty, was not only a gourmet, but also a chef. He created the famous Dongpo meat dishes, which is closely related to his good use of cooking time. He also wrote these experiences into a stew poem: "Slow fire, less water, natural beauty when cooking." Later generations used his experience, with a small sealed fire cook the meat. The meat is original, oily and bright red, rotten but not broken, waxy but not greasy, tender as tofu, good palatability and outstanding flavor.
The heat is the most important and the most difficult to grasp and explain in cooking. It can really be described as "Tao can be Tao, extraordinary Tao", and whether a chef can become a famous chef is the key. Therefore, when cooking in China, chefs accumulate life experience, realize their own spirituality, give full play to their subtle observation experience and rich imagination, and create the art of food. The so-called skillful operation and undivided attention are really "knowing gains and losses".