Of all nations, China is endowed with the greatest variety of
provincial cuisines and regional dishes. Some scholars distinguish as many
as eight great cuisines of China, but the Middle Kingdom's culinary
regions are most conveniently categorized by the four cardinal points of
the compass. Even so, an article of this size cannot hope to describe the
amazing variety of fare available throughout Greater China, but this guide
should give you enough basic knowledge to sound like a connoisseur at a
Chinese banquet, no matter where the host is from.
Down South: Canton
Guangzhou (Canton)
is the first stop on any gastronomic tour of China. Cantonese food or
yuecai is celebrated as the king of Chinese cuisines, but most of the
stuff that passes for Cantonese food outside China would end up in the
garbage can of any self-respecting Cantonese native. But what exactly is
good Cantonese food? Here is a guide to the basics of this complicated
cuisine, kindly provided by chef Ou (pronounced Oh!) Weiliang of the
Sampan Seafood Restaurant. The Sampan has earned a reputation as one of
the finer Cantonese restaurants in Beijing, and it takes only a few
mouthfuls of chef Ou's steamed prawn dumplings to see that this reputation
is well deserved.
Chef Ou learned the art of Cantonese cooking in
Hong Kong after what he calls 'the gourmet revolution.' During the 1950s,
Hong Kong was inundated with expert chefs from all over China. The city's
rapid development as an international trading center also brought new,
imported ingredients.
Chefs in Hong Kong began to have access to
ingredients like never before, and they began experimenting," chef Ou says
as he runs his tongue along his lips for added emphasis.
Variety is
a hallmark of Cantonese cuisine, befitting the varied palates of the
denizens of the busiest import/export zone in Asia. A well-balanced
Cantonese meal is comprised of dishes made from subtly,
incongruously-matched ingredients such as steamed cod fish with preserved
duck-egg yolk and minced garlic, braised fresh crab meat with eggplant,
sweet and sour beancurd with BBQ pork and, of course, endless plates of
smaller steamed meat buns and fried dumplings that fall under the general
category of dim sum.
Like most New Yorkers, I think of dim sum as a
Sunday afternoon excursion involving a few hours spent inside the Triple
Eight Palace underneath the Manhattan bridge, randomly picking small
dishes from buffet carts. However I have often felt oppressively full well
into the evening after a Triple Eight brunch. But the dim sum served to me
here is neither heavy nor greasy. This is as it should be, explains chef
Ou.
"Cantonese food should be light, combining a greater variety
of ingredients then other regional cuisines. If it's mediocre, you feel
bloated; if it's good, you're hungry two hours later."
Anyone who
has travelled through Guangdong province has noticed that many animals
considered pets elsewhere are thought of as ingredients for the pot down
south. There is an old Cantonese saying "fei qin zou shou," which roughly
translates as 'if it flies, swims or runs, you can eat it.' Chef Ou tells
me that the reputation is not necessarily deserved, and that his
restaurant serves very little in the way of endangered species. "For
instance," he tells me "I wouldn't serve you snake meat during the warmer
months - it's strictly a winter food."
Nonetheless, most Chinese
people can name at least one Cantonese dish that would not look out of
place in an Indiana Jones movie: 'Tiger Fights
Dragon'
(longhudou) is a delicacy consisting of a roast snake
entwined around a roast cat.
Naked Lunch:
Chaozhou
The next culinary stop is Chaozhou
(Chiuchow), a coastal city only a few hours drive north of Guangzhou.
Despite the geographical proximity, Chaozhou food is unique enough to be
considered in a class by itself.
Expect dishes from this region to
be extremely light and made of only the freshest ingredients. "Chaozhou
cuisine utilizes the most natural of flavors, and cannot hide behind a
wall of excess spices," explains Proprietress Wu, of the Chiuchow Garden
Restaurant, one of the most highly regarded Chaozhou restaurants in
Beijing.
Chaozhou chefs pay special attention to the presentation
of their delicacies. A superb dish that appeals equally to the eye and the
palate is the plain-sounding mashed vegetable with minced chicken - made
to resemble a large green and white yin-yang symbol - the green being a
spinach puree and the white a glutinous chicken and egg-white broth.
Dumpling-like foods abound, but Chaozhou-style means no grease. Stewed
diced chicken wrapped with egg white, for example, chicken wrapped in a
thin skin made from egg whites. Although it is fried, it is not even
faintly oily. Deep fried bean curd is also remarkably light and fresh for
a dish prepared in this way.
"Chaozhou dishes require the freshest
of ingredients. There is nothing to hide behind. If anything is even the
least bit stale, you will know," explains Wu.
Chaozhou's most
famous dishes are probably China's most expensive soups: shark's fin and
bird's nest soup. While the former is really just a fancy fish soup, the
latter is surprisingly sweet and subtly flavored.
The Spicy West: Sichuan and Hunan
When a person from Sichuan or Hunan
asks you if you like spicy food, you'd best consider your reply well, for
natives of these two southwestern provinces do not joke when it comes to
liberal usage of hot red chili pepper, wild pepper and garlic. It is
likely that both regional cuisines were influenced by ancient travelers
from Siam (Thailand) and India.
Sichuan and Hunan are both hot and uncomfortably humid. So why is their
cuisine so spicy? Eating dishes laden with red peppers induces
perspiration; traditional medicine advises that sweat expels bodily
toxins, purges the humors and helps equalize body temperature.
Perspiration also evaporates and causes a confection effect, thereby
cooling off the chili-consumer. Moreover, once your tongue gets used to
the spicy fire, there is an extraordinary range of delicate flavors behind
the chili barrage.
Sichuan cuisine uses chilies that have been
either marinated or fried in oil, as well as Sichuan wild pepper
(huajiao). This crunchy little spice is described as 'ma ' in
Mandarin - the root of anesthesia - because it effectively numbs your
tongue and taste buds. Although the flavor of Sichuan wild pepper has been
compared to that of soap dipped in tiger balm, the hot-cool-numb sensation
produced by crunching on a pepper is addictive.
The Hunanese, who
claim their food is the hottest in China, prefer red peppers unmarinated
and fresh producing a very spicy bite. Mao's home province produces a
number of famous spicy dishes with suitably revolutionary names such as
red-cooked pork (hongshao rou), and red-cooked Hunan fish
(hongshao wuchangyu). Popular appetizers include fried pickled
beans and minced meat, and silverfish fried with soy sauce and chili
oil.
One of the most famous Chinese dishes and a perennial
foreigner favorite is Kung Pao Chicken (gongbao jiding). This dish
first became popular in Sichuan and its legendary origin is a good example
of the willingness of Chinese chefs to improvise. However, this tendency
sometimes leads to unfortunate dishes like a concoction currently popular
in Beijing known as 'deep fried ice-cream on toast'. Gongbaojiding is one
of the good ones though.
Ding Baozhen served under the Qing dynasty
(1644-1911) Emperor Xianfeng as the governor of Shandong province. One day
he arrived home with a group of friends, but his cook hadn't prepared for
guests, and had but a meager chicken breast and some vegetables in the
kitchen. The cook diced the chicken into tiny bits, and fried it up with
cucumber, peanuts, dried red peppers, sugar, onion, garlic, bits of ginger
- sundry ingredients that had been lying around the bottom of the
cupboard.
Ding Baozhen and his guests really enjoyed the improvised
meal, so much so that it became a regular item on the menu. Eventually,
Ding Baozhen was promoted to Governor General of Sichuan province. His
cook w ent with him to Sichuan where he began experimenting with the local
produce, including hot broad bean sauce and Sichuan chili peppers. Soon
the humble chicken dish was all the rage in the province. The people
honored Ding Baozhen by naming the dish after his official name, Gongbao.
(His surname 'Ding' has nothing to with the "ding" in gongbaojiding
which simply means cube or piece.) The moral of this story is that if you
work hard at your craft, like Ding Baozhen's chef, one day a dish will be
named after your boss.
Drunken Birds and Juicy
Meat Bombs: Shanghai
The rice, seafood and fresh
vegetable-based cooking of the southern coastal provinces of Zhejiang and
Jiangsu is generally known as huiyang cai. As the area's biggest city,
Shanghai has made the region's best dishes famous.
If the
personality of a population was to be judged by its food, Sichuan people
would be described as hot tempered, people from Chaozhou as sincere and
unpretentious, and the Cantonese as subtle and complicated. The
Shanghainese could be summed-up in one word: 'drunk.'
Natives of
China's most commercial city are not actually known for excessive
drinking, but their chefs like to soak everything in Shaoxing wine: drunk
chicken, drunk pigeon and drunk crab are Shanghai staples. The city's
chefs are also known for an impressive selection of cold meat appetizers
and checkerboard-patterned deep fried fish. Popular dishes include
stir-fried fresh-water eels and finely ground white pepper, and red-stewed
fish - a boiled carp in sweet and sour sauce.
Perhaps the dish most
closely associated with the Pearl of the Orient are the hairy freshwater
crabs that come into season in October. Poet and Essayist, Li Yu (1611-80)
wrote about his passion for such crabs:
"Meat as white as jade, golden
roeS to try to use seasoning to improve its taste is like holding up a
torch to brighten the sunshine."
Xiaolong bao (little
steamer dumplings) are a Shanghai favorite with locals and outsiders
alike. Similar to many Cantonese dim sum dumplings, xiaolong bao are
delicate steamed packets that cause a little explosion of juice and meat
in your mouth.
North: Beijing and
Beyond
Peking Duck is justly famous as a major
world dish. Peking Duck preparation methods were developed and refined
during the early Qing dynasty (1644-1911). The fowl is cleaned and stuffed
with burning millet stalks and other aromatic combustibles, and then
slow-cooked in an oven heated by a fire made of fragrant wood. When the
duck is fully roasted, the meat is sliced into small pieces, each one
attached to a piece of crispy skin. The duck is served with pancakes,
scallions and a delicious soy-based brown sauce.
Despite a famous flagship dish like Peking Duck, Beijing food is
generally recognized as a close relative or even subcategory of Shandong
cuisine, or lucai . Like food from China's Northeast (dongbei cai) and
Shanxi Province, Shandong cuisine is wheat-based and utilizes
strong-flavored vegetables like kale, cabbage and potatoes. Simple cooking
techniques (steaming, stewing and stir-frying) are combined with the
robust flavors of heavy soy sauce, garlic (often raw) and scallions. The
proximity of the sheep- and goat-filled Mongolian plains has ensured that
mutton is also an essential part of the Northern diet, although many
Chinese people complain they cannot eat mutton because it has a "gagging
odor" (shanwei'r).
Chinese Soul
Food
The popularity of exotic ethnic cuisine is
on the rise in Beijing, with a bevvy of new restaurants serving fare from
the far reaches of the empire.
In addition to a vast array of
different kinds of Chinese food, Beijingers
can also indulge cravings
for the culinary creations of a good number of the PRC's 56 official
minorities - which you may or may not recognize as
'Chinese.'
Mongolian Hotpot is a winter favorite in Beijing but
tastes nothing like the food offered in Ulan Bator. Diners put thinly
sliced meat and vegetables into a broth in a pot boiling away at the
center of the table. A moment later, a cooked morsel is removed, dipped in
a sesame paste and garlic sauce and eaten. Hotpot eaters usually give a
nod to Mongolia by ordering large quantities of mutton, but you can also
order a wide range of ingredients from fresh vegetables to congealed blood
and pig brains.
Sichuan Hotpot is similar to Mongolian Hotpot, but
the broth is made with red chilies and Sichuan wild peppers. It was
originally served as a street snack, with the meat and vegetables served
on skewers for easy boiling. The late 1990s have seen an ongoing craze for
what is known on Beijing's streets as "malatang."
You won't find
any pork at a Hui establishment, but food served by this Chinese Muslim
minority is heavy on fried, spiced lamb. Delicious baked or flat breads
coated in sesame seeds are a special feature.
Food served in Uighur
restaurants is also pork-free, but this Muslim ethnic group from Xinjiang
prefer their lamb roasted over a fire. Uighur cuisine is also noted for
its fine spicy tomato salads, flat bread called naan, noodle dishes and
lightly spiced soups made with bell pepper, tomato and
mutton.
Tibetan cooking may not take you to Nirvana, but then you
try growing fresh ingredients at 3000 meters above sea level! The staple
is tsampa, ground barley usually cooked into a porridge and served with
lip-smacking rancid yak butter tea. Dumplings known as momo are wholesome
and filling. A Tibetan meal on the wild side might include yak penis with
caterpillar fungus.
Guizhou sour fish soup is a hotpot dish rather
than a proper soup. The provincial speciality is popular in Beijing,
although here the fish are not put into the hotpot live, as happens in
Guizhou. Some other Guizhou specialities include pickled radish, shredded
dried beef (served cold), and dipping sauces made of fermented tofu.
Guizhou food is very spicy.
In Taiwan, every town claims to make
the best beef noodle soup, a dish that any restaurant claiming Taiwanese
affiliation should serve. A Taiwanese taste worth acquiring, especially if
you are a fan of cheeses like Limburger, is "stinky tofu" (chou
doufu), a dish made of fermented bean curd, served with pickled
vegetables and hot sauce.
The Dai people of Yunnan are
ethno-linguistic cousins of the Thai and their cuisine has similarities to
Thai food. Deep-fried tree moss is surprisingly delicious, as are the many
rice-based dishes served in coconut shells and hollowed out pineapple
halves.
