Henan has a long history, but why is Henan cuisine not famous?

Text | edamame, source | WeChat WeChat official account "Sanjiang Kitchen" (ID: sanjiangfood), Observer Network has been authorized to reprint.

"Sichuan, Shandong, Guangdong, Huaiyang, Fujian, Zhejiang, Hunan and Huizhou" are the eight major cuisines in China and the representative of China cuisine. Even in areas outside the eight major cuisines, many people can blurt out some representative dishes, such as braised pork in the northeast, fish in sour soup in Guizhou, and hand-grabbed meat in the northwest ... But when it comes to Henan, many people can't take it.

In this era when the whole people call themselves "foodies", Henan cuisine rarely attracts attention, and representative dishes are even rarer. A few years ago, China on the Tip of the Tongue was very popular, involving Henan cuisine, and many places were very low-key. In addition to the baked noodles of the Yellow River carp, I also told a story about a Henan mother who accompanied her to learn braise in soy sauce in Shanghai. After the episode was broadcast, it also triggered a big debate on the practice of braised pork on the Internet.

In fact, when asked about the typical local cuisine in Henan, both outsiders and locals will answer "Hui Mian". But in the eyes of local gourmets and chefs, this is a naked humiliation of Henan cuisine. Hui noodles are just a snack, how can they represent Henan cuisine? Only those big dishes, famous dishes and hard dishes can count. Embarrassed, few people can name several famous dishes of Henan cuisine.

Speaking of it, the history of Henan cuisine is not only pale, but also infinite in scenery. Needless to say, in the first half of last century, the status of Henan cuisine was comparable to that of Shandong cuisine, and the earliest restaurant chain in China was Houdefu. Why did Henan cuisine lose its living soil in just a few decades?

Luoyang water mat originated in the Tang Dynasty and has 24 dishes, including eight cold dishes, four big dishes, eight Chinese dishes and four table dishes.

Peony Swallow is a certain character, and the finished product is like a white peony flower, which is dazzling in color and floats on the noodle soup.

How is Henan cuisine formed?

The development of cooking in China is often inseparable from the development of history, and Henan cuisine is no exception. As early as 4,000 years ago in Xia Dynasty, Wang Qi, the founder of People's Republic of China (PRC), hosted a banquet in Yuzhou to entertain guests, which was called "Diaoyutai" in history. "Harmony of Five Flavors" and "Taste with Soup" put forward by Yi Yin in Shang Dynasty are the earliest cooking theories related to Henan cuisine.

Several capitals in Henan history also promoted the development of Henan cuisine, such as "Eight Treasures of the Zhou Dynasty" recorded in historical books and "Luoyang Water Seats" customized by Wu Zetian in Tang Dynasty. By the Song Dynasty, the capital city Bianliang was already the largest consumption city in China, and restaurants, restaurants and tea shops depicted in The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival were all over the streets. There are hundreds of dishes in the "seventy-two shops" recorded in Tokyo Dream, and Henan cuisine has reached its peak.

Later, when the Song Dynasty moved south, the influence of Henan cuisine declined, but it still had a great influence on Jiangnan cooking. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Henan cuisine declined, but it still occupied a place in the competition of major cuisines. In the Ming Dynasty, Brahma Lu Conglu recorded: "In Shaanxi, Shandong, Sichuan, Yunnan, Henan, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other provinces, food has its own flavor and characteristics."

At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Yuan Shikai came to power, and Henan cuisine also ushered in moderns.

By the end of the Qing Dynasty, only Shandong cuisine was the most popular in Beijing, and the limelight completely overwhelmed other cuisines. According to China Cooking:

Surrounded by Shandong cuisine, a Henan restaurant fought its way out. This restaurant is Houdefu. Chen, the founder of Houdefu, is from Qixian County, Henan Province, and his parents are beggars. Chen came to Beijing as a teenager and worked in a restaurant. Later, she learned to cook and was good at cooking. 1902, a tobacco shop in Dashilan, Beijing closed, where Chen founded Houdefu, which specializes in Henan cuisine.

In the first few years, Houdefu's business was not good. However, with the collapse of the imperial system, the rise of one person changed Hou Defu's fate, that is, Yuan Shikai, a native of Xiangcheng, Henan.

Yuan Shikai likes eating fish as well as fishing. When he lived in seclusion in Huanshang Village, he claimed to be an old man in Huanshang and built his own fish pond to raise fish. Yuan Shikai's favorite fish is the yellow river carp in the black port north of Kaifeng. He thinks it can't be compared with other fish. Yuan Shikai likes to eat soft and smooth baked noodles of crucian carp, also called soft and smooth baked noodles of crucian carp. It is a famous Henan dish now, made of sweet and sour soft juice, also called sweet and sour fish baked noodles or soft and smooth baked noodles of Yellow River crucian carp.

Speaking of crucian carp noodles, it's actually not complicated to make. The main ingredient is the Yellow River carp, because the water in the Yellow River is fast and cold, so the meat quality of the Yellow River carp is "fresh, white and tender", and then the fish is mixed with sweet and sour sauce and roasted noodles, and a carp roasted noodles is finished. And eating this dish is more particular. You must use a spoon to hold fish and sauce, use chopsticks to hold noodles, and send them to your mouth at the same time.

As for how Yuan Shikai, who lives in Beijing, ate fresh Yellow River carp, there are two stories in history. The first is that local officials in Henan province fill boxes with uncondensed lard and put live fish just caught in this lard. With the condensation of oil, fish suffocate and die, and they are completely isolated from the outside air. The second theory is that local officials put spring water into vats and fish into vats and transported them to Beijing by train.

According to another record, when Feng was president of Beiyang, he ordered people to collect fish from Zhongnanhai and sell them at a high price, including fish released by Yuan Shikai from Henan as a tribute. So, on the whole, the second statement is more credible.

With the rise of Yuan Shikai, Houdefu, a hotel in Henan, became a gathering place for dignitaries, and Houdefu's business suddenly improved. 19 16 Yuan Shikai proclaimed himself emperor, and Hou Defu used the signboard of "Henan people" to create public opinion. For a time, Hou Defu's business grew bigger and bigger, with abundant funds and famous chefs, becoming a famous restaurant in Beijing at that time.

The former site of the century-old Henan Restaurant before Hou Defu's collapse is located in Deshengmennei Street, Beijing.

In Liang Shiqiu's works, Henan cuisine can be compared with Shandong cuisine.

Yuan Shikai announced the abolition of the monarchy 83 days after he proclaimed himself emperor, and later died of illness. Houdefu, who became famous by Yuan Shikai, was not greatly affected, because Houdefu's craftsmanship was indeed ranked first in Beijing at that time.

Liang Shiqiu is an out-and-out gourmet. He can almost tell which hutong in Beijing has what famous food and which restaurant has what flavor dishes. In his book Talking about Eating in Duck Shed, he described many masterpieces of Beijing cuisine, including Quanjude's roast duck and cheap square. Roasted mutton in Zhengyanglou, BBQ Bay and BBQ season; Houdefu's iron pot eggs, tile fish and walnut waist; Crystal shrimp, soup bag and sweet soup walnut cheese in Yuhuatai; Zhimeizhai's pot roast chicken, fried wonton and crispy fried belly; Hibiscus chicken slices, mullet thread, roasted winter bamboo shoots with shrimps and steamed duck liver with distiller's grains in Dongxinglou; Fried shrimp, salted shrimp and so on in Zhongxintang.

Most of these restaurants were Shandong cuisine, which was also the mainstream of Beijing at that time. There is only Houdefu in Henan Hotel. In Liang Shiqiu's works, Hou Defu is comparable to Shandong Cuisine Restaurant, and Hou Defu's famous dishes are: Yellow River Carp Baked Noodles, Fried Walnut tenderloin, Iron Pot Eggs, Tile Fish, Double Cooked Fish, etc. It's already making people drool.

Tilfish is a stout yellow river carp or silver carp, and the best part of the middle section is taken. Knife workers are also very particular about not only peeling and cutting fish fillets moderately, but also avoiding cutting fishbones too much. Sliced fish fillets are coated with protein powder instead of batter. Put hot oil into the pot, fry until yellow, then add rock sugar with the best lotus root powder to make sweet and sour juice. Add a spoonful of hot oil while it is hot, pour it on the fried fish pieces, and finally sprinkle with Jiang Mo. Serve.

The famous fried walnut tenderloin is made of the best pork tenderloin, cut into rectangular pieces in vertical and horizontal directions, carved with a vertical knife and a cross knife, and then fried in an oil pan. At this time, the oil should be hot but not boiling, fried until it turns yellow, the waist slices shrink into a circle, and the knife edge opens into a walnut shape, hence the name walnut waist. Deep-fried golden walnut loin, eat with pepper and salt while it is hot. Crispy and tender for a while, neither soft nor hard, and the pepper is full of flavor.

In the 15th year of the Republic of China (1926), Beijing Morning Post once wrote:

Not only that, Hou Defu opened more than a dozen semicolons in the heyday of the Republic of China. Shops have expanded to Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Harbin, Xi, Qingdao, Chongqing, Nanjing, Changchun, Chengdu, Hongkong, Taiwan Province and Japan.

Nowadays, when it comes to Henan cuisine, the first thing that many people think of is Huimian Noodles, Henan.

In the last twenty or thirty years, even native Henan people didn't know about Henan cuisine.

There are also reports from Henan media that Zhou Enlai personally decided to use Henan cuisine as the state banquet for founding ceremony banquet in 1949. However, the three craftsmen found no other information to confirm the incident.

After 1980s, more and more restaurants appeared in the streets of China. Sichuan cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, Western cuisine and Japanese cuisine ... all kinds of dishes are popular, but Henan cuisine remains silent. Houdefu, as the signboard of Henan cuisine, was renamed Henan Restaurant during the Cultural Revolution, and its old name was restored to 1988, and it changed places several times in the next 20 years. Finally, at 20 10, 10, Houdefu closed down due to poor economic benefits.

As early as 1999, the Henan provincial government proposed "revitalizing Henan cuisine", and there will be related activities every few years thereafter. However, even Henan people don't know much about Henan cuisine.

Daokou roast chicken is also a famous food in Henan, which is as famous as Beijing roast duck and Jinhua ham and is known as "the best chicken in the world"

Why is Henan cuisine so famous?

Henan cuisine has been popular for only a short hundred years. What happened to make Henan cuisine fall out of favor?

Hou Ruixuan, the first head chef and national treasure chef of Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, is a native of Henan and a master of Henan cuisine. His disciple, China cooking master Li Zhishun, once opened a hotel in Zhengzhou, dealing in authentic traditional Henan cuisine. Li Zhishun is famous for sticking to the traditional skills of Henan cuisine. He insists on hanging soup in his shop every day. Hanging soup is an indispensable part of Henan cuisine, but the cost is high, time-consuming and laborious, and it is too high and too little. Finally, the hotel closed and Li Zhishun found another place. Some people commented that "the master can't open a shop, and he will die if he opens a shop. It has always been like this." Similar to Henan cuisine, there is Shandong cuisine, because the requirements for ingredients and soup are very high, and in this fast-paced era, Shandong cuisine is no longer the glory of the Republic of China.

At the same time, Henan cuisine is also influenced by external factors. In the 1950s and 1960s, various political movements continued, the economy was depressed, and the supply of materials was tight, which dealt a great blow to Henan cuisine, which focused on raw materials and edible materials. At that time, many dishes could not be cooked. China cooking master Lv Changhai once said in an interview:

Wang Xuetai said in the history of Chinese food culture:

Most of the eight major cuisines were produced in economically developed areas in the past century. Although Sichuan cuisine was born in inland provinces, it is still supported by developed cities such as Chengdu and Chongqing. On the other hand, from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, Henan has been in constant war and is not an economically developed province. After 1949, Kaifeng, once the core city of Henan cuisine, gradually declined. Zhengzhou, the new provincial capital, was not a regional central city for a long time, and the influence of Henan cuisine gradually declined.

The most fundamental thing is the taste, just like the popularity of pepper, which has various internal and external reasons, but the basis is the attraction of pepper itself to people. The famous Henan cuisine teacher summed up the characteristics of Henan cuisine and said that Henan cuisine has five flavors, with moderate quality and taste. "Medium" means that Henan cuisine is not sweet, salty, spicy or sour, and seeks between sweet, salty, sour, spicy, flat and light. "Harmony" refers to the integration of East, West, North and South, in order to achieve unity, to resolve the ups and downs, not to seek blindness, but to seek harmony.

However, in the last two or three decades, all attractive foods, whether spicy or delicious seafood and aquatic products in Sichuan, have a strong regional or extreme flavor. The taste of Henan cuisine is in the middle, but it doesn't have its own characteristics, so it can't leave a deep impression on diners and become an embarrassing existence.