What is local cuisine?

※The development and utilization of "local cuisine"

Chinese cooking ranks first in the world for its superb skills, exquisite seasoning and rich ethnic characteristics. The development of Chinese cooking, tracing back to its roots, has always been inseparable from the "local dishes" (including local snacks) of various ethnic groups and places. It is these folk "local dishes" that have been processed and perfected by cooks of past generations to form the local dishes in various parts of our country. Local famous dishes. The so-called "local cuisine" refers to folk dishes with distinctive local characteristics that are made in a certain area by using unique local products. It is the embodiment of the regional diet of the Chinese people, the foundation of local cuisine, and the essence of Chinese cuisine. Origin, it can be said that "local cuisine" occupies an extremely important position in people's dietary life no matter in the past, present or future.

1. “You can rely on mountains to eat mountains, and you can rely on water to eat water.”

This is a major feature of local food culture. Country home stoves usually cook whatever is available. It is easy to obtain materials, cooked on the spot, and extremely delicious. In our country, there are many rolling and lofty mountains. The villagers who live among the mountains naturally have to rely on the mountains to rely on them. There are all kinds of strange things in the mountains and wilds, such as small ones such as pheasants, turtle doves, hares, snakes and even frogs. They are all common dishes available to the people in the mountain villages.

In the Nanshan District of Fujian, there is a kind of frog called Shilin. There is also a kind of frog called Shilin that grows under the rocks beside streams and deep pools in the Lushan area, a famous scenic tourist resort in Jiangxi. The meat of these frogs is not only tender and delicious, but also has very good nourishing effects.

For a long time, these have been casually caught and cooked by people in mountainous villages. Now they are introduced into shops and become the delicacies of mountains and villages that are purchased by hotels and restaurants. In the diet, in addition to meat dishes such as birds and animals, there are also vegetarian dishes that grow wild all over the mountains, especially fungi, such as wild mushrooms, fungus, cinnamon, etc., which are good raw materials for the people in the mountain villages to cook. These wild vegetables and mushrooms that grow in the mountains have long been coveted by urban nobles.

In mainland my country, there are many rivers and lakes, which produce all kinds of strange aquatic animals and plants, which have brought many benefits to the dietary life of villagers everywhere. Those famous freshwater fish, such as Yellow River carp, Yangtze River saury, Fuchun River shad, Songjiang perch, Zhuxi giant salamander, etc., are commonplace and not surprising to local villagers. There are also other kinds of fresh water, which are often eaten as food. Local delicacies on the table include snails, shrimps, clams, crabs, etc. In addition, aquatic plants such as water chestnuts, lotus roots, and lotus seeds are also favorites of villagers who rely on water.

In addition, in areas with developed nomadic and animal husbandry industries in my country, abundant beef and mutton are the main food raw materials for ethnic minorities. Some of the more special cooking methods and meat and dairy products with strong ethnic flavors created by them in their long-term life practice (these are in urgent need of development and utilization, especially halal food) are still favored by the majority of herdsmen. Loved and welcomed, there are many halal foods among them. Among dairy products, the experience of my country's ethnic minorities in manufacturing, processing, and eating dairy products is particularly valuable, and it enriches the content of Chinese food culture. Such as Mongolian milk tofu and milk puffs, Kazakh kumiss, Tibetan yogurt and milk residue, etc. The unique food styles of these ethnic groups occupy a particularly important position in our country's food culture.

2. "Natural flavor" This is the principle that should be followed when developing local dishes.

There is a big difference between the unique flavor of local cuisine and the meticulous workmanship of restaurants and hotels. However, when the wealthy people living in the shops and temples occasionally ate it, they often praised it and spread it widely throughout the world. As a result, the originally unknown local dish suddenly became worth a hundred times as much and became famous all over the world. Su Dongpo praised in "Cai Geng Fu": "The method of boiling and eating cyanine, radish, and bitter chestnut does not require fermented sauce, but it has a natural flavor." Local dishes use local raw materials, local cooking, local products, and local eating methods. They indeed have a unique local flavor. This local flavor is an expression of the natural taste. We can often see some yellow-haired and blue-eyed people eating roasted sweet potatoes on the side of the road, staying in hotels and eating food stalls on the street. The more local, the more foreign it is to them, while the foreign Chinese are even more hesitant about the traditional local flavor. Think about it again and again. However, there are many local dishes from ancient times to the present that cannot be passed down with the changes of the times. The dietary and cooking life of ordinary rural residents in ancient times is generally impossible to find in classics, which brings some difficulties to understanding the production status of folk local dishes in history. We can only glimpse the essence of ancient local dishes from the few words recorded by literati.

This is really a great loss for Chinese cooking, but it also gives a broad sky to those who come after us.

In today's era when urban food life is very rich, food industrialization is highly developed, and people are more pursuing healthy food, so the diet has begun to sing the slogans of "return to nature", "return to nature", and It is under this dietary trend that the development of local dishes has been welcomed and valued by the public. Due to its distinct "local" characteristics, local cuisine has a rich pastoral flavor but is widely applicable. Whether it is a four- or five-star high-end restaurant or a family-style individual restaurant, these varieties are inseparable. They are really the choice of high-end customers. Welcome, middle and low-end customers love it more sincerely. It is not only loved by locals, but also attractive to outsiders. Tourists come here all the way just to experience the "strange smell" they have never tasted before. It is often seen that some large hotels also open a "local style restaurant" or "village style food street", and their decoration design is also quite original. This kind of conception and layout is to give diners an immersive association. A feeling of being in the countryside, a spiritual enjoyment.

While people's food habits today are becoming more and more advanced, they also appear to be more primitive as they eat. While people admire nature and hope to return to nature, they are also fascinated by the original taste of nature. Therefore, those rural folk customs The food life has also become an aspect of life that urban people yearn for. When it comes to dish innovation in the catering industry, it would be a smart move to start from here.

Laoliu Hotel in Guihua Town, a suburb of Xianning City, is a hotel specializing in Xianning local cuisine. For more than ten years, they have discovered many dishes with Xianning's unique local flavor from the public, and now they have become their signature dishes. For example, steamed bacon with dried beans, pork with wheat sauce, bitter vegetable soup, boiled loach with cured hoof, roasted wild boar meat, noodles, crispy rice porridge, etc. The raw materials used are all Xianning specialties, and some of the ingredients are unique to Xianning. In recent years, the local dishes of Lao Liu Hotel have become more and more popular, and many people from out of town come here just to have a bite of wheat sauce pork.

Local flavor dishes are popular in thousands of households in rural areas. Absorbing the nutrients of folk local dishes is used in urban restaurants, which can open up new breakthroughs in dish production and create new styles of dishes. Although some local dishes also pay attention to the shape and presentation of the dishes, they do not insist on pursuing the superficial splendor, but pay more attention to simplicity and authenticity. As long as they are suitable for accompanying meals or suitable for health and fitness needs, they can be served to anyone regardless of wealth. dining table. Take corn on the cob, for example. Nowadays, "boiled corn on the cob" is not only served on the tables of large hotels, but also in the restaurants of KFC and McDonald's. Dishes such as fried corn with pine nuts, golden corn, and corn soup have also been developed. These "cooked corn grains" The development and utilization of dishes are the embodiment of today's back-to-basics diet trend.

Look again, pickles, pickles, kimchi, and sauerkraut have become common items on today’s restaurant tables. Bean curd, bean paste, sweet sauce, hot sauce, and fermented bean curd have long been indispensable in hotel kitchens. Preserved eggs, bad eggs, drunken eggs, chickens, bacon, sausages, drunken crabs, salted fish, etc. have become the favorite varieties of master chefs. Drawing nutrients from local dishes and using valuable things for my own use is a test paper placed in the hands of today's chefs. Chefs of all generations in our country absorbed the essence from the soil of local food. For example, Yangzhou egg fried rice and Sichuan twice-cooked pork with local characteristics originated from the folk and became famous in hotels.

3. An incorrect development trend

But now, just two years ago, there was a violent "retro" trend in the catering industry. What is the "Tu Tao Village"? ", "Red Lake Guild Hall"... Restaurants with rustic names have appeared one after another, strongly advocating "eating large pieces of meat and drinking in large bowls" with a Jianghu style of food, arousing the strong "retro-style" of urbanites. "Emotion", the restaurant layout is like a banquet at the Red Lake, or a criticism meeting, and the various services are inexplicably fresh. The dishes are almost all "eating too rough": local bacon, local kimchi and other dishes with strange names, and the cooking methods are also arbitrary. Looking at these new restaurants, their business strategy is not just to use the word "weird" to attract business, but to take advantage of people's curiosity. Once people lose their sense of novelty and become accustomed to it, they will close down. These restaurants fundamentally violate the traditional spirit of Chinese cooking. They do not really pay attention to the development of local dishes, but only focus on the word "local" to make a fuss about it. They try to use China's extensive history and culture to recreate history to please the world and create a Putting the cart before the horse, forgetting that modernity is modernity, and modern people do not want to live in the old era.

Conclusion:

Local cuisine is simple and delicious, and pays attention to the "natural taste". Whether in the past, present or future, it occupies an extremely important position in people's dietary life. Restaurant chefs should open their minds and broaden their horizons. They can introduce local dishes, especially those that have not yet been developed, into transplants or cook them carefully. They should carefully select ingredients, process them carefully, control the heat, and season them authentically to truly show the flavor of the dishes. With its "natural taste", it will surely attract batches of high, medium and low-end customers. As long as you are a thoughtful person and good at learning, you will definitely be able to innovate extraordinary dishes.