What is morning tea?

Morning tea is a social eating custom in China. The custom of morning tea is very common in southern China, especially in Guangdong, Yangzhou, Taizhou and Yancheng, Jiangsu. Speaking of Guangdong's traditional culture, morning tea is one of the highlights. Food in Guangzhou, taste in Xiguan.

Xiguan is the core area of Guangzhou's food culture for more than 300 years and the birthplace of the most authentic Cantonese dim sum. The top ten famous snacks in Guangzhou are all from Xiguan area. When I went to Guangzhou, I had to come to Xiguan for tea and morning tea. Xiguan is naturally famous. Every weekend or holiday, Cantonese people will help the old and take care of the young, or make an appointment with three or five friends to gather in the teahouse to "sigh for morning tea". "Sigh" means enjoyment in Cantonese, so it can be seen that drinking morning tea is a pleasant pastime in the eyes of Cantonese people, and it is no different from other entertainment activities in this respect.

Basic information

Chinese name

morning tea

major constituent

Black tea and oolong tea .......

Someone's taste

fragrance

origin

Guangdong and Yang Tai, Jiangsu

trait

Dried silk is cut from dried tofu. First, a piece of dried bean curd is evenly cut into about 20 pieces with a knife, then obliquely cut into filaments equivalent to matchsticks, and then poured into boiling water for repeated scalding. Because of the alkali, dried silk is soft and elastic to chew.

Spread out completely

The origin of morning tea

Su Shi Zao cha

Morning tea in Yang Tai can be traced back to the early and middle Qing Dynasty. "Take the first prize, stop tea before the rain, and try new tea after the rain." This is a poem by Zhu Yuting, a Taizhou poet in the Qing Dynasty. As the poet described, before the middle of Qing Dynasty, the teahouses in Taizhou only made green tea, during which famous teahouses such as Yuxuan, Luyulou, Guangshengju and Pinxiang were born. In the late Qing dynasty, foreign businessmen and local people opened teahouses in succession, and the competition among their peers was fierce. In order to attract business, some teahouses sell dried silk, pasta and other snacks in addition to green tea. This innovative business philosophy has gradually influenced the catering industry in Taizhou.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, tea houses such as Fuchun, Hailingchun, Yiyuan, Residence House and Dadong Restaurant came into being. Zhezheju is a well-known old shop in Taizhou Teahouse. Its shop used to be near Sunjiaqiao. In the Qing Dynasty, because this family's morning tea was delicious, all Taizhou people went to Zhezheju to taste the morning tea, so that the business of this teahouse was booming, and it was difficult to sit late, but there were diners waiting in the store, which left a two-part allegorical saying among Taizhou locals, that is, "Why are you such a person?" It shows that this person is stubborn and inflexible.

Dadong Restaurant was founded in the early 1940s. It's owned by a boss named Wu, from Dongtai. Boss Wu knows business very well. After he opened the shop, he changed the monotonous pattern of Taizhou morning tea varieties. He made great efforts in the quality and variety of morning tea, and introduced new varieties of morning tea such as fish noodle soup, shredded pork and steamed dumplings. Although the price is more expensive than other teahouses, it still attracts many diners to taste. With the change of time, most of the time-honored teahouses no longer exist, but there are still many large and small shops dealing in morning tea on the streets of Taizhou. Among them, Fuchun Hotel, Wuzhou Hotel, Leather Bag Teahouse, Zhejiang Zheju and other hotels 10 are the most famous for their morning tea. Except Fuchun, several other hotels have now moved back to Taizhou Old Street.

Cantonese morning tea

morning tea

morning tea

Speaking of the origin of Guangdong morning tea, it can be traced back to the reign of Xianfeng Tongzhi. At that time, there was a restaurant named "Yili Pavilion" in Guangzhou. There is a wooden sign that says "tea party" hanging at the door, serving tea and cakes. The facilities are simple, with only a few wooden tables and benches for welcoming guests and chatting for passers-by. Later, the teahouse appeared, and the scale became larger and larger, and it became a teahouse. Since then, it has become a common practice for Cantonese people to drink morning tea in teahouses. Until today, the tea in Guangdong morning tea has become a supporting role, but the refreshments are more and more exquisite and diverse. With the rapid development of Guangdong's economy, this traditional culture has not disappeared, but has increasingly become a beautiful landscape in Guangdong's leisure life. There is also a restaurant called "Erli Restaurant" that serves the same snacks. The difference lies in the price and equipment. The cost of tea in teahouse is 36 cents, while that in Erli restaurant is only 20 cents, which is a far cry from 16 times. Some old-fashioned teahouses are graded, and upstairs is more expensive than downstairs, because there is air conditioning (or electric fan) upstairs, and the place is more spacious. Since it is called "morning tea", tea is naturally an indispensable part of Guangdong morning tea. Black tea is the main tea of morning tea, which can warm the stomach and get rid of boredom, which is beneficial to digestion. Commonly used fermented tea (Anhua black tea, Pu 'er tea, etc. ) and oolong tea (Tieguanyin, Dahongpao, etc. ), and some people also like to drink chrysanthemum tea, that is, add chrysanthemum to Pu 'er tea to cool off the heat. Black tea is dark red in color and the soup is thick and bitter. Although it is not as good as green tea in vision and taste, it is a perfect match with the rich refreshments in Guangdong morning tea.

The prosperity of Guangdong morning tea is inseparable from Guangdong's prosperous trade and rapid economic development since ancient times. In Guangdong, you can talk about business and exchange information in the morning tea, or get together with friends and talk about things. Businessmen regard teahouses as important discussion places, where ordinary people express their pressure in exchange for half a day's leisure. There is a couplet in the "Miaoqixiang" teahouse in old Guangzhou:

"Busy in the name, busy for profit, busy for leisure, have a cup of tea;

Work hard, work hard, have fun in pain, and bring a pot of wine. "

On the third floor of the famous teahouse "Taotaoju" in Guangzhou, there is also a couplet that reads:

"Tao Qianshan drinks, Yi Yashan cooks, and just meets the gentleman;

Tao Kan cherishes flying, Yu Xia cherishes inches, and the most regrettable thing is the time in the cup. "

I think it should be the psychological portrayal of most Cantonese people when they drink morning tea.

Tea and cakes

Su Shi cha Dian

When it comes to the varieties of morning tea in Yangzhou, Taizhou and Yancheng, the "protagonist" is dried silk. Taizhou dried silk was researched and created by Xing Guisen, a famous chef in Central Jiangsu. Xing Guisen was originally a disciple of San Ji, the chef. He is famous for cooking dried silk. During the Republic of China, Xing Guisen worked as a chef in Wanhua Building, Xicang Street, Taizhou. After painstaking research, he introduced hand-dried silk to the public.

Dried silk is cut from dried tofu. First, a piece of dried bean curd is evenly cut into about 20 pieces with a knife, then obliquely cut into filaments equivalent to matchsticks, and then poured into boiling water for repeated scalding. Because of the alkali, dried silk is soft and elastic to chew. Of course, dried silk itself is tasteless, and it is all blended by seasoning. Soy sauce, water, sugar and salt are adjusted to moderate depth, slightly sweet and delicious. This process is called "cooking oil", and it is fragrant with sesame oil. Sprinkle shredded ginger, coriander, shredded carrot, peanuts and diced mustard tuber to make light and delicious dried silk. As for boiled dried silk, it is cooked with Yao meat, shrimp, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, fungus, vegetables, soup and other accessories.

When people in Yangzhou, Taizhou, Yancheng and other places eat morning tea, they mostly choose "Fuxiang" tea mixed with Anhui Kuizhen, Zhu Lan and Hangzhou Longjing. This tea is bright in color, rich and mellow after soaking, which combines the color of Kuizhen, the fragrance of Zhulan and the taste of Longjing. This kind of tea also has an allusion. It is said that in the old society, tea in Taizhou teahouses was graded, gentry and wealthy businessmen drank Longjing, ordinary families drank Kuizhen, and foreigners in Thailand drank Zhu Lan. All three kinds of tea need to be paid. The next day, the teahouse mixed the remaining three kinds of tea powder and provided it to low-paid people such as drivers and porters for free. Once, a relative of a salt merchant accidentally drank this kind of tea and thought it was very good, so he recommended it to the salt merchant. After the salt merchant drank it, he called this kind of tea with compound fragrance "Fu (Fu) Xiang" tea and recommended it to his friends. Over time, this "fragrant" tea became the new favorite of people at that time. Nowadays, "Fuxiang" tea has been popularized, and more people have enjoyed the happy time brought by this famous tea.

Pasta is the "finale" of Yang Tai Salt Morning Tea. Including fish soup noodles, fresh meat wonton, dry mixed noodles, boiled noodles, fried noodles and many other varieties, of which fish soup noodles 1942, which won the prize in Panama International Expo, is the most popular. The fish soup on the fish soup noodles is very elegant. The bones of wild eel, small crucian carp and big pig are stir-fried with onion and ginger, and then cooked slowly with fire. After the noodles are cooked, put them into fresh thick fish soup, sprinkle with some small peppers and garlic leaves, and the attractive fish smell comes to the nose. With fresh and smooth noodles and mellow fish soup, the refreshing taste lingers in my heart for a long time. The old diners in Taizhou rated it as "thick mouth and moist stomach". Like Cantonese morning tea, there are many kinds of snacks in Taizhou morning tea, such as crab roe soup buns, diced diced bamboo shoots, shredded radish buns, diced diced pork buns, mushroom vegetable buns, dried vegetable buns, shrimp dumplings, glutinous rice steamed dumplings, and layered oil cakes. The dough is made of high-quality wheat flour, and the stuffing is made of fresh vegetables, meat and aquatic products, which are steamed and cooked now, so the snacks with thin skin and full stuffing taste soft and delicate. If you want to try every snack, you can also choose a variety of snacks in the same cage.

Cantonese tea

The status of refreshments in Guangdong morning tea is also very important. There are two kinds of snacks: dry snacks include jiaozi, dried fruits, steamed stuffed buns and shortbread, and wet snacks include porridge, meat, turtle sauce and tofu. Among them, the dry point is the most exquisite and sells well. For example, two or three fresh shrimps are wrapped in translucent crystal dumpling skin, which is the signature shrimp dumpling that every teahouse must make. Before lifting chopsticks, you can see a little reddish in the crystal. After you gently take a bite, the elasticity of crystal jiaozi Pitt and the natural sweetness and crispness of shrimp are combined into a delicious food, which is memorable. Another example is the bird's nest in some high-end teahouses, especially the crisp egg tarts. Several layers of golden crispy egg tarts with tender yellow silky bird's nest aroused people's appetite at first sight, not to mention the perfect combination of sweet and soft bird's nest and crispy powder after eating, which made people want to stop. There are also various kinds of porridge, such as the first porridge, preserved egg lean meat porridge, raw rolled fish porridge and so on. They are all made of soft and slippery porridge bottom, with different kinds of meat and fish eggs, supplemented by crispy shrimp slices and chopped green onion, and then sprinkled with a spoonful of pepper, which tastes sweet and delicious.

Speaking of this, the spectators may have been unable to hold back and want to taste the delicious Guangdong morning tea. But wait a minute, how much do you know about the etiquette of Guangdong morning tea? Cantonese people have a few small manners when drinking morning tea. For example, when the teapot is out of water, open the lid to indicate that it needs to be refilled. When others pour tea for themselves, they tap the desktop with their right index finger and middle finger to express their gratitude. After drinking morning tea, they shout "Pay the bill" to the waiter. How did this etiquette come into being?

Let me tell you something about these etiquette allusions. The allusion of "burying" is actually to pile up the bills, that is, to settle accounts. The "hand-knocking ceremony" when pouring tea comes from the story of Gan Long's southern tour: It is said that when Gan Long poured tea for his entourage in the teahouse, his entourage bent his hands and kowtowed as a representative. This story has spread to this day, and now it has spread from the morning tea table in Guangzhou to all parts of the country: opening the lid to pour water also came from one place. During the dinner, the waiter was called to refill the water. As a result, as soon as the other party opened the lid of the teapot, the rich businessman insisted that there was a canary in the teapot and started a lawsuit with the teahouse. As a result, the teahouse lost the lawsuit. Since then, the teahouse owner has stipulated that guests must open the lid of the teapot themselves if they want to pour water. Although it is only a legend, the two sides exchanged ideas through a small gesture, and it is also a sign of civilization to not shout.

Steamed vermicelli roll

Rice rolls, also known as Juan Fen and Zhu rice rolls (because it looks like pig intestines), was created by Pantang Seafood Restaurant in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period, and is now available in snack bars, teahouses, restaurants and hotels. It is to steam rice slurry into thin skin one by one with a special multi-layer steamer or cloth, and put meat, fish fillets, shrimp and so on. Steamed, rolled into long strips and cut into plates. The raw materials are beef sausage, pork sausage, fish fillet sausage and shrimp sausage. No stuffing, called sausage; Rice milk with sugar is called sweet sausage.

In Hongkong, Guangdong and other places, rice rolls usually uses soy sauce or peanut oil hot sauce to flavor. In Singapore and Malaysia, more sesame seeds and sweet sauce are added, which may be unfamiliar to diners in Guangdong and Hong Kong, but they have good local characteristics.

Boat porridge

After the end of the Han Dynasty, Guangzhou became a big trading port. Tang Xianzu, a famous playwright in Ming Dynasty, once described the busy scene and majestic momentum of Guangzhou Port with "thousands of wells on the riverside and thousands of ships on the site". Under this historical background, a special kind of porridge-boat porridge appeared in Lizhiwan, Xiguan, Guangzhou. At that time, the river in the western suburbs of Guangzhou was flowing freely, and Li Honglu was named as one of the eight scenic spots in Yangcheng-"Li Yu Singing". Many scholars go boating, and boatmen cook porridge in boats and sell it to tourists. This kind of porridge is made of fresh fish fillets, fried vermicelli, jellyfish skin and peanuts. The taste is fresh, the scenery is beautiful, the boat is light, the air is cool and poetic.

shrimp dumpling

Shrimp dumplings, filled with fresh shrimp, are veritable shrimp dumplings. Shrimp dumplings are the first brother of Guangdong morning tea, and every teahouse is the first to promote homemade shrimp dumplings. It is said that the idea of shrimp dumplings originated from a small teahouse owner in rural Henan, Guangzhou. Because the teahouse is located in a water town, fishermen often sell fish and shrimp on the river, so the boss buys live shrimp and makes shrimp dumplings with pork and bamboo shoots as stuffing, which is famous for its delicacy in Guangzhou.

A delicious shrimp dumpling must be crystal clear, refreshing and not sticky. The stuffing inside must be the original shrimp, and this shrimp is also exquisite: it can't be chilled shrimp, in case it feels watered when imported. Finally, we need to pay attention to the composition of pork. When pork is wrapped in fresh shrimp, you should put a proper amount, so as not to usurp the host's role.

shumai

Steamed dumplings, a famous traditional snack. Also known as steamed dumplings, millet, steamed dumplings, roasted plum, and ghost steamed head, it is a kind of pasta snack wrapped in hot noodles and steamed in a cage. In Guangdong morning tea, Shao Shao is the second brother in the menu, just below the shrimp dumplings. Shao Guangdong roast, mainly dry steamed roast, shrimp roast, crab roast, pork liver roast, beef roast and ribs roast.

Among them, dry-steamed stir-fried dishes were popular all over Guangdong in 1930s, and spread all over large and medium-sized cities in Guangxi in the past 20 years, becoming an essential product of Lingnan teahouses, restaurants and tea markets. Dry steaming takes egg liquid, water and flour as skins and pork, shrimps and mushrooms as fillings, which are kneaded into the shape of pomegranate flowers and steamed. Its color is light yellow, crab yellow is bright, its skin is soft, its meat is refreshing, it contains a little juice, and it tastes delicious and fragrant.

Steamed spareribs with black bean sauce

Steamed pork ribs with black bean sauce, a classic snack of Guangdong morning tea, is made by frying washed pork ribs and chopped green onion in a pot, taking them out and mixing them with seasonings in the format, adding taro, pumpkin, white radish and other ingredients, and finally mixing them with black beans, and steaming them in a steamer until the aroma is overflowing, which is really mouth-watering.

A good steamed ribs, ribs must be steamed away from the bone, not stuffed with teeth, to have a chewing head. The taste of fermented soybean juice should be completely integrated with the taste of ribs. If you chew it in your mouth, a strange taste will last forever. It is worth mentioning that the ingredients, if added with taro, must be fried together with the bottom; If it is pumpkin, it needs to be cooked very soft and slippery, preferably sandy; If it's white radish, it's too soft to come loose. These ingredients absorb the gravy of ribs and are absolutely unforgettable.

Steamed chicken feet

According to statistics, steamed chicken feet have been one of the most popular snacks in restaurants and tea markets in China and Japan for many years. This is enough to show that Guangdong people's love for chicken feet is sincere. Chicken feet are fried and steamed, full and soft. Bones will be removed when smoking. Coupled with the sauce mixed with various flavors, it will suddenly taste fragrant and even chew.