Chinese Cuisine
CHINESE CUISINE
INTRODUCTION
The cuisine of china is marked
by the by the precise skills of shaping, heating, color way and flavoring.
Chinese cuisine is also known for its width of cooking methods and ingredients
as well as food therapy influenced by traditional Chinese medicine.
History:
The diet of the common people
in pre-modern times was largely grain and simple vegetables, with meat reserved
for special occasions. China emerged as one of the world's earliest
civilizations in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China
Plain. It has been ruled subsequently by the following dynasties
·
Southern and Northern dynasties
·
Tang Dynasty
·
Song dynasty
·
Mongol Yuan Dynasty
·
Ming dynasty
·
Qing dynasty
·
Republic of china and then the
Peoples Republic of China
Four key developments
contributing towards the Growth of cuisine historically are as follows:
·
The expansion of Han culture
from the upland stretches of the Yellow River across a huge and expanding
geographical area with climate zones ranging from the tropical to the
subarctic, each providing new ingredients and indigenous cooking traditions;
·
An elaborate but continually
developing traditional medicine which saw food as the basis of good health
("Food was medicine and medicine, food");
·
Constantly shifting demands
from elites – beginning with the imperial courts and provincial governors but
eventually expanding to include rich landowners, "scholar-gourmands",
and itinerant merchants – for specialised cuisines, however far away from home.
·
Continuous absorption of
diverse foreign influences, including the ingredients, cooking methods, and
recipes from invading steppe nomads, European missionaries, and Japanese
traders.
Geographic
Location:
China is the world's second
largest state by land and the most populous country in the world. The capital
of china is Beijing. China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest
steppes and the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts in the arid north to subtropical
forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan
mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze
and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, run
from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's
coastline along the Pacific Ocean is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China,
and South China seas.
Adjoining
Countries:
China extends across much of
East Asia, bordering Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma) in Southeast Asia;
India, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in South Asia; Tajikistan,
Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia; and Russia, Mongolia, and North
Korea in Inner Asia and Northeast Asia. Additionally, China shares maritime
boundaries with South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Climatic
Conditions
The climates of central and
south China are humid, which make it difficult for perspiration to evaporate. A
perceived reason for people eating spicy food is that, according to traditional
Chinese medicine, chilies help move internal dampness and cold, increasing
health and comfort.
Colder climate areas in the
north tend to eat heartier foods with higher calories, as the body needs these
to keep warm there.
Cuisine
:
The ingredients used in China's
foods are traditionally based on the agriculture and wildlife of a region.
The preference for seasoning
and cooking techniques of Chinese provinces depend on differences in historical
background and ethnic groups. Geographic features including mountains, rivers,
forests and deserts also have a strong effect on the local available
ingredients, considering climate of China varies from tropical in the south to
subarctic in the northeast. Imperial, royal and noble preference also plays a
role in the change of Chinese cuisines. Because of imperial expansion and
trading, ingredients and cooking techniques from other cultures are integrated
into Chinese cuisines over time.
The color, smell and taste are
the three traditional aspects to describe Chinese food, also the meaning, shape
and nutrition. While, cooking should be appraised from ingredients, cuttings,
cooking time and seasoning. It is considered inappropriate to use knives on
dining table. Chopsticks are the main eating utensils for Chinese food, which
can be used to cut and pick up food.
Staple
Diet
China's staple food is rice in
the south, wheat based breads and noodles in the north. Pork is the most
popular meat in China, Southern part of china, due to the area's
proximity to the ocean and milder climate, has a wide variety of seafood and
vegetables; it differs in many respects from the wheat-based diets across dry
northern China.
Rice : Rice is a major staple food for people. Steamed rice, usually
white rice, is the most commonly eaten form. Rice is also used to produce
beers, wines and vinegars. Rice is one of the most popular foods in China and
is used in many dishes. Glutinous rice ("sticky rice") is a variety
of rice used in many specialty Chinese dishes.
Wheat : In wheat-farming areas in Northern China, people largely
rely on flour-based food, such as noodles, breads, jiaozi (a kind of Chinese
dumplings), and mantou (a type of steamed buns).
Noodles: Chinese noodles come dry or fresh in a variety of sizes, shapes
and textures and are often served in soups or fried as toppings. Noodles can be
served hot or cold with different toppings, with broth, and occasionally dry.
Noodles are commonly made with rice flour or wheat flour, but other flours such
as soybean are also used.
Soybean
products: Several kinds of soybean
products are sold in a farmer's market in Haikou, China.
Tofu is made of soybeans and is
another popular food product that supplies protein. The production process of
tofu varies from regions to regions, resulted in different kinds of tofu with a
wide range of texture and taste. Other products such as soy milk, soy paste,
soy oil, and fermented soy sauce are also important in Chinese cooking.
Vegetables
Some unique vegetables used in
Chinese cuisine include Chinese leaves, bok choy, dao-mieu (pea seedling), choy
sum, on choy, yu choy, bitter melon, Chinese broccoli, carrot,
cabbage,capsicum, Baby corn,. Spring onion, French beans and so on. Other
vegetables including bean sprouts, pea vine tips, watercress, lotus roots and
bamboo shoots are also used in different cuisines of China.
Because of different climate
and soil conditions, cultivars of green beans, peas, and mushrooms can be found
in a rich variety.
Herbs
and seasonings
Seasonings such as fresh ginger
root, garlic, scallion, white pepper, and sesame oil are widely used in many
regional cuisines. Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, cinnamon, fennel, cilantro,
parsley, and cloves, dried Chinese mushrooms, dried baby shrimps, dried
tangerine peel, and dried Sichuan chilies are also used.
Sauces: China is home to soy sauce, which is made from fermented soy
beans and wheat. Oyster sauce, clear rice vinegar, chili, Chinkiang black rice
vinegar, fish sauce are also widely used. A number of sauces are also based on
fermented soybeans, including Hoisin sauce, ground bean sauce and yellow bean
sauce.
Regional
Cooking Styles:
The most praised "Four
Major Cuisines" are Chuan, Lu, Yue and Huaiyang, representing West, North,
South and East China cuisine correspondingly. Modern "Eight Cuisines"
of Chinaare Anhui, Cantonese, Fujian, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Sichuan, and
Zhejiang cuisines.
The color, smell and taste are
the three traditional aspects to describe Chinese food.
Northern
China food — salty, simple, less
vegetables with wheat as the staple food
Western
China food — hearty halal food with
lamb the main meat
Central
China food — spicy with a lot of
seasonings
Eastern
China food — sweet and light
Southern
minority food — sour
Northern
Cuisine — salty and simple with less
vegetables
Regions: Beijing, Xi'an, Inner Mongolia, and Northeast China
CANTONESE
CUISINE
It comes from Guangdong
province and is one of the Eight Culinary Traditions of Chinese cuisines. Its
prominence outside China is due to the large number of emigrants from
Guangdong. Guangzhou, has long been a trading port and many imported foods and
ingredients are used in Cantonese cuisine. Besides pork, beef and chicken,
Cantonese cuisine incorporates almost all edible meats, including offal,
chicken feet, duck's tongue, snakes, and snails. However, lamb and goat are
rarely eaten, unlike in the cuisines of northern or western China. Many cooking
methods are used, with steaming and stir frying being the most favoured due to
their convenience and rapidity. Other techniques include shallow frying, double
steaming, braising, and deep frying.
For many traditional Cantonese
cooks, the flavours of a finished dish should be well balanced and not greasy.
Apart from that, spices should be used in modest amounts to avoid overwhelming
the flavours of the primary ingredients, and these ingredients in turn should
be at the peak of their freshness and quality. There is no widespread use of
fresh herbs in Cantonese cooking, in contrast with their liberal use in other
cuisines . Garlic chives and coriander leaves are notable exceptions, although
the latter are usually used as mere garnish in most dishes.
In Cantonese cuisine, a number
of ingredients such as spring onion, sugar, salt, soy sauce, rice wine,
cornstarch, vinegar, scallion oil, and sesame oil, suffice to enhance flavour,
although garlic is heavily used in some dishes, especially those in which
internal organs, such as entrails, may emit unpleasant odours. Ginger, chili
peppers, five-spice powder, powdered black pepper, star anise and a few other
spices are also used, but often sparingly.
SHANDONG
CUISINE
The cuisine as it is known
today was created during the Yuan Dynasty. It gradually spread to northern and
northeastern China, Beijing, Tianjin, and the emperor's palace, where it
influenced imperial food. Shandong cuisine is primarily made up of eastern Shandong
and Jinan dishes.
Commonly known in Chinese as Lu
cuisine is one of the Eight Culinary Traditions of Chinese cuisine and one of
the Four Great Traditions. It is derived from the native cooking style of
Shandong, a northern coastal province of China. Chandong cuisine is famous for
its wide selection of material and use of different cooking methods. The raw
materials are mainly domestic animals and birds, seafood and vegetables.
Popular cooking techniques include Bao (quick frying), Liu (quick frying with
corn flour), Pa (stewing), roasting, boiling , using sugar to make fruit,
crystallizing with honey.
Shandong cuisine features
seafood ingredients and a variety of cooking techniques. It is known for its
fresh, salty, crisp, and tender flavors.
Staple
Foods:
·
It is noted for its variety of
seafood, including scallops, prawns, clams, sea cucumbers, and squid.
·
Shandong is unique for its use
of maize, Shandong maize is chewy, starchy and often has a grassy aroma. It is
served as steamed (or boiled) cobs, or the kernels are removed from the cob and
lightly fried.
·
Shandong is noted for its
peanuts, which are fragrant and naturally sweet. Large dishes of peanuts
(roasted in the shell or shelled and stir-fried with salt) are common at meals,
and they are served raw in a number of cold dishes from the region.
·
Shandong uses a variety of
small grains. Millet, wheat, oats and barley can be found in the local diet,
often eaten as congee or milled and cooked into a variety of steamed and fried
breads. People in Shandong tend to prefer steamed breads rather than rice as a
staple food.
·
Potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages,
mushrooms, onions, garlic and eggplant are staple vegetables, with grassy
greens, sea grasses and bell peppers also common. The large, sweet cabbages
grown in central Shandong are popular.
·
Shandong's greatest
contribution to Chinese cuisine is arguably its vinegar. Hundreds of years of
experience and unique local methods have led to the region's prominence in
Chinese vinegar production
Styles: Shandong cuisine is divided into, Jinan , Jiaodong, Luxinan
and Kongfu Cuisine.
Jinan
Cuisine : The cooking methods of
Jinan Cuisine are focused on quick frying , roasting and boiling .
Jinan-style food is generally sweet, aromatic, fresh, and tender.
Jiaodong
Cuisine : Jiaodong Cuisine is more
focused on cooking and cutting skills. The Jiaodong area is located close to
the sea, so most raw materials are seafood. Sea cucumber, abalone, and scallop
are common in this area.
Kongfu Cuisine : The family of
Kong is the descendant of Confucius. It was the largest family in Chinese
history, lasting about 2000 years. Being close to the royal courts they had
high standards for the quality of every dish.
Luxinan
Cuisine : Luxinan is the area
southwest of Shandong province. People living in this area like to eat health
food with Chinese medicines and raw materials.
Huyang
/ JIANGSU CUISINE
Also known as Su cuisine Jiangsu
cuisine consists of Yangzhou, Nanjing, and Suzhou dishes. It is famous for its
fresh taste, with moderate saltiness and sweetness. Ingredients of Jiangsu
Cuisine mainly come from rivers, lakes, and the sea. It features precise and
delicate carving techniques and various cooking techniques including braising,
stewing, and quick-frying.
It is derived from the native
cooking styles of Jiangsu province. In general, Jiangsu cuisine's texture is
characterized as soft, but not to the point of mushy or falling apart. For
example, the meat tastes quite soft but would not separate from the bone when
picked up. As the style of Jiangsu cuisine is typically practiced near the sea,
fish is a very common ingredient in cooking. Other characteristics include the
strict selection of ingredients according to the seasons, with emphasis on the
matching colour and shape of each dish and using soup to improve flavour.
Styles Jiangsu cuisine consists
of several other styles, including:
Huaiyang
cuisine: Although Huaiyang cuisine
is one of several sub-regional styles within Jiangsu cuisine, it is widely seen
in Chinese culinary circles as the most popular and prestigious style of the
Jiangsu.
Nanjing
: Its dishes emphasize an
even taste and matching colour, with dishes incorporating river fish/shrimp and
duck.
Suzhou : It emphasis on the selection of material, stronger taste than
Nanjing cuisine, and with a tendency to be sweeter than the other varieties of
the cuisine.
Wuxi: Its proximity to Lake Tai means it is notable for wide
variety of freshwater produce, such as the "Three Whites" – white
bait, white fish and white shrimp
SICHUAN
CUISINE
Szechwan cuisine is a style of
Chinese cuisine originating from Sichuan province in southwestern China. It has
bold flavours, particularly the pungency and spiciness. Sichuan is colloquially
known as the "heavenly country" due to its abundance of food and
natural resources. One ancient Chinese account declared that the "people
of Sichuan uphold good flavor, and they are fond of hot and spicy taste."
Most Sichuan dishes are spicy, although a typical meal includes non-spicy
dishes to cool the palate. Sichuan cuisine is composed of seven basic flavours:
sour, pungent, hot, sweet, bitter, aromatic, and salty. Sichuan food is divided
into five different types: sumptuous banquet, ordinary banquet, popularized
food, household-style food, and food snacks.
Sichuan cuisine is the origin
of several prominent sauces/flavors widely used in modern Chinese cuisine,
including the garlic sauce/yuxiang , mala ,and guaiwei Common preparation
techniques in Sichuan cuisine include stir frying, steaming and braising.
Styles: Four sub-styles of Sichuan cuisine include Chongqing,
Chengdu, Zigong, and also Buddhist vegetarian style.
Staple
Diet
The complex topography of
Sichuan including mountains, hills, plains, plateaus, and basin has shaped food
customs in Sichuan with versatile and distinct ingredients.
·
Abundant rice and vegetables
are produced from the fertile Sichuan Basin,
·
A wide variety of herbs,
mushrooms and other fungi prosper in the highland regions.
·
Pork is overwhelmingly the
major meat.Beef is somewhat more common in Sichuan cuisine than it is in other
Chinese cuisines, perhaps due to the prevalence of oxen in the region.
·
Sichuan cuisine also utilizes
various bovine and porcine organs as ingredients, such as intestine, arteries,
head, tongue, skin, and liver, in addition to other commonly utilized portions
of the meat.
·
Rabbit meat is also much more
popular in Sichuan than elsewhere in China.
·
Yoghurt, which probably spread
from India through Tibet in medieval times, is consumed among the Han Chinese.
This is an unusual custom in other parts of the country.
·
Sichuan cuisine often contains
food preserved through pickling, salting, and drying. Preserved dishes are
generally served as spicy dishes with heavy application of chili oil.
·
The most unique and important
spice in Sichuan cuisine is the Sichuan pepper which has an intense fragrant,
citrus-like flavour which produces a "tingly-numbing" sensation in
the mouth.
·
Other commonly used
spices in Sichuan cuisine are garlic, chili peppers, ginger, and star anise,
etc.
·
Broad bean chili paste is one
of the most important seasonings. It is an essential component to famous dishes
such as Mapo tofu and double-cooked pork slices
HUNAN
CUISINE
Hunan cuisine is similar to
Sichuan cuisine, but generally even spicier. It has a great variety of
ingredients due to the high agricultural output of the region.Is known for
sourness, as many pickles are very popular in Hunan. Common cooking techniques
include pickling, smoking, stewing, stir-frying, and braising, and
pot-roasting.
FUJIAN
CUISINE
Fujian cuisine is famous for
its abundant ingredients from the sea and mountains. It is characterized by its
fine slicing techniques, various soups and broths, and exquisite culinary art.
Fujian dishes are slightly sweet and sour, and less salty. Common cooking
techniques include braising, stewing, steaming and boiling.
ZHEJIANG
CUISINE
Zhejiang cuisine comprises the
styles of Hangzhou, Ningbo, Shaoxing, and Shanghai. It is famous for freshness,
softness, and smoothness, with a mellow fragrance. It is characterized by its
elaborate preparation and varying techniques of cooking, such as sautéing,
stewing, steaming, and deep-frying.
ANHUI
CUISINE
Famous for the native cooking
styles of the Yellow Mountains (Huangshan) region of China, Anhui cuisine
features anelaborate choice of wild ingredients and the strict control of heat
and cooking time. Most of its ingredients are from local mountain areas,
leading to greater freshness and tenderness.
XINJIANG
CUISINE
Xinjiang is inhabited by many
ethnic groups, and about half of the population belongs to the Uyghur minority,
so Xinjiang Cuisine mostly refers to Uyghur cuisine. The food is predominantly
halal food due to most Xinjiang people being Muslims.
BEIJING
CUISINE
Beijing cuisine is influenced
by a variety of China's cooking styles, due to being the capital, but mostly
nearby Shandong and Inner Mongolia. It is famous for its imperial court
cuisine, which originated from the imperial kitchens, where food was cooked for
royalty and officials.
TAIWAN
CUISINE
It is most like Fujian cuisine,
as the geography is similar, and there has been most interaction between these
two areas of China. There is also notable Japanese influence in Taiwan food.
INNER
MONGOLIA CUISINE
Inner Mongolian cuisine comes
from the traditions of ethnic Mongols, and features dairy products, and all
kinds of red meat (captive herds and game): mutton, beef, venison, etc. Typical
dishes include roasted whole sheep, roast leg of lamb, and ‘hand-grabbed'
mutton.
TIBETAN
CUISINE
Tibetan cuisine is a blend of
flavors of Nepalese, Indian, and Sichuan cuisines due to Tibet's position neighboring
India, Nepal and Sichuan Province. It also has its own original dishes,
influenced by its harsh climate where they farm yaks, e.g. yak fat tea.
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