A Note on the Centrality of Food in Chinese Culture
Food occupies a central place in Chinese culture and tradition, which some would suggest are indivisible concepts in themselves. "Have you eaten yet?" is a sometime common greeting, indicating prime concern for the state of fullness of another's belly.
One traditional belief was that a person’s soul could leave his body while he was still alive, producing symptoms of illness, melancholy or madness. The poet in the poem below attempts to lure back one such wayward soul by listing some earthly attractions:
O soul, come back! Why should you go far away?
All your household have come to do you honor; all kinds of good food are ready:
Rice, broom-corn, early wheat, mixed all with yellow millet;
Bitter, salt, sour, hot and sweet: there are dishes of all flavors.
Ribs of the fatted ox cooked tender and succulent;
Sour and bitter blended in the soup of Wu;
Stewed turtle and roast kid, served up with yam sauce;
Geese cooked in sour sauce, casseroled duck, fried flesh of the great crane;
Braised chicken, seethed tortoise, high-seasoned, but not to spoil the taste;
Fried honey-cakes of rice flour and malt-sugar sweetmeats;
Jade-like wine, honey-flavored, filled the winged cups;
Ice-cooled liquor, strained of impurities, clear wine, cool and refreshing;
Here are laid out the patterned ladles, and here is sparkling wine.
From Ch’u Tz’u, The Song’s of the South, trans. D.Hawkes (Oxford, 1959)
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| Kenneth Lo |
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The Flavour and Seasons of Cantonese Food:
Cantonese cuisine has its origin in Guangdong province in the south of China. The capital of Guangdong province is the major port city of Guangzhou, the third largest city in China and positioned some 75miles north of Hong Kong. This is the city referred to for so long as 'Canton' by Europeans, and it is here that the culinary traditions of Cantonese cookery are centred.
An old Chinese saying indicates how highly the cuisine of Guangzhou (Canton) is regarded:
"To be born in Suzhou
to live in Hangzhou
to eat in Guangzhou
and to die in Liuzhou"
to live in Hangzhou
to eat in Guangzhou
and to die in Liuzhou"
Often when people first sample Chinese cuisine outside of China they are experiencing Cantonese food. This dominance is due largely to a steady stream of emigrants from the region, a flow of humanity that lasted for perhaps roughly the last two hundred years.
Passing out through the major ports of 'Canton' and Hong Kong these immigrants have taken Cantonese food with them to other port cities of the world. Chief amongst these are San Francisco (partly because of the gold rushes of the mid 19th Century) and London around the time of the First World War (because of Hong Kong's position as a long-term British possession). Ex-pat Cantonese restaurants of these periods were originally Chinese eating joints, which catered for the local Chinese seamen and labourers wroking on the docks. Slowly these eateries multiplied and spread, taking Cantonese food to the world.
As with all traditional Chinese cuisine local menus are heavily influenced by the time of year, local climate, geography and the seasonality of ingredients. Cantonese food is no exception, and the dominance of seasonal change and weather is noted by Kenneth Lo in his book, Chinese Food:
"It was in South China that I was born, bred and went to school. The climate is semi-tropical, the summer long, hot and torrid, and in the afternoons there are often thunderstorms, which help to dispel the heat which, by midday, lies oppressively over the land. Every now and then a muggy monsoon blows fleeting clouds across the sky for several days on end. Otherwise the sun beats down on every object on the earth below until the ground, the stones and walls all radiate a blistering heat. You might think that in such a climate one would have little appetite. Quite the contrary. I was hungry almost all the time and any sort of food was welcome. The autumn days were brilliant, windless and perfect... The streets were full of food vendors who sold jellied meats and cooked chicken drumsticks with buns, or would cook you a dish of noodles or meat-stuffed wraplings [Chiao-tzu - similar to wuntuns but larger] on the spot.
The winters were excessively cold,...but the holidays and the New Year heralded festivities which meant food. The large, steamed and long-simmered dishes, the red-cooked dishes, the earthenware casseroles!
...Spring was the least memorable of the four seasons, perhaps because it was so short, but it was fascinating to watch the bamboo-shoots in the bamboo groves in our garden breaking through the ground and sprouting at the rate of at least an inch a day! Then suddenly the mist and rain were banished by a hot sun, long walks became too enervating, and along the roadside small mounds of peeled water chestnuts were sold, the colour of carved ivory, and 8-10 inch lengths of fat sugar-cane full of sugary juice, which had been scrapped with a knife till they were equally spotless and white."
Due to Gunagdong's location on the southern coast of China the presence of the sea also plays a defining role in the flavours of Cantonese food in a way that differences it from, for instance, the food of land-locked Peking. Fresh seafood is prominent in many Cantonese restaurants with tanks of live seafood. As Mr. Lo also remarks, "...the Cantonese can hardly make a move in the kitchen without introducing prawns, crabs and abalone."
In this light you will note the appropriateness with which oysters are offered as a first course in the menu at Ancestral Restaurant. Surrounded by the ocean and crisscrossed by rivers as both New Zealand and Guangzhou are, Cantonese food makes perfect sense in the New Zealand context.
For the traditional Cantonese cook, the flavors of a finished dish should be well balanced, and never greasy, with spices being used in modest amounts to avoid overwhelming the flavors of the primary ingredients. These primary ingredients, in turn, should be at the peak of their freshness and quality. This is well reflected in handling of fish dishes. The freshest seafood is odorless and, in Cantonese culinary arts, it is best cooked by steaming with minimal augmentation of the flavour. For instance, in some recipes, in order to bring out the natural sweetness of the seafood only a small amount of soy sauce, ginger and spring onion is added to the steamed fish.
There is no widespread use of fresh herbs in Cantonese cooking (and most other regional Chinese cuisines, for that matter) contrasting with the liberal usage seen in European and other Asian cuisines such as Thai or Vietnamese. Garlic, chives and coriander leaves are notable exceptions, although the latter tends to be mere garnish in most dishes.
Besides pork, beef, and chicken, Cantonese cuisine incorporates almost all edible meats, including offal , chicken feet, duck tongue, snakes, and snails. However, lamb and goat is rarely eaten, unlike in cuisines of northern or western China. Many cooking methods are used, steaming and stir-frying being the most favored due to their convenience and rapidity. Other techniques include shallow frying, double boiling, braising, and deep-frying.
The Flavours, Ingedients and Spice of Sichuan Cooking:
"When you go to Beijing, you see what low rank you hold. When you travel to Canton, you realise how little money you've got. But when you come to Chengdu [Sichuan], you find out how large your appetite is"
–Lin Yutang, My Country and My People
Sichuan (also Szechuan or Szechwan) cuisine is a style of Chinese food that originates in the hot and humid Sichuan province of southwestern China.
Kenneth Lo has this to say regarding the geography and climate of the region of Sichuan
"Perhaps the coastal Chinese feel familiar with western China because The Story of the Three Kingdoms (the Chinese equivalent of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table) was set mainly in Szechuan. Actually the majority only came to know it when they moved to the great interior during the Japanese War. It is one of the largest provinces and certainly the most heavily populated in the whole of China. Szechuan is a vast basin, bounded by ranges of mountains, and thus not afflicted by the monsoons of the coast, nor the freezing seasonal winds from the north.
Much of China is conducive to luxuriant vegetation, and the west is no exception; in summer this region is very humid, and vegetation runs riot in the near tropical heat. Although the winter is not severe, the houses are, in general, inadequately heated, and one can only keep warm by putting on layers of warm clothing until one is quite stiffly upholstered."
There are many local variations of Szechuan cuisine within Sichuan Province and the Chongqing Municipality (which was politically part of Sichuan until 1997). The four best known regional sub-styles are Chongqing style, Chengdu style, Zigong style, and a Buddhist vegetarian style.
Sichuan food is famed for its highly spiced and bold flavours, typified by the liberal use of garlic and chilli peppers, as well as the unique flavour of the Sichuan peppercorn.
Most non-Chinese people's awareness of Sichuan cuisine comes from two items, one a dish, the other a condiment: Szechuan Beef, and Szechuan pepper. These two items illustrate very effectively the character of Sichuan cuisine as a whole. The preponderance of beef on the Sichuan menu reflects the common presence of oxen in the region. Meanwhile the dish of Szechuan Beef itself is an excellent example of the method of richly braising and then stir- or dry-frying any given meat chewy it texture.
Common preparation techniques in Szechuan cuisine include stir-frying, steaming and braising, but a complete list would include more than 20 distinct techniques. Szechuan cuisine also utilizes various bovine and porcine organs as ingredients such as intestines, arteries, the head, tongue, skin, and liver in addition to other more common portions of meat. Peanuts, sesame paste and ginger are also prominent ingredients in Szechuan cooking.
How to make the most of the Cuisine when ordering:
" I just love Chinese food. My favourite dish is number 27".
– Clement Atlee, former British Prime Minister
When presented by the staggering variety of dishes available within Chinese cuisine it can at times be difficult to know how and what to order. The unflappable Mr. Lo has these words of advice to offer when presented with the typically multitudinous Chinese menu:
"The problem which immediately arises is not so much which dishes to choose, but what combination. The first thing to remember about a Chinese meal is that it is supposed to be communal. Although each person should be consulted about his likes and dislikes, you should aim at a balanced selection for the whole party at the table. It is up to the host or hostess to make the final choice, not the individual.
It is normal to have at least three dishes and a soup for a Chinese meal; so two or three is the minimum number of diners to make the meal worthwhile, and the more the merrier. It is customary to have at least one more dish than there are people: the ideal number of diners is six, with a selection of seven or eight dishes in addition to a soup."
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