Людмила Белоусова
Время такое- потреблять больше чем необходимо. Не все руководствуютя принципом разумной достаточности. Отрадно, что понимаете вы это.
3.3 What Do Real Revolutionaries Eat?
Chinese Cuisine in the western regions is proudly spicy. Its distinctive flavor comes from red-hot chili peppers, an ingredient first brought to China by Spanish merchants in the 17th century. But Sichuan cuisine was hot long before the Spaniards arrived. A collection of poems from the ancient state Chu entitled Elegy to the South reveals that natives of the area have been cooking with Sichuan pepper, cassia (local cinnamon), wormwood and other spices since 300 BC. Texts unearthed from Han Dynasty (260 BC–220 AD) tombs also describe rich, diverse and exquisite dishes flavored with exotic spices. Nowadays chili and garlic have supplanted some of the spices from former times, but Sichuan pepper, cassia, star-shaped anise, five spice powder and coriander still feature in local Sichuan cuisine.
The main purpose of northern Chinese cuisine is to retain body heat in cold weather. Sichuan dishes, on the other hand, are aimed at drying the body from the inside, bearing in mind the high humidity of this region. Hot chili in sultry and humid weather creates internal interstices that act as a cooling system. In winter chili warms the body from the inside, hastening blood circulation, promoting the metabolism and accelerating digestion. Also, as foodstuffs do not keep in warm climate, and the refrigerator is a relatively recent invention how did Chinese ancestors prevent food from going bad? With chili: a reliable destroyer of bacteria.
Sichuan Province is blessed with a subtropical climate and excellent irrigation, so fresh foodstuffs are plentiful all year round. Staples of the local cuisine are rice, vermicelli, pork, cabbage, white radish, fresh water fish and bean curd. Mountains densely covered in bamboo groves are the habitat for pandas, symbol of Sichuan and China. Bamboo is their staple food, and also a favorite item for human consumption, along with the various kinds of mushrooms, native-grasses and forest roots that enrich local dinner tables.
This mountain region is also rich in all kinds of nuts, in particular walnuts, ginkgo and stone-pine. Long harsh winters oblige the Sichuanese to preserve vegetables, something they accomplish with salt, vinegar, oil and – of course! – indispensable chili.
Chairman Mao Zedong was born in Hunan and never lost his love of the local spice cuisine, insisting that: “Those who do not eat hot dishes are not real revolutionary”. It was only a few decades ago that genuine revolutionaries were temporarily based in Sichuan, so it is no surprise that the local cuisine’s fame has spread all over China, along with communist ideals and people power.
Chefs are very cautious when choosing ingredients and flavorings; every dish is cooked in its particular way. The Chinese western school of cooking is often referred to as the “cuisine of one thousand and one tastes”. Among its most famous dishes are spicy pork, gongbao jiding – chicken fried with nuts and vegetables, chicken bites cooked with spices, and bean curd with chili and prickly ash.
Tofu cooked by a master is transformed into delicacies such as Pock-marked Wife Tofu, White Water Tofu, Pocket-Shaped Tofu, and Eight Treasure Tofu. Bean curd is by no means a Sichuan specialty; it is consumed all over China and is popular with vegetarians around the world. At times eating it can be an adventure. Tofu nao, for example, is a dish of bean curd in a rich brown sauce cooked with fine chopped meat, green cucumber and cloud- (or ear-) shaped wild fungus. It is one of Beijing’s the most popular breakfast dishes and very nutritious.
People of Sichuan are very inventive when it comes to cooking and have created many unusual recipes. There is one local story of how somebody once threw a couple of small crucian carps into a jug of pickles, so adding a distinctive spiciness to an already hot dish. This unusual dressing, named “fish pepper”, is added to onion, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, salt, sugar and vinegar, creating a whole range of dishes with “fish aroma”.
Sichuan cuisine encompasses more than 20 methods of cooking, yet throughout all the spices used are basically the same; only the main ingredient changes. One method of cooking can, therefore, create a whole range of dishes. Take “fried rice with meat bites” as an example. First crunchy fried rice is placed on a plate, followed by a spicy condiment and only then are thin slices of meat added to make a delectable dish. When shrimps are substituted for meat another dish is created – “fried rice with shrimps”. The dish thus changes according to the main ingredient.
When I think about Sichuan cuisine the first thing that comes to mind is yu xiang rou si – straw-shaped slivers of pork with fish aroma. It was the first dish I ordered in Chinese and is my favorite of all, and after four years in China I like it just as much now as when I first tried it. I order it in every new restaurant I go to because each chef adds his own special something, so it tastes a little different each time. This is actually one of the reasons why I so like Chinese food and Sichuan cuisine in particular: for the surprises and discoveries that lurk in the most standard dishes.
Book “Chinese Customs and Wisdoms” (translated into English by the author) was published in Beijing in 2007 by the Foreign Language Press
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