"Buy wine high temple, kiss from my swim. Chef China cooks sumptuous meals, cooks sheep and slaughters fat cows. " This is the elegance left by Cao Zhi, a poet of the Three Kingdoms. The last two sentences of this poem vividly describe the busy scene in the kitchen. The protagonist of the kitchen is the chef, and the chef must have unique skills.
There are many famous chefs in history, and their dishes are refreshing and impressive. Moreover, there were many famous female chefs in ancient times, which reflected the rare equality between men and women.
Shanzu
Duan Wenchang, the prime minister of the Tang Dynasty, had a chef named Shanzu, who was a young lady with great experience in food. She is good at the selection of ingredients, the blending of tastes, and the cooking of knife workers. Duan Wenchang's son Duan recorded many delicacies in Youyang Miscellanies, most of which were written by ancestors.
The caterer is very strict about the choice of ingredients. The bamboo shoot she chose should be "the tip of the bamboo shoot must be selected and boiled in three soups", that is, she cooked the tip of the bamboo shoot in three soups of vegetarian soup, broth and clear soup to meet her requirements. Shan Zu believes that "choose the core of the green vegetables and don't spend the night", and only use Chinese cabbage for cooking, and don't need to spend the night. Rice ancestors "choose mushrooms evenly, and there must be no evil." The mushrooms she wants. Color, size and quality should be consistent. Shanzu has unique views on the growth time, quality, location and use of livestock.
"Jade Frozen Chicken" is a specialty of Shanzu. She cooked the chicken, wrapped it in tarpaulin, cooled it at the bottom of the well, and removed the bones to get the meat. Add bones and sheep's trotters to the previous chicken soup and stew for four hours, then filter with gauze, add spinach juice, put chicken into the soup, cool the chicken soup and set it on a plate. This dish is similar to boiled chicken, but the color is more attractive and the taste is more delicious.
Zheng Fan
Zheng Fan of the Five Dynasties was also a female chef, belonging to a clean stream in the culinary world. She is a nun and is good at cooking cold dishes. According to "Wangchuan Villa" drawn by Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei, Van Gogh made 20 "Wangchuan Villa samples" with raw materials such as bacon, bacon, meat sauce, melons and vegetables, as well as skilled knife workers and vegetarian dishes. Van Gogh is known as "a landscape painting with fantastic ideas, and each painting occupies a landscape in Wangchuan Villa".
The "Wangchuan Villa Sample" is ingenious in conception and diverse in composition, which shows Van Gogh's profound literary foundation and exquisite skills. Gu Tao, a scholar in the Northern Song Dynasty, spoke highly of it in "Shame Gate of Qing Jia". "Bhikuni is honest and delicate. He uses fried, pickled, pickled, sauced, melons, vegetables, yellow and red as scenes. If he sits with 20 people, then people will put on a play.
Song Wusao
In hangzhou dishes, there are two dishes, "Song Saoyu Soup" and "West Lake Vinegar Fish", which are made by a chef named Song Wusao. She was originally from Kaifeng. After the disaster of Jingkang, Song Wusao went south to Lin 'an and opened a pub outside Qiantang Gate. One day, Song Gaozong visited the West Lake by boat and heard shouts with Kaifeng accent. The emperor was homesick and called the hawking Song Wusao aboard. Song Wusao made a bowl of fish soup for Gaozong. After the emperor tasted it, he praised it and rewarded it with one hundred and twenty pieces of silver. From then on, "Song Sao Tang" became famous in Hangzhou, and WuSao in Song Dynasty was also regarded as the "master of a generation" of Piyu.
"West Lake Vinegar Fish" is made of slightly salty grass carp, processed with ginger, garlic, sour vinegar, sugar, white salt, shredded radish and other seasonings, and then seasoned with vinegar. In the sixth year of Xichun (A.D. 1 179), Song Xiaozong met Song Wusao on a trip to the west. They chatted happily. Seeing that Wusao Song was old and loyal, Song Xiaozong took a nap in her shop. "West Lake Vinegar Fish" made by Wusao Song herself. After Song Xiaozong tasted it, he praised it: "It's delicious!" One hundred colored silks were awarded immediately. Under the praise of the emperor, "West Lake Vinegar Fish" has a long-lasting reputation.
Dong Xiaowan
Dong Xiaowan, one of the eight beauties of Qinhuai in the late Ming Dynasty, was not only beautiful in talent and color, but also excellent in cooking. Nowadays people often eat oily meat, which was originally created by Dong Xiaowan, so it is also called "Dong rou". The pickles she pickled are as yellow as wax and as green as jade. After all kinds of wild vegetables are cooked in Dong Xiao's bowl, they are crisp and refreshing.
Dong Xiaowan's "fire meat has the taste of pine and cypress, wind fish has the taste of muntjac deer, drunk clam is like peach blossom, pine shrimp is like dragon beard, oily pomfret is like sturgeon, and roast rabbit crispy chicken is like cake bait", and so on. She married Mao Bijiang as a concubine. In order to cater to the husband's greasy and sweet taste, pickled plum blossoms are added to the caramel, which is very satisfying in taste and smell.
Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province is famous for its sweet-stuffed and crisp-rolled winter candy, which is also related to Dong Xiaowan. The Qing Dynasty document Chongchuan Lu Zhiwen records: "Dong Tang was made by Dong Xiaowan, the concubine of Mao Shi." After she returned to Nanjing, Sifu eagerly used sesame seeds, caramel, pine nuts, peach kernels, roses and osmanthus flowers to add fine flour, mixed with sesame oil, and cut into crisp candy with a length of five points, a width of three points and a thickness of one point. This kind of sweet food melts in the mouth, is crisp and refreshing, and is deeply loved by the brush river. It is often given to relatives and friends. Over time, merchants copied it one after another, calling it "East Tang".
Little Ren Mei.
Chinese dim sum is also an essential part of Chinese food. During the Qianlong period, Ren Mei grew up in Zuying Tea Store in the south of Yizheng, Jiangsu Province, and was familiar with the recipes of various cakes. Later, the 25-year-old Xiao opened a snack bar to make a living. She used half rice flour and half glutinous rice flour, mixed with fruit pulp, walnuts, melon seeds, pine nuts and sesame oil, cut into pieces with sugar, and decorated with red, green and shredded plums to make various snacks. The taste is delicious, and the diners are "greedy".
Yuan Mei, a gifted scholar, praised after tasting: "Little Ren Mei is good at making dim sum, steamed bread, peanuts, melon seeds and cakes. They are small and lovely, as white as snow." He also specially ordered 3000 boxes of peanuts, melon seeds, peanut cakes and melon seeds cakes to be shipped to Nanjing as gifts for friends. Xie Qikun, the envoy of Shanxi Province, tasted cookies and wrote a poem sighing: "The city is green and beautiful, and the surname is new. It's cold in front of Modao Road, and there are cake buyers at sunset. " Emperor Qianlong knew the reputation of small cakes and ordered two thousand boxes of cakes to be shared with the concubines in the harem.
Small cakes were designated as royal tributes, and the teahouse continued to expand into a large workshop, employing as many as 70 or 80 pastry chefs. After tasting Xiaorenmei's cake, some people compared it with the famous HongLing cake in the Tang Dynasty, thinking that "HongLing is forgiving, which shows that Zhou Zhen is good at it." Poet Wu Xuan praised: "Exquisite hands are fine and even, and they are good at kneading cakes." Since Xiang came to Jiangnan, he has been famous in the city since he was a child. "