China News Agency, Luoyang, Henan, October 4th, title: Millennium Luoyang water table: water carries Baishi food to prosper in Tang Dynasty
China News Agency reporter Han Zhangyun
"Luoyang peony is the best in the world, and there are peony flowers in the dish." A compliment, so that "Luoyang Yancai" was renamed "Peony Yancai", and it also secured the status of Luoyang water table top dish.
Touring the Dragon Gate, appreciating peony, and drinking water mats are the "three musts" of the ancient capital Luoyang.
There are many delicacies in Luoyang, and the local people especially like to eat soup.
What is a water seat?
According to Yao Yanli, the representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage "Really Different Luoyang Water Mat", the water mat uses water as the medium and uses traditional techniques such as steaming, stewing, stewing, and boiling to cook food, thus forming a soup The unique feasting skills of the dishes.
According to legend, Luoyang water banquet was a court banquet during Wu Zetian's period. Therefore, the traditional Luoyang water banquet is rich in content and grand in form, with a total of twenty-four dishes, namely eight cold dishes and sixteen hot dishes.
The serving procedure is also quite particular: four meats, four vegetarians, and eight cold dishes are placed on the table, followed by four large dishes, each with two Chinese dishes, followed by four pressing dishes.
A table of hot and cold meat, vegetarian, sweet, salty, sour, and spicy flavors are gathered together on a table of water.
"The ingredients are selected from the sea, land and air, and the taste is in the world. The Luoyang water table has rich and eclectic ingredients, and blends all kinds of flavors to comfort the taste buds of the diners." Yao Yanli said that the biggest feature of Luoyang water table is that the vegetarian dishes are made with meat and meat, and the fake is mixed with the real.
"Take the peony banquet as an example. It tastes like bird's nest, but it is actually shredded white radish."
Peony jelly is the top dish in Luoyang water feasts. The raw materials are simple, but the production process is quite complicated.
The white radish is cut into shreds, steamed and dried for nine times, and then frozen at -18°C for 90 days to fully dehydrate and increase its toughness.
When the dish is finished, the dehydrated shredded white radish is piled into a hill shape, surrounded by shreds of ham, shredded egg skin, shredded crab sticks, and day lily in two groups of eight "knife noodles", steamed in the basket for half an hour, and then taken out. Place a golden egg coat in the center to form a peony flower shape, and pour in the broth at the end to complete a peony agar-agar with full color and fragrance.
The accumulation of time has resulted in the unique taste of Peony Agar-agar.
The white radish shreds soaked in the broth is crystal clear, tough and elastic. The clear soup base is slightly sour and peppery, and the belly is warm and moist. The food is very appetizing. coexist.
Luoyang water table is inseparable from water. The Book of Tea has a saying: "Mountains, rivers, and wells." Yao Yanli asked to go back and forth 110 kilometers every day, and take spring water from Mingshan in Xixi, Henan, to make soup.
"The voice of singing is the soup of the chef." Dong Xuemin, who has been in the business for 29 years, is already the "head of the kitchen".
When he arrives at work every morning, what he must see is the soup that was hung the night before.
A pot of soup is prepared with more than 10 kinds of raw materials such as old hen, stick bones, ham, ganoderma lucidum, scallops, etc. After 14-16 hours of cooking, "the taste makes it out, the tasteless makes it in, and the difference makes it go away". The soup base is mellow and rich, and the aftertaste is endless.
The magic of soup is the most unique in the dish of sour soup and fried balls.
Pour the reconciled hot and sour soup on the golden and crispy balls that have just come out of the pot, and the hot balls will make a crackling sound when they meet the hot soup. For the diners, the sight, hearing and taste have a wonderful feeling.
Luoyang water table not only captures the taste buds of Chinese people, but also a window for foreigners to understand Chinese food culture.
In the water mat museum, there are three letters sent from Japan.
Yao Yanli said that in 2010, the Japanese writer Nanjo Bamboo sent three letters in a row to express his thoughts about the Luoyang water table after tasting the Luoyang water table.
Today, all kinds of water banquet restaurants have been opened all over the streets and alleys of Luoyang. Around the water banquet and Tang culture, Luoyang restaurant people have restored more than 30 kinds of golden glutinous rice balls, soup bath embroidered pills, Bu Nai soup, cifei sheep, camel hoof soup, chess cakes, etc. Tang dishes in the Tang Dynasty have restored the traditional techniques of "Baheji" and the double-blade fish fillet "Xianluanyu", which have been lost for thousands of years, and initially restored the dining etiquette of the Tang Dynasty. fragrant.
As time goes by, the once court banquet has already flown into the homes of ordinary people.
In the small restaurants on the streets of Luoyang, even soup slices, slivers of pork, small crispy meat... The special dishes in Luoyang water feasts have become home-cooked dishes that are often ordered and eaten by citizens, reducing the sense of distance and adding to the fireworks in the market. .
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