A few days ago, a Nanjing library librarian copied the food in Yuan Mei's "Suiyuan Food List", which set off another round of food search trips in ancient books.
Do the food practices of thousands of years ago meet the taste of modern "foodies"?
How to present ancient delicacies with modern ingredients?
From food lovers and ancient book fans to library professionals and documentary makers, more and more "book lovers and food lovers" believe that there are not only Yan Ruyu in the book, but also a gourmet house in the book.
□ Khaki
"Be sure to find out what the eggplant crab that Grandma Liu eats tastes like" "The almond tea favored by the health expert Jia Mu turns out to be so suitable for girls to drink" "The jujube mud yam cake that Qin Keqing was able to overcome when he was seriously ill"...Netizens" Bi Chanyi's video account profile on station B is "There is food in the book". Since August 2020, she has recorded more than 60 videos of "reproducing" the food of "Dream of Red Mansions", attracting many readers." follow up".
One of the most-viewed videos has the theme "I can eat 10 crab dumplings that Jia's mother dislikes."
This is one of the four kinds of snacks brought by the girls when Mother Jia took Grandma Liu to the Grand View Garden.
Mother Jia would dislike it because it was greasy and didn't eat it.
This crab dumpling is fried, it is only one inch in size, 1 inch = 3.33 cm, and it is not as long as a thumb.
In the video, "Bichanyi" mixes crab yellow and crab meat into the stuffing by cutting the stuffing to make delicate small dumplings, which are then fried into golden brown. ”.
The real name of "Bi Chanyi" is Li Dan, who is engaged in scientific research management work in a university.
For her, the series of videos copied by Dream of Red Mansions is just a "sideline" of her personal hobby. From shooting with a camera to post-editing, she does all the work by herself.
Because he liked "A Dream of Red Mansions" since he was a child, and later came into contact with some books on ancient diet because of his interest, Li Dan planned to copy the food described by Cao Xueqin word by word, and taste the taste of it.
In order to make the "simmered and tender" egg custard that the girl Siqi wanted to eat, Li Dan found it in a Qing Dynasty health-preserving Chinese medicine book called "Shixian Hongmi" after four or five unsuccessful attempts. The answer is to use broth instead of water to simmer, which makes a satisfactory egg custard.
In the process of restoring ancient books and delicacies, producers are also looking for the evolution of food in history.
In the video "It turns out that there was cream in ancient times", Li Dan reproduced the creamy pine dough rolls that Fang Guan felt greasy.
She specially remarked after the video: "ice cream has always been with us growing up, and in my impression, cream seems to be an imported product. I checked some information and found that our nomads will make cream very early. "Drinking is about to" The medium contains 'Masigo Oil': Take the net cow and your son, and keep hitting it with Achi (also a wooden utensil for oiling).
Not only Li Dan, but now on various online platforms, it is not uncommon for lovers to recreate ancient food and food, and there is also a trend of specialization.
Han Chao and Shi Xingyu, librarians of the Nanjing Library's Historical Documents Department, "translated" the words in Yuan Mei's "Suiyuan Food List" into several lively and fragrant dishes.
"Suiyuan Food List" is a book written by Yuan Mei based on his more than 40 years of food experience. It describes in detail 326 kinds of dishes from the north and the south, which are divided into instructions list, diet list, seafood list, Jiangxian list, special animal list, miscellaneous animal list, There are 14 aspects such as Yuzu Dan, which are widely circulated to this day.
As the regular army of Nantu, the two started the production of food videos in the summer of 2020, and launched two episodes every year in conjunction with the winter and summer vacations.
Translating the words in ancient books into lively and fragrant dishes is not as easy as what you see in the video, and sometimes it "turns over".
The dish of "pork in pork" is recorded very simply in the Suiyuan Food List, which is to slice the pork slices very thinly, and then simmer them in shrimp soup.
But during the actual operation, Han Chao and Shi Xingyu found out: After the soup is boiled, where did the shrimp go?
They learned that there is a place in Zhejiang to make hammer meat, which is to mix meat and shrimp together, which is delicious and sweet, so they spent a long time mixing shrimp and meat and dipping it in starch, but the result was still not satisfactory.
Therefore, Han Chao and Shi Xingyu chose to start with more common ingredients to make a homely version of "Suiyuan Food List".
Yuan Mei loves tofu, and the Suiyuan Food List includes dishes such as "Jiang Shilang Tofu", "Yang Zhongcheng Tofu", "Zhang Kai Tofu" and "Wang Taishou Babao Tofu", each of which is very particular.
In the video they presented, the two were cooking "Wang Taishou Babao Tofu" online while chatting about the allusions behind it.
According to the "Suiyuan Food List", "The Prefect of Meng Ting said: 'This holy patriarch bestowed Xu Jian'an the preceptor. '" That is to say, Kangxi gave Xu Jianan the practice of this dish, and when Xu Jianan took the recipe, he was "extorted" by the imperial kitchen for a thousand taels of silver before buying it, which shows how delicious it is.
This kind of food video is not broadcast for a long time, but the cost of time paid by the producers is not low. They consult ancient books, repeat trials, and may not be successful every time, but why are more and more video producers obsessed with it? ?
On station B, a video "It took 3 months to restore the beautiful Chinese food in landscape paintings" has reached 1.8 million views. The UP host "Eclipse" wrote that this video took a whole summer. , It took a lot of effort just to check the ancient books and materials and set the scene.
"Of course there are reasons for me to insist on doing this. For example, when I read the gold and jade in "Qi Min Yao Shu", I was shocked that 'sushi' had a similar existence in ancient China. Chinese food is not only Only cooking fume and simmering, frying, and frying are not just synonymous with low-priced food in the eyes of foreigners.”
It is based on this concept that more professional video content producers have also joined this feast of reproduction.
The documentary "Ancient Books Through Time and Space" presents the story of how contemporary researchers and artists make ancient books "live". The first episode "Feast in Ancient Books" opened the eyes of many viewers and greatly increased their appetite.
Writer Lu Ran and his team recreated more than 300 Song Dynasty delicacies in 5 years. In the documentary, he demonstrated the practice of Song Dynasty delicacies such as "crab stuffed orange", and also popularized many Song people eating crabs.
For example, the Song Dynasty entered the first climax of crab eating in China. Every autumn, no crab could climb out of the Song people's kitchen; Su Dongpo liked to eat bad crab, while Song Gaozong's favorite was hand-washing crab; A good partner is an orange, so there is a verse saying "orange makes crabs fatter".
The documentary also popularized a lot of "cold knowledge". For example, the most eaten meat in the Song Dynasty was mutton. At that time, mutton was defined as a noble ingredient and even as part of officials' salaries.
According to the "Song Huiyao Collection", Song Shenzong ate a total of 430,000 catties of mutton in one year, and only 4,000 catties of pork.
Li Dan was invited by CCTV to "Let's Talk" to make "fake crabs" in Qing Dynasty cuisine. She hopes to let everyone realize the unique side of Chinese cuisine. "If someone is attracted by the food in the book, then open the book and read it carefully. That is also a joy for me." The taste of thousands of years ago, using the ingredients of today, has been restored and presented through the hands of today's people, and more people can see it.
As the video maker "Sun Eclipse", who loves ancient books and food, said, in the past five thousand years, we have had countless picturesque Bazhen jade food.
Such a splendid culture should not be recorded only in the ancient books of the library.
Maybe time is long and silent, but we still have a lot of tacit understanding with time.