Zhejiang Food

One of the major eight schools of cooking in China, Zhejiang cuisine offers combined flavors of Hangzhou, Ningbo and Wenzhou. Each of the three sub-cuisine traditions is noted for its special flavor and taste, but they are all characterized by the careful selection of ingredients, emphasizing minute preparation, and unique, fresh and tender tastes. Zhejiang cuisine specializes in quick-frying, stir-frying, deep-frying, simmering and steaming, obtaining the natural flavor and taste. Special care is taken in the cooking process to make the food fresh and tender. Thanks to exquisite preparation, the dishes are not only delicious in taste and but also extremely elegant in appearance. Zhejiang cuisine is best represented by Hangzhou dishes, including Hangzhou Roast Chicken (commonly known as the Beggar's Chicken, which is especially delicious with a pleasant aroma of lotus leaves), Dongpo Pork, West Lake Vinegar Fish, Sistern Song's Shredded Fish Soup.

Source: (Zhejiang Online http://www.zjol.com.cn 6-23)

Some tasty Zhejiang Food:

Dongpo Pork:First created by Su Dongpo, a well-known poet from the Song Dynasty, when he served as a local official of Hangzhou. The dish is made from belly pork which is cut into four pieces and first briefly boiled and then rinsed. Next, the pork is put into a pot with sugar, soy sauce, onion, ginger and rice wine, the pot is sealed, and the pork is cooked in the oven until tender (about two hours). Finally, it is transferred to a bowl, the juices from the pot strained over the meat, and the bowl covered and put inside a steamer and steamed for at least two hours.

　

Xi Hu Cu Yu (West Lake vinegar Fish):Prepared with fresh and alive grass carps from the West Lake, this dish integrates delicious, sweet and sour tastes, with tender fish meat, which tastes just like crabmeat. The fish is first starved for 2 days in order to get rid of the mud smell.

Jiao Hua Ji (Beggar's Chicken): Recipe Legend has it that a Hangzhou beggar invented "Beggar's chicken". The story goes that because the beggar had no stove, he wrapped the stolen chicken in clay and baked it in a hole in the ground. To cook the chicken, firstly the organs of the chicken are cleaned, and Chinese herbs are inserted. Then the chicken is wrapped around lotus leafs, and wrapped around in clay and baked over low heat for hours. The taste of the chicken is aromatic, tasty, and tender.

Shanghai Food

Shanghai, being a relatively new city in China, does not really have a cuisine of its own, but successfully refines all the work of the surrounding provinces such as Zhejiang and Jiangsu. Through years of culinary practice and the assimilation of the art in other styles of cuisine, Shanghai chefs have also created a style of cuisine peculiar to the region. Shanghai dishes are usually characterized by the use of heavy and highly flavored sauce. The use of sugar is another uniquness found in Shanghainese cuisine and, especially when used proportiaonally with soy sauce, the taste created is not so much sweet but rather savory. My chef friend told me that this is mainly due to the fact that sugar neutralized the sourness found in soy source. Household in Shanghai would consume as much soy source as sugar. Visitors are often surprised when the "secret ingredient" was revealed by local Shanghainese. Some tasty Shanghai Food:  Xiao Long Bao (Little Dragon Bun): The little dragon bun is one of my favourite dish. Unlike the buns in northern China, these buns are very small and easy to swallow. The buns are usually steamed in containers made of banboo. The skin of the buns are very thin and the bun is very juicy. The dish is now popularized and consumed widely throughout China as a Dim Sum. Chou Dou Fu (Smelly Tofu): When first smelled, one would naturally hold their nose, not to mention give it a try and swallow a piece. The smelly tofu is a popular local food mainly found on Shanghai streets. The tofu is fermanted with many ingredients before fried. Old ladies usually serve them on their liltte trolley. Dispite their odour, most foreigners love it after tasting it. It is dirt cheap too!   Da Zha Xie (Hairy Crab): Da Zha Xie is a special type of crab found in rivers, and is normally consumed in the winter. The crabs are tied with ropes or strings, placed in bamboo containers, steamed and served. There is little artificial ingredient added to the dish yet it tastes fantastically good. Da Zha Xie is usually consumed with vinegar. Locals are also quite fussy about when to consume male crabs and when to consume female crabs. Pi Dan (Preserved Eggs): Preserved duck eggs are a traditional Shanghainese delicacy, and although known as "1000-year-old eggs" they are rarely more than 100 days old. It is done using a traditional method. Pidan is now very common in China, and is sometimes consumed with congee.

Hunan Food

Also known as Xiang Cai, Hunan cuisine has already developed into a famous culinary school in China. Hunan dishes consist of local dishes from the Xiangjiang River area, Dongting Lake area and Western Hunan mountain area. While similar to Szechuan cuisine, Hunan Cuisine is often spicier and contains a larger variety of ingredients. Other characters distinguish Hunan cuisine from Szechuan cuisine is that in general, Hunan cuisine utilizes smoked and curing food in its dishes much more frequent than Szechuan cuisine. Hunan cuisine dishes are often more oily and look darker than Szechuan cuisine dishes. Hunan is known for its liberal use of chilli peppers, shallots and garlic. Many Hunan dishes are characterized by a strongly flavored brown sauce. Some rely on sweetness from ingredients such as honey; sweet and sour sauces are also characteristic of the style. Hunan cuisine make extensive use of chiles, to cleanse the palate and to cope with the humid climate. (Hot foods such as red chili peppers dry out and cool down the body, making it easier to handle the heat and dampness). Hunan dishes are normally made with fresh chile peppers, including the seeds and membranes which contain most of the heat.Hunan food takes curing, simmering, steaming and stewing as the main cooking methods. Dishes of this style are usually tinged with a sour and spicy flavour. Popular Regional Dishes: Hunan's culinary repertoire consists of more than 4,000 dishes, including Dong'an Chicken, Crispy Duck, Orange Beef, and Spicy Frog's Legs. Dong'an Chicken was originated by Dong an people of Hunan As early as Tang Dynasty. So far, it has been more than 1200 years. This kind of dish is of nice shape, bright color, and rich in nutrition. It tastes hot, crisp, sweet, tender and tart.   Another popular dish is crispy duck, where the duck is seasoned with pepper corns, star anise, fennel, and other spices, then steamed and finally deep-fried.   Orange beef, where the beef is marinated overnight, then washed and marinaded again with a mixture including egg white, wine, and white pepper. In braised soy sauce beef, the meat is simmered in an aromatic mixture including anise, sugar, ginger, soy sauce, and wine. Spicy Frog's Legs A pricier dish is frog legs in hot sauce (ma-la tien-ji-tui). The frog legs are stir-fried with green peppers, then the whole preparation is glazed with a light reddish-brown sauce. The hot sauce has a slight kick, but is not overwhelming.

Jiangsu Food

A journey through Jiangsu is not only a chance to experience beautiful river town  scenery and some of the most brilliant achievements in Chinese culture,  but also a great chance to try one of the major components of Chinese  cuisine - Jiangsu Cuisine. Jiangsu Cuisine, also called Huaiyang Cuisine,  consists of the styles of Yangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou and Zhenjiang dishes.  Known as "a land of fish and rice" in China, Jiangsu Province has a rich variety  of ingredients available for cooking. Using fish and crustaceans as the main  ingredients, it stresses freshness and aliveness freshness. Its high carving  techniques are delicate, of which the melon carving technique is especially  well known. Due to using the methods of stewing, braising, quick-frying,  warming-up, stir-frying, wine sauce pickling and adding some sugar as  condiments, Jiangsu dishes taste fresh, light and mellow. In Huaiyang cuisine,  ingredients are strictly chosen and carefully prepared to maintain the original flavor.  Huaiyang cuisine also pays special attention to the seasonally of each  ingredient so that each ingredient is in its prime state for eating. For example,  Yangzhou Cuisine is light and elegant; Suzhou Cuisine is slightly sweet; and  Wuxi Cuisine is fairly sweet. Light and tasty soups are also a key part of  Huaiyang cuisine and perfectly in tune with the latest health food trends. In 1949, Huaiyang cuisine was the selected cuisine for the first state banquet  of the new People's Republic and, in 1999, Huaiyang cuisine was also featured  on the menu of the People's Republic's 50th anniversary state dinner. In 2002,  Huaiyang cuisine was also selected for the dinner hosted by President Jiang Zemin  for visiting US President George W. Bush. Jiangsu dishes can be classified into that of Suzhou-Wuxi style and  Zhenjiang-Yangzhou  style. The feature of Suzhou-style dishes is their natural flavor in original  stock and a mixture of salty and sweet taste. The characteristics of  Zhenjiang-Yangzhou style food are best described by the saying that  "the soup is so clear that you can see the bottom of the bowl and the  sauce is so thick that it turns creamy white".Typical courses of Jiangsu cuisine  are Jinling salted dried duck (Nanjing's most famous dish), Squirrel with Mandarin Fish,  Yangzhou Style Fried Rice, "Lion-Head" Meatball with Crab Roe, Wuxi Sweet and Salty  Spare Ribs. Crystal meat (pork heals in a bright, brown sauce), clear crab shell  meatballs (pork meatballs in crab shell powder, fatty, yet fresh), Yangzhou  steamed Jerky strips (dried tofu, chicken, ham and pea leaves), triple combo duck,  dried duck, and Farewell My Concubine (soft-shelled turtle stewed with many  other ingredients such as chicken, mushrooms and wine), etc. Nanjing Style Dried Salty Duck It has a long history  of over 1,000 years. apart from its plumpness in  appearance. It, the duck tempts people with  characteristics of tasting crisp, fresh, fragrant,  and rich but not greasy. The cooking method of  the duck was invented 600 years ago. The salted  duck is slathered with roasted salt, steeped in  clear brine, baked dry and then kept under cover  for some time; the finished product should have  a creamy-colored skin and red, tender flesh. It was  the tribute to the royal palace during the Qing Dynasty. Squirrel-shaped Mandarin Fish Tradition has it  that once stopping at the Crane House during his  south Yangtze tour, Emperor Qian Long saw a carp  frisking on the holy table and ordered it cooked for him.  The chef, knowing it was the emperor's order, spared no  effort in flavoring and seasoning. In order to be exempted  from the sin of killing the "holy fish", he made the carp into  the shape of a squirrel with its head and tail soaring high.  The dark reddish brown fish, crisp outside and tender amid,  was sour and sweet enough to the taste of emperor, whose  appreciation raised the name of Squirrel-shaped Mandarin Fish  to the world. Being the raw material, the mandarin fish is  characterized by its tenderness of the flesh and sparseness  of the bones as well. After scaling and frying, the head of the  fish looks big with its mouth wide open, the tail bends upwards,  and the flesh imitates the erecting hair of a squirrel. It will be  squeaking like a squirrel if it is sprinkled with shrimp meat,  dried bamboo shoots and tomato ketchup. Thus the  Squirrel-shaped Mandarin Fish is complete in color, smell, flavor and sound, and it is to arouse the  appetite of whoever sees it. Yangzhou Style Fried Rice: Rice is the main ingredient in  this dish. It is first pounded and then stir-fried with shrimp,  ham, egg, peas and seasonal vegetables. Because a variety  of seasonal vegetables are used, you taste a variety of  wonderful flavors and textures! "Lion-Head" Meatball with Crab Roe: This dish is the  symbol of Huaiyang cuisine and it requires very  complicated procedure. First mix the ground pork,  egg white, crabmeat, rice wine, salt, scallions and  ginger into a rather stiff mixture. Then divide it into  4 portions and roll each portion into a meatball.  Add cabbage, chicken broth together with  meatballs into casserole and place on low heat  and simmer for long time until its done. It has the  fragrance of the pork and crab and the color of the  dish is as bright as orange. It tastes rich but not greasy. Wuxi Sweet and Salty Spare Ribs Wuxi Spare Ribs is  the most popular local dish and is the specialty to look  out for people come to Wuxi. It features the common  eastern technique of "Red cooking" in a stock of rice  wine and soy sauce and spiced with ginger, anise,  cloves and black peppercorns and has unique red-sweet  sauce on the top in order to give rich taste.

Cantonese Food

Cantonese food is the most popular style outside China. Cantonese cuisine originates from the region around Canton (Guangzhou) in southern China's Guangdong province. One Cantonese saying goes that anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies is edible. Another says that the only four-legged things that Cantonese people won't eat are tables and chairs. Cantonese cuisine includes almost all edible food in addition to the staples of pork, beef and chicken, such as snakes, snails, insects, worms, chicken feet, duck tongues, and entrails. As a trading post, Canton (Guangzhou) had access to a large range of imported food, which resulted in the huge variety of Cantonese dish we can enjoy today.

Unlike other Chinese cuisines, the Cantonese usually serves soup before a meal. The soup is usually a clear broth prepared by simmering meat and other ingredients, and cooked on mild fire for hours. Chinese herbal medicines are sometimes added to the clay pot, to make the soup nutritious and healthy. Cantonese normally only consume the liquid in the pot, the solids are usually thrown away unless they are expensive such as abalones or shark fins. There's also a Cantonese saying that to "secure" a husband, a Cantonese woman needs to first cook good soups.

Due to Guangdong's proximity to the south China sea, cooking live seafood is a specialty in Cantonese cuisine. Prawns, shrimps, scallops, lobster and crab are in plentiful supply. Many Chinese restaurants maintain live seafood tanks. The freshest seafood is odorless, and is best cooked by steaming. Less fresh ones will be fried or even deep fried. When cooking a fresh fish, only a small amount of soy sauce, ginger, and spring onion is added to a steamed fish, while loads of garlic and spices will be added to cook an unfresh fish.

Some tasty Cantonese Food:

Dim Sum (Dian Xin) - Dim sum is literally translates to "touch the heart". Dim sum is usually servec as breakfast or brunch, enjoyed with family or friends. There is a wide variety of food available, Gow (Dumpling), Siu Mai, Phoenix talons (Chicken feet), Steamed spare ribs, and Spring rolls are good examples. In some restaurants, they are served on trolleys. Instead of placing an order after reading a menu, you order whatever you like after physically seeing the yummy dim sums on the trolley. Dim sum is part of the Cantonese culture, it is common to see good Cantonese restaurants crowded with people having dim sums on sunday mornings, enjoying dim sum while reading newspapers.

　

Shark Fin Soup - Genuine shark fin soup or stew is made with real shark fins obtainable from several shark species. In Cantonese cooking, raw shark fins are processed by first removing the skin, trimming them to shape, and thoroughly drying them. Bleaching with hydrogen peroxide may be employed before drying to make the colour of the sharks fin more appealing. Considered a highly prized delicacy, the best Cantonese shark fin soup can fetch up to US$100 per bowl. However, there are also cheaper shark fins, usually taken from smaller shark species, used for casual dining. The quantities used for each bowl of soup may vary from a few needles of fin rays (typical in a US $150 Chinese feast), to a whole small fin, or even more. The price depends on the size and quality of shark fin used; shark fin is estimated to cost at least US $4.50 per bowl.

　

Char Siu (BBQ pork) - Char siu, also known as BBQ pork, is Cantonese-style barbecued pork. It is usually made with long strips of boneless pork, typically pork shoulder. The distinctive feature of char siu is its coating of seasonings which turn the meat dark red, or occasionally burnt, during cooking. The seasoning mixture for char siu usually includes sugar or honey, five-spice powder, red food colouring, soy sauce, and sherry or rice wine. The words char siu literally mean "fork roasted", which is the traditional preparation method. Long forks hold the meat in a covered oven or over a fire. Char siu is rarely eaten on its own, but used in the preparation of other foods, most notably char siu bau, where it is stuffed in buns, and char siew rice (or Barbecued pork with rice), where it is served with rice. Char siu is common in places with a large Cantonese-speaking community, including southern China, Malaysia and Singapore. It is also commonly served in Chinese restaurants and food markets in other parts of the world.

Beijing Food

Beijing is the Capital city of many dynasties in the history of China, and many nomadic populations once lived in Beijing. Today, Beijing cuisine is refined from a combination of Shangdong cuisine and the Imperial cuisine, and formed its unique characteristics. Many Beijing dishes primarily comprise of meat, as a result of eating habits of the royals. For example, the Mongolian rulers during the Ming dynasty favored mutton, while the Qing dynasty rulers preferred pork. Bejing chefs generally put more effort into the method of cooking, and uses very common ingredients. Deep-frying, roasting, instant-boiling, stir-frying and stewing are among the most common methods of cooking. Because of its more northerly location, instead of rice, which is the staple diet in southern cuisines, noodles, buns, or jiaozi(dumplings), are preferred by the local people. Peking Roast Duck: The most famous dish associated with Beijing is Peking Roast Duck. The origin of the Peking Duck dates back to the Ming Dynasty, about 600 years ago. Cooks from all over China travelled to the capital Beijing to cook for the Emperor. It was a prestigious occupation as only the best chefs could enter the palace kitchens. A top cook was even able to reach the rank of a minister! It was in these kitchens where dishes of exceptional quality such as the Peking Duck was first created and crafted to perfection by palace chefs. However, many of the recipes for such "foods of the Emperor" were later smuggled out of the kitchen and onto the streets of Beijing. With the eventual fall of the Ching dynasty in 1911, court chefs who left the Forbidden City set up restaurants around Beijing and brought the Peking Duck and other delicious dishes to the masses. The crisp skin of the duck is the most prized part. To achieve such crispness, the duck is air-dried, then coated with a mixture of syrup and soy sauce before roasting. When ready, it is presented ceremoniously and the skin deftly carved. These pieces are wrapped in thin pancakes with onions or leeks, cucumber, turnip and plum sauce. Some restaurants also serve up just about every part of the duck, from the webbed feet to the beak and liver. On request, the remainder of the duck meat can be sauteed with bean sprouts, and the bones made into a wonderful soup with cabbage. Shuanyangrou (Lamb Hot Pot) Another favorite Beijing dish, it is especially popular in the cold Beijing winter months. Lamb is typical northern food, and is generally not consumed in southern parts of China. It is favored by northern people as it warms up the body. Around the Chunjie or Chinese Lunar New Year, Shuanyangrou is consumed a lot. The way to cook the lamb is ridiculously simple. Lamb meat is first cut into very thin pieces. This was done manually and required great skill. Recently machines have become better at this job and many lamb are thus cut by machines. The lamb is put into a boiling pot for a few seconds with many other ingredient such as seafood or vegetables, and taken out immediately and consumed with sauces such as peanut sauce.

Anhui Food

Anhui Cuisine Anhui cuisine (Hui Cai for short), one of the eight most famous cuisines in China, features the local culinary arts of Huizhou. It comprises the specialties of South Anhui, Yanjiang and Huai Bei. The highly distinctive characteristic of Anhui cuisine lies not only in the elaborate choices of cooking materials but also in the strict control of cooking process. Most ingredients in Anhui cuisine, such as pangolin, stone frog, mushroom, bayberry, tea leaves, bamboo shoot, dates, games, etc., are from mountain area. Huangshan Mountain has abundant products for dish cooking. Huangshan Chukka has tender flesh and a sweet taste. It can be boiled in clear soup or braised in soy sauce. The dishes help relieve internal fever and build up vital energy. The white and tender bamboo shoots produced on Huangshan Mountain can be made into very delicious food. Xianggu, a kind of top-grade mushroom grows on old trees, is also very tasty. Anhui cuisine chefs pay more attention to the taste, color of dishes and the temperature to cook them, and are good at braising and stewing. They are experts especially in cooking delicacies from mountains and sea. Anhui dishes preserve most of the original taste and nutrition of the materials. Generally the food here is slightly spicy and salty. Some master dishes usually stewed in brown sauce with stress on heavy oil and sauce. Ham is often added to improve the taste and sugar candy added to gain freshness. High up on the menu are stewed soft shell turtle with ham, Huangshan braised pigeon, steamed stone frog, steamed rock partridge, stewed fish belly in brown sauce, bamboo shoots cooked with sausage and dried mushroom, etc. Stewed soft shell turtle with ham: One whole soft shell turtle, pork, ham, bamboo shoots, a clove of garlic, shallot, ginger, soy sauce, salt, rice wine, black pepper, lard are all stewed together in a pot on charcoal fire. The dish is not greasy and can lead diners to endless aftertastes. 2. Steamed stone frog Inhabited in caves, stone frog is a special product in Huangshan Mountain. It weights 250 grams or so, whose belly is white and back black with stripe. Stone frog is rich in protein, calcium and so on. It has the functions of clearing heat, improving vision and nutrition. It is one of the best exotic dishes from mountains.   3. Bamboo shoots cooked with sausage and dried mushroom It is one traditional flavor in Huizhou mountainous area. Cooked with sausage and dried mushrooms, the bamboo shoots are more fragrant. It is delicious, and noted for its good color, juicy meat and thick soup. Li Hongzhang Hotchpotch Li Hongzhang hotchpotch is a popular dish named after one of Anhui's famous personages. Li Hongzhang was a top official of the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 AD). When he was in office, he paid a visit to the US and hosted a banquet for all his American friends. As the specially prepared dishes continued to flow, the chefs, with limited resources, began to fret. Upon Li Hongzhang's order, the remaining kitchen ingredients were thrown together into an impromptu stew, containing sea cucumber, squid, tofu, ham, mushroom, chicken meat and other less identifiable food materials! Thus appetites were quenched and a dish was created.