The Four Famous Chinese Cuisines

People regard food as their prime want, and food safety is a top priority.

Cooking is an ancient Chinese art. Some 3,000 years ago., the Chinese people already know how to “deliciously” blend the five flavours –pungent, sweet, sour , bitter, and salty and today Chinese restaurants can be found in many countries and regions throughout the world .

Chinese cooking places great stress on the color , fragrance, taste , form and nutrition of the food and is very particular about cutting and temperature control. According to the rough estimates, there are more than 5,000 different local cooking styles in China . The most popular cooking styles in China are those of Sichuan , Guangdong ,Shangdong , and Huaiyang ( Jiangsu ).

As early as the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911),some overseas Chinese opened Chinese restaurants in England and other countries and regions. Since then, Chinese cuisine has been popular the world over.

The Chinese cooking is very delicate and has a great variety. It is agreeable to different races od people all over the world .

Diet is s kind of civilization of humanity and cooking is a superb art. With the development of social productive forces, and the increase of international exchanges, the Chinese cookery art is sure to be further improved. But it is a pity that only a few books were writtrn about the Chinese cuisine in ancient times.

Sichuan Style

Distinct features of Sichuan Style: They prefer steaming ,simmering, and smoking .The cooking is elaborate and meticulous and the flavouring highly varied and mixed. The taste of each dish is very distinct. A common Chinese saying about Sichuan cuisine is that each meal has its own unique taste, and no two dishes have the same flavour.

Sichuan cooking emplys scores of condiments giving all the different tastes-salty, sweet, sour, hot, aromatic, peppery or bitter, of which a prickly pepper as the climate, the chefs there lean heavily on such warmth-giving ingredients as chilli pepper, black pepper, the mild red huajiao pepper, and ginger. Of hundreds of varieties if Sichuan dishes, it is said that only 20 over cent have a hot and numbing effect on the palate. In fact, the art of Sichuan cooking emphasizes the aesthetic appeal of food. It offers everything pleasant and inviting to colour, aroma, and appearance, while flavour is the top priority. What Sichuan cuidine boasts is an abundance of flavour and diversified methods of cooking.

Guangdong Style

Guangzhou food is a representative of Guangdong foods, including all the delicacies of Guangdong , Chaozhou , and Hainan Island.Guangdong food has absorbed some elements of Beijing , Suzhou , Yangzhou , and Hangzhou cuisine, ehile keeping its South China flavour.

In preparing the Guangdong cuisine, dozens of varieties of ingredients are often involved and more than 30 different kinds of cooking methods employed, such as frying, grilling, stewing , simmering , deeo-frying ,roasting ,and braising , etc. Freshness is everything to the Guangdong cuisine. So is quick cooking ;there is not much long broiling or barbecuing as in North China . Also, there is no simmering for hours with spices and herbs like in the West. The objective is freshness, tenderness, smooth texture, and piquant flavour. These qualities are especially svident in another Guangdong specialty-roast suckling pig. A piglet is gutted and coated inside with fermented bean curd, sesame paste, fen liquor ,and garlic-flavoured sugar , and then roasted until its skin is golden-red and shiny as lacquer. The custom is to eat the crisp, crackling skin first, and then the tender, smooth-textured flesh.

Shandong Style

Shangdong cuisine is known for its light seasoning, and delicacy. Its chefs make a point of retaining the original flavour, freshness, crispness, and tenderness of the ingredients. Among its specialties are Sweet-sour Huanghe(Yellow River) carp, fried crisp on the outside but tender that the meat can be shaken off the bones and melts deliciously in the mouth. Chefs in the coastal cities of Qingdao and Yantai excel in the preparation of seafood.

Shangdong cuisine is also known for its soup, both the clear and milky-white kinds. One clear type, prepared with materials extracted from swallow's nests, is often the first major course at banquets. (soup usually comes at the end of most Chinese meals)White soup made with wild rice stems or dandelion greens is famed for colour, fragrance, taste, and appearance.

Shangdong food consists of Jinan and Fushan food. Jinan food makes good use of soup seasoning, frying in deep oil and steaming . Shandong roast chicken is especially good with wine and the chicken is tasty and tender. Tasting it is guaranteed to make the diner believe.

The origin of Huaiyang cuisine can be traced to pre Christian times. The clearsimmered soft-shelled turtle, a Huaiyang specialty , was listed in the famous delicacies mentioned in an ancient verse by Qu Yuan(c.340-c.278 BC), one of the greatest poets in Chinese history. Yangzhou ,where Huaiyang cuisine originated, remained an important economic and salt-trading centre for more than 1,000 years, as the famous Beijing-Hangzhou Canal passed through there. The traders and men of letters from the North and South gathered there. They became patrons of the many local restaurants, which competed with each other for customers. The most impressed by the local cuisine when he took control of Yangzhou as the leader of a peasant rebellion, Zhu Yuangzhang designated it as the imperial court kitchen master in Nanjing , the first capital of the Ming Dynasty.

When the third Ming emperor Yongle (1360-1424,reigned 1203-1424)moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing in 1421, he brought the Huaiyang chefs with him.

Huaiyang specialties are lightly flavoured, whether they combine sweet-and –sour or sweet-and –salty tastes. Soy sauce and spices are mild and used sparingly, although the use of roch-flavoured broth is extensive.

Special Cuisine

Imperial Court Cuisine

Imperial Court Cuisine (or Imitation Imperial Cuisine), as the name suggests, consists of dishes once prepared exclusively for the imperial family. Every dynasty in Chinese history had an “imperial kitchen ” to prepare meals for the emperor and his consorts. The dishes were not only meticulously prepared, but also included rare and expensive foodstuffs, such as bear's paws, birds' nests, shark's fins, venison, sea cucumbers, duck webs and other delicacies of land and sea. The Imperial Cuisine of today is bases on the dishes prepared by the refreshments are especially palatable and unique in flavour, such as wandouhuang(pea flour cake),yundoujiuan(kidney bean roll), xiaowotou(small steamed corn bread) and roumoshaobing(sesame seed cake with mwat fillings).

Beijing Roast Duck

Beijing Roast Duck has the reputation of being the most delicious food Beijing has to offer. A Beijing duck dinner is usually a fixed item on any Beijing tour itinerary. The earliest Beijing Roast Duck Restaurant was the Bianyigang(shop of Convenience and Pleasure or Cheap Restaurant), founded more than four hundred years ago, in Rice Market hutong in the old Vegetable Market area in the southern city of Beijing . The place that offers the best Beijing Roast Duck is the Quanjude(Complete Collection of Virtues/Repository of All Virtues)Restaurant, opened in 1864 outside Qianmen (Front Gate). It has outlets at Hepongme and Wangfujing. The founder of the Quanjude was Yang Quanren. It is said that he came to Beijing from nearby Jixian Country , Hebei Province in 1835 and started up a duck and chicken stall (consisting of a plank across two stools ) in the Meat Market outside Qianmen. At Quanjude, ducks are immersed in condiments unique to the restaurant and are roasted directly over flames stoked by fruit tree wood. The best roast duck is date-red, shining with oil, but with a crisp skin and tender meat. The chef then cuts the meat into pancakes, Chinese onions and special sauce. The way to savour it is to coat the thin pancake with sauce, slap on a few pieces of meat and roll up the pancake. Chopsticks are optional: it is much easier just to grab the thing with your bare hands.

Since the establishment of Quanjude on July 26,1864 to July26,2004 within 140 years, a total of 115 million Beijing Roast Ducks were sold. Quanjude was rewarede China's 500 most valuable commodity brand, ranking 56 at the World Convention Commodity Brand sponsored by the World Commodity Brand Laboratory and the World Economics Forum on June 28,2004, and the assessment value reached 8.458 billion yuan (U S ＄ 1.023 billion), an increase of over 30 times than that of 1994.

Mongolian Hot Pot

Mutton Hot Pot (or Rinsed Mutton ) is a Muslim specialty. All the year round, the family, relatives, and friends would gather round the fire and eat in intimacy and warmth. It has now spread to people of all nationalities including foreign diplomats and overseas visitors in Beijing and become one of the capital's most celebrated dishes. The hot pot used to be a brass pot with a wide outer rim around a chimney and a charcoal-burner underneath. Nowadays electric pot is used. Water containing mushrooms and dried shrimps is boiled in a pot. Thin pieces of raw mutton are cooked with chopsticks in a self –service pot of boiling water. Diners dip thin slices of raw mutton into the water, where the meat cooks rapidly. The cooked slices are then dipped into a sauce. This cooking method ensures that the meat is both tender, and tasty. Cabbage, noodles and pea starch noodles are gradually added to the boiling water, which becomes a very rich broth drunk at the end of the meal.

The piquant sauce is individually mixed by each diner from an array of more than a dozen condiments such an seame paste, Shaoxing (in Zhejiang Province ) rice wine, fermented (preserved) bean curd, salted Chinese chive-flowers, soy sauce, chilli paste, shrimp paste, rice vinegar, chopped green onion and minced coriander. Only raw meat, vegetables and seasoning are provided, and the diners cook and serve themselves. This makes for a rather active meal. Rinsed Mutton has a history of more than a thousand years, when beef, chicken, fish, shrimp, pork were also cooked in hotpots. Covering an area of 1,200 square metres, the new Donglaishun(Success Comes from the East) Reataurant can serve 350 customers at one time. Because of its reputation, the restaurant has established 62 customers at one time. Because of its reputation, the restaurant has established 62 chain restaurants in 19 provinces, antonomous regions and municipalities throughout China .

Tan Cusine

Tan Cuisine originated in the household of Tan Zongjun, a bureaucrat of the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Tan Zongjun was born into a famed sholar's family in Guangdong Province and worked his way up to a senior official at a young age . He hac been appointed as sheriff in many places and finally got a position in Beijing during his 30s. Since Tan was a cooking enthusiast ,he looked to perfect his skills and learn about local dishes wherever he went. After moving to Beijing , he was even more intrigued by food. He made efforts to fuse Beijing cooking with cooking styles of other places, especially of hid hometown in Guangdong Province . Tan's attempts were successful.

Suiyuan Cuisine

Suiyuan Cuisine , the Confucian Cuisine and the Tan Cuisine have been reputed as the three imperial official foods in feudal China . The Suiyuan Cuisine uses local delicacies in Nanjing as the principal dishes, incorporating the local official cooking excellence of Juangsu , Zhejiang , and Anhui .

Yuan Mei (1716-1798),a successful candidate in the higheat imperial examinations of Qing Emperor Quanlong, Jiangning Country magistrate, and poet of the Qing Dynasty, resigned and lived in Jiangning , near Nanjiang, and built a garden at Xiaochuang Hill, Named Suiyuan Garden, hired a very skiful chef named Wang Xiaoyu and cooked for the Yuan family. Due to various reasons, for more than one hundred years, the type of cooking was lost completely and fortunately, for more than 20 year's hard work, Mr Xue Wenlong, especially in 1980s, when he was in charge of the Chinese Kitchen in Jinling Hotel (a five-star hotel ) in Nanjing and worked together with famous gourmet Mr Li Enhhua and finally reproduced and perfected the Suiyaun dishes. Because of Yuan Mei's talent, social status, position and influence, the Suiyuan Cuisine exerted the most influential and the most salient official style of food in South China .