The art of eating and the art of eating

I like to read articles about food. Those who know how to eat are gourmets, and those who know how to eat and write interestingly are the masters of the art of eating. Such as Liang Shiqiu, Tang Lusun, Liu Fang and Wang Zengqi. People who can eat, cook and write at the same time are even rarer. Famous experts talk about eating, and rarely introduce the steps of cooking in detail, but it can let readers know why a dish is delicious and how to make it delicious; let diners know how to eat, and cooks know how to cook, which is more interesting than reading recipes much more. A good article about eating has knowledge and realm. Not just writing about eating, writing about eating is higher than eating.

My daughter and I have had discussions about whether eating is an art or a science. Daughter cooks with great precision. She brings a kitchen scale with her home. Every time I cook, I strictly follow the recipe, down to all the ingredients, it must be weighed, and the seasonings are also in accordance with the recipe, no less. I cook all by feeling. I rarely read recipes. I only know the outline and the reason. I follow my feeling and use the materials at hand. My daughter said that cooking is a science, just like McDonald's fast food, because of the precise measurement of ingredients and condiments, each branch tastes roughly the same.

Art originates from the pursuit of having more money, and the art of eating is also the same. The eight major cuisines of China were formed in the late Qing Dynasty. At that time, corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, the high-yielding crops of the Americas, were widely grown in China, and people began to have enough to eat, and two meals a day became three meals a day. After you have eaten, you will think about eating well. Before the reform and opening up, half a catty of meat, half a catty of oil, and grain was rationed every month. The world view has become a food view, and everything can be regarded as edible or not. Steve Jobs said that people should stay hungry. Hunger made me familiar with the Xinhua Dictionary, copied down all the edible plants, followed the map and searched for edible plants, flowers, plants, fruits and trees, and tasted almost all of them. I have eaten fish caught by pins, frogs caught by wire forks, shrimps caught in rice paddy nets, loaches in ditches, sparrow eggs under the eaves, snails in ponds, crabs in rivers and grasshoppers on grass . At that time, eating was to feed one's stomach and had no connection with art.

The art of eating is mostly about taste and texture. The taste is sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, salty, astringent, and fragrant. The taste comes from the contact between the food and the teeth and the tip of the tongue. The most appealing thing about food is the taste. For example, sea cucumbers are soft and sticky, pig trotters and duck feet are smooth and rubbery, glutinous rice and ginkgo nuts are soft and sticky, oil-fried and crispy, and fish balls are strong and elastic. Many southerners love to eat fried snails, and they are looking for that kind of slurping.

Only those who know how to eat can know how to cook. When a gourmet eats a good dish, he can appreciate the beauty of it and understand the key to cooking. In Lu Wenfu's "Gourmet", Zhu Zhizhi gave a lecture to the chef, saying that adding salt is the key to cooking, because salt can hang all the flavors. Too salty or too light will not taste, just the right saltiness can hang out the umami of the ingredients themselves.

Cooking pays attention to minimalism: the best ingredients only need the least cooking, cooking small fresh food is like governing a country, less tossing, and the original flavor is the best. The seasoning is used as the finishing touch, but it is not too much to cover up the original flavor of the ingredients. Good foodies like to buy their own ingredients. Yuan Mei, a gourmet in the late Qing Dynasty, said in "Suiyuan Food List" that "for a meal, the chef's contribution is the sixth, and the comprador's contribution is the fourth." The contribution of ingredients is particularly important.

It is said that eating is art because cooking, like art, requires imagination and innovation. Cooking without strictly following the recipe is the same as fighting a war without strictly following the military book. Whimsical, to create new dishes. Few people know that loofah vine tips are more delicious than loofah. The person who invented this dish must be imaginative and innovative. Tremella is generally used in sweets, and it is also delicious in hot pot or stew instead of black fungus. There is a dish called Steam Pot Chicken, because I don't like chicken, I replace the chicken with spare ribs, which tastes better. Using a frying pan to make cakes is better than the wood stove and iron pot in the countryside. Old Beijing Zhajiang Noodles use Chinese yellow noodle sauce, which is too salty and too sweet. I switched to the fried sauce made of tomatoes, which was fresh, slightly sour and tasted better.