Chinese Gastronomy
The Chinese Philosopher Lao Tzu once said: Governing a great nation is much like cooking a small fish. He meant that governing a country required just the right seasonings and adjustments for successful results. This metaphor clearly illustrates the significance that food occupies in Chinese culture!
Chinese food can be roughly divided into the Northern and Southern styles of cooking. In general, Northern dishes are oily without being cloying and the flavors of vinegar and garlic tend to be more pronounced. Pasta also plays an important role in Northern cooking; noodles, ravioli-like dumplings, steamed stuffed buns, fried meat dumplings, and steamed bread are the favored flour-based treats. The cooking styles of Peking, Tientsin, and Shantung are probably the best known styles of Northern Chinese cuisine. An elaborate, stuffed chicken symbolizes the Chinese wish for plenitude and satisfaction. Representative of the Southern cooking styles are: Szechwan and Hunan cuisine which are famous for their liberal use of chili peppers; the Kiangsu and Chekiang styles which emphasize freshness and tenderness; and Cantonese food which tends to be somewhat sweet and full of variety. Rice and rice products such as rice noodles, rice cakes, and rice congee are the usual accompaniments to Southern style cooking.
In Chinese cooking, color, aroma, and flavor share equal importance in the preparation of each dish, thereby, satisfying the gustatory, olfactory, and visual senses. Any one entree will combine three to five colors, selected from ingredients that are light green, dark green, red, yellow, white, black, or caramel-colored. Usually, a meat and vegetable dish is prepared from one main ingredient and two to three secondary ingredients of contrasting colors. It is then cooked with the appropriate method, seasonings, and sauces to result in an aesthetically attractive dish. The primary methods of preparation include stir-frying, stewing, steaming, deep-frying, flash-frying, and pan-frying. A dish with a fragrant aroma will whet the appetite. Among many others, some ingredients that contribute to a mouth-watering aroma are scallions, fresh ginger root, garlic, chili peppers, wine, star anise, stick cinnamon, pepper, sesame oil, and dried black Chinese mushrooms. Of utmost importance in cooking any dish is preserving the fresh, natural flavor of the ingredients and removing any undesirable fish or game odors. In Western cooking, lemon is often used to remove smells of fish; in Chinese cooking, scallions and ginger serve a similar function. Soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, and other seasonings add richness to a dish without covering up the natural flavor of the ingredients. A well-prepared dish will be rich to those who like strong flavors, not over-spiced to those who like a blander taste, sweet to those who like a sweet flavor, and hot to those who like a piquancy. A dish that is all of these things to all of these people is a truly successful one.
Tradition
However, color, aroma, and flavor are not the only principles to be followed in Chinese cooking; nutrition is the first concern. A theory of the "harmonization of foods" can be traced back to the Shang dynasty's (16th to 11th century B.C) scholar Yi Yin. He relates the five flavors of sweet, sour, bitter, piquant, and salty to the nutritional needs of the five major organ systems of the body (the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys), and he stresses their role in maintaining good physical health. In fact, many of the plants used in Chinese cooking such as scallions, fresh ginger root, garlic, dried lily buds, and tree fungus have properties of preventing and alleviating various illnesses. The Chinese have a traditional belief that food and medicine share the same origin and that food has a medicinal value. This view can be considered the forerunner of nutritional science in China. According to this theory, a correct proportion of meat to vegetable ingredients should be maintained. One-third of meat-based dishes should be made of vegetable ingredients, and one-third of vegetable dishes should consist of meat. In preparing soups, the quantity of water used should total seven-tenths the volume of the serving bowl. Basically, the correct ingredient proportions must be adhered to in the preparation of each dish or soup in order to ensure optimal nutritional value.
The Chinese have a number of traditional rules and customs associated with eating. For example, food must be eaten while seated. Also a set order of who may be seated first among men, women, old, and young exists. Furthermore, one must eat main courses with chopsticks and soup with a spoon.
The Present
In this cosmopolitan world, Chinese food is available in practically all major and many not-so-major-cities of the globe. In fact, in any large city or little village in China, you do not have to walk very far to find a restaurant. Even in home cooking, food is prepared with sophistication and variety. Northern style dishes include Peking duck, smoked chicken, chafing dish with sliced lamb, fish slices in sauce, beef with green pepper, and dried scallops with Chinese white radish balls. Representative of the Southern style of cooking are duck smoked with camphor and tea, chicken baked in salt, honey glazed ham, flash-fried shrimp, eggplant in soy sauce, and Szechwan style bean curd. With the rapid expansion of industry and commerce, a new twist has been added to traditional Chinese food: Chinese fast food franchises. At the same time, restaurants serving foods from all over the world have been springing up in the large cities of China: American hamburgers, Italian pizza, and Japanese Sashimi¡£