The Paper's reporter Yu Kai
The smell of fireworks in the world is the most soothing to the hearts of mortals.
In the eyes of many Shanghainese, eating a meal of this gang dish Chinese New Year's Eve meal, strong family affection and New Year's flavor spread during the banquet, this year has a taste.
Walking on the oil hooves is the "big dish" on the Table of Shanghainese New Year. When tasting this dish, with chopsticks against the meat, you can easily pull out the main bone, after removing the bone, you can use two pairs of chopsticks to disassemble at will, the meat quality with the spoon, more appetizing.
Represented by the oil hoof, the dish has gradually formed a style of thick oil red sauce, sweet and delicious, and salty mouth. In the 1950s and 1960s, the difference between salt and sugar was very large, and putting soy sauce and sugar were mostly high-end dishes, and it was a very face-saving thing to be able to eat a table of dishes with thick oil and red sauce. In the words of chef Ren Defeng, this reflects the fact that Shanghai cuisine "wants both face and lizi".
In addition to satisfying the appetite of Shanghainese, flattery is also a key factor in Chinese New Year's Eve meals. A braised paddle made of a blue fish means that there is a head and a tail, and there is more than one year.
The charm of the specialties also lies in soothing homesickness. An old man who returned from Canada Chinese New Year's Eve to eat "blue fish bald lungs" in the meal. This is a nearly lost dish that requires two to ten fresh cod livers to cook. After eating this dish, he was amazed, and he must meet the chef and stuff a red envelope.
In the end, the restaurant did not receive anything for this laborious dish.
Bluefish baldness The pictures in this article are all provided by the interviewees
Thick oil red sauce is synonymous with high-grade, face-saving
Talking about the Chinese New Year's Eve rice of Shanghainese, Ren Defeng, who has been engaged in cooking for 47 years, blurted out a few dishes - Sixi grilled bran, smoked fish, fried shrimp, oil hooves, buckle three silk, he told the surging news (www.thepaper.cn) reporter that these are the indispensable dishes on the dinner table of Shanghainese people Chinese New Year's Eve, and there are many "Flower Head Sutras".
Ren Defeng has long served as the general manager of Dafugui Restaurant, Dexing Pavilion and Shanghai Old Hotel, and he is also a representative inheritor of the traditional cooking skills of Shanghai Benbang cuisine, a chinese intangible cultural heritage. He said that the characteristics of Shanghai's bengang cuisine can be summarized by thick oil red sauce (oily, flavorful, sugary, colorful), commonly used cooking methods to braised, simmered, salty with sweet, oil but not greasy, specialties such as fried shrimp, eight treasures spicy sauce, grass head circle, eight treasure duck, buckle three silk, braised meat and so on.
Why such a characteristic is formed, Ren Defeng said the key point: this reflects the cooking principle of Shanghai cuisine "both face and inside", "both affordable underground rice, but also able to get on the plate".
Braised pork
This gang smoked fish
"In the 1950s and 1960s, salt was 5 cents a pound, soy sauce was 1 cent and 3 cents a pound, and sugar was 6 cents 8 cents, 7 cents 8 cents a pound, at that time many Shanghai housewives bought sugar, they had to lock it in the cabinet to prevent children from stealing food." Ren Defeng said that this huge difference in condiments has caused that in the traditional concept of Shanghainese, it is a light dish to put salt, put soy sauce and sugar to be a high-end dish, and it is a very face-saving thing to be able to entertain friends and family to eat a table of Shanghainese dishes with thick oil and red sauce.
The same principle is also reflected in the "braised paddling", which is a classic Shanghainese dish made of blue fish tail and thick oil red sauce.
"There may be many young people who don't understand why the status of braised paddling is so high, and it is also placed on the cover of some Shanghai Bengang cuisine books, you know, in the planned economy era of the 1950s and 1960s, the blue fish in the market sold for more than 1 yuan a pound, while yellow fish and striped fish only sold 2 cents and 3 cents a pound." Chin paddling (the eyes and tail of the bluefish) is the fattest and most delicious live meat on the blue fish, and in line with the Shanghai people's Chinese New Year's Eve rice pay attention to the head and tail, the annual mouth color, so the braised paddling, the gang smoked fish are very expensive high-end dishes on the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner table, far from the seafood such as fish and pomfret can be compared. Ren Defeng's thoughts were suddenly pulled back to decades ago.
Chin paddling
These must-order Chinese New Year's Eve meals, all of them are "begging"
In 1973, 17-year-old Ren Defeng entered the Shanghai Food and Cooking School as an apprentice, and after graduating in 1975, he started from the Rich And Noble Restaurant, and gradually grew into a head chef, deputy general manager and general manager, including the China Golden Chef Award, Shanghai Top Ten Famous Chefs and other honorary titles.
In Ren Defeng's view, in the history of Shanghai's urban development for more than a hundred years, generation after generation of Bengang chefs have invariably made a full article on the most popular "small dishes under the rice", and finally formed a set of local cuisine style characteristics characterized by thick oil and red sauce, sweet and catchy, and salty closure.
Every year, Shanghainese Chinese New Year's Eve a few dishes that last for a long time, which can be said to be a big wave of sand, in addition to the taste and texture in line with the appetite of Shanghainese, flattery is a very key factor, especially in the Chinese the most important and grand Spring Festival.
For example, Sixi roasted bran is basically the first cold dish of a table of bengang dishes Chinese New Year's Eve rice, so it is called "appetizer" in "appetizer". In the Shanghai dialect, roasted bran is harmonized with "relying on husband", implying that the male in the family will achieve higher achievements. Judging from its ingredients, it also has its own meaning, the winter shoots in the four joys mean that the festival is high, the peanut rice represents the long-lived fruit, the golden needle vegetable represents carefree, and the fungus has the meaning of rising hair and getting rich.
Four hi roasted bran
The best Sixi roasted bran looks like yellow chestnut, full of marinade, with chopsticks to clamp hard, you can clearly see that the brine oozing out of the baked bran block, chopsticks are slightly loose, and the elastic roasted bran will suck the marinade back. Its taste is "sweet and delicious, salty and tight", when tasting this dish, it is advisable to enter the whole piece and chew it with a full mouth, in order to experience the unique taste of soft and rigid and the strong taste of the five-spice sauce of the gang.
Another indispensable New Year dish is the oil hoof, usually the restaurant that undertakes Chinese New Year's Eve meal is written as "yuan hoof" on the menu, taking the meaning of reunion.
In the era of planned economy supplied by tickets, walking the oil hooves is the "first dish" on the Table of Shanghainese New Year, and it is also a representative work of the "rotten and boneless dishes of this gang, without losing its shape". When tasting this dish, with chopsticks against the meat, you can easily pull out the main bone, after removing the bone, you can use two pairs of chopsticks to disassemble at will, and its meat quality is opened with the chopsticks, which is more appetizing.
Walk the oil hooves
In Ren Defeng's decades of experience as a hotel chef, Shanghainese Chinese New Year's Eve meals are often started with Sixi roasted bran and finalized with three silks.
According to the food customs in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, the clear soup dish is often the last dish of a table feast, at this time most people have eaten enough, so the Oshio dish "good-looking" is greater than "delicious", and the portion should not be too much, according to this standard, the three silks composed of chicken shreds, winter bamboo shoots, ham shreds are almost an indispensable finale dish on the feast of the gang, and it is a fine dish that tests the chef's knife work and the standard of the restaurant. A superior buckle of three silks can draw a timeless and perfect end to Chinese New Year's Eve meal.
Buckle three wires
How much do Shanghainese love a "Shanghai Chinese New Year's Eve meal"?
Ren Defeng, who has been the general manager of the Shanghai Old Hotel for 15 years, recalls that 2009-2015 was the most brilliant period of the Old Shanghai Hotel of the City God Temple, and there was still a month before the New Year, and a total of 152 tables were booked. A total of 100 kitchen staff (including 50-60 chefs, plus dishwashers) are required on the day, and the chefs are 5 tables and cooks, and the table is busy from 16:30 until the last table of guests leave from 10:30 to 11:00 pm.
"Chinese New Year's Eve meal is divided into three sets of menus for 6 people and 10 people (high-end, mid-range), and two or three dishes will be adjusted every year, such as boiled fish fillets and bullfrogs, to take care of the tastes of spicy and young people, but the classic dishes are basically unchanged, and we will never turn over the stage that day, that is, to let the guests' reunion dinner eat happily." Ren Defeng stressed.
Specialties are king, and this restaurant is hard to find
Chinese New Year's Eve rice is a "big cake" that families compete for, and it is also a Shanghai Bengang restaurant, if there are famous chefs and specialties that are loud on the beach, they can often seize the opportunity in the competition.
Walking into the Daning branch of Shenyan Restaurant on Yanchang Road in Jing'an District, there are three eye-catching "Shanghai Specialties" signboards hanging at the entrance of the restaurant, which were evaluated and issued by the Shanghai Catering and Cooking Industry Association in October 2019, namely "Aged Flower Carved Drunken Cream Crab", "Stir-fried River Shrimp" and "Osmanthus Braised Pork".
Aged flower carving drunken cream crab
Liu Genbiao, executive chef of Shenyan Restaurant, told the surging news reporter that the Chinese New Year's Eve meal reservation was launched on November 1, 2019, and as of December 11 of that year, the Chinese New Year's Eve meals with a total of 480 seats in Daning Restaurant had been fully booked, and even the second Chinese New Year's Eve meal (flipping table) at 7:30 pm in the day of the Chinese New Year's Eve had also been fully booked, and many guests rushed to the house specialties.
For the gourmets on the beach, the first thing that comes to mind when mentioning Shen Yan is the drunken cream crab, "The drunken crab of the Shen Feast inherits the classic taste of the old Shanghai Ben Gang Aged Flower Carving Drunken Cream Crab, which is characterized by the ancient secret system, fresh and sweet, and is listed from November to March every year, and many old diners have a good bite." Since 2016, every time guests book a table Chinese New Year's Eve meal, we will send a bottle of special drunken crab worth 258 yuan, and this year is the same. Liu Genbiao said.
Liu Genbiao, who joined Shen Yan in 2005 as a head chef and was promoted to executive chef in 2010, is a 46-year-old senior technician at the national level and a master of Chinese cooking. He is a senior disciple of the Beijing gang master Gu Mingzhong, and in 2020, he became one of the three people elected as "Shanghai Craftsmen" in the city's catering industry.
Stir-fried river shrimp
Speaking of ShenYan's specialties, he is like a number of family treasures: "Our stir-fried river shrimp, using high-post A-grade river shrimp, traditional cooking technology, no hair growth, the taste Q elastic, smooth, elastic, no alkali water taste; osmanthus braised pork is selected from Anhui, Liyang black pig and Suzhou osmanthus flower, eat fat but not greasy, there is osmanthus fragrance." ”
On the Chinese New Year's Eve menu of Shen Yan, braised big yuan hoof, Zhao Cai Jin Bao (abalone roast pork hand), family portrait (casserole composed of egg dumplings smoked fish salted chicken skin shiitake mushroom meat yuan bacon) are also irreplaceable protagonists. Liu Genbiao said that the menu will also be fine-tuned every year, such as replacing the Steamed Yellow Croaker with Fujian Snow Vegetables with Ningbo Deep-Sea Yellow Croaker, replacing the original Eight Treasure Duck with Eight Treasure Glutinous Rice Steamed Turtle, and replacing the char siu puff pastry with family reunion Eight Treasure Rice.
Eight treasure ducks
Dry fishing guan yan
Thousands of miles to find a homeland, the Canadian old man named to eat blue fish bald lungs
The charm of specialties can sometimes make overseas travelers come back.
Liu Genbiao told a story of Chinese New Year's Eve rice that he remembered deeply. In the Spring Festival of 2018, an old customer booked a table of Chinese New Year's Eve rice at the Shenyan Prince Store on Zhonghua New Road in Jing'an District, and ordered to eat "blue fish bald lungs".
This is a dish that many Shanghai chefs have never heard of and have almost lost, and can hardly be eaten without advance reservations. Bald character, in the Shanghai dialect is "only", "all"; the lungs of the lungs are actually the cod liver of the blue fish, a large green fish weighing more than ten or twenty pounds, only two or three or so fish livers, to make a braised blue fish lung with only fish liver and no side dishes, generally need two to ten fresh big blue fish liver is enough, a "bald" word, the honor and rarity of this dish are highlighted.
This dish is almost the most exquisite dish in this dish, and it also requires a lot of cooking skills. Because the texture of the liver is soft and tender, the fire is easy to burn and dry, the fire is small and tasteless, the chef is not skilled, the fish liver is fragile after getting started, and the knowledgeable foodie can know how the chef's means are as long as they look at the appearance of the dish. To taste this dish, you should use a spice spoon instead of chopsticks, preferably with a sauce with ingredients, a full spoon, preferably with your tongue gently touching it, it will melt.
Gold medal fried suckling pigeon
Oyster yellow two-headed abalone
After receiving this "special" order for Chinese New Year's Eve meals, Liu Genbiao searched around for supplies, and finally got 350 grams of fresh fish liver slaughtered and removed in the morning of the Chinese New Year's Eve, and carefully made this blue fish bald lung, which he had only burned five or six times as a Master of Chinese cooking.
"That night, the guest asked me to go down once, and I thought there was something wrong with the dish." Liu Genbiao said that after meeting him, he learned that the old guest's father was almost 80 years old, and this time he returned to Shanghai from Canada for the New Year, he came to the blue fish lung, saying that he would taste the taste of his hometown again in his lifetime. While eating, the old man exclaimed that the cod liver in his hometown is much more delicious than the foie gras in foreign countries, and he must meet the chef who cooked vegetables and express his gratitude to Liu Genbiao in front of him.
Liu Genbiao was also moved, he politely refused the red envelope, said to the old man: the heart is received, the guests eat happy is our recognition.
That night, in addition to the set price of the Chinese New Year's Eve meal, this "blue fish bald lung" that made the old man realize his dream did not charge a penny from the guest.
Editor-in-Charge: Xu Xiaoyang