Shredded fish and meat is also a classic hot dish that must be mentioned when it comes to Sichuan cuisine. But in fact, the finalization of this dish will not be very early, because the Late Qing Dynasty Sichuan food book "Feast Feng Feng Yi Tong Ding Xinlu" and "Qing Dynasty Sichuan Encyclopedia" "Chengdu General View" do not mention fish-flavored dishes, let alone fish-flavored meat shreds. Among them, for example, the "Chengdu General Survey" published in 1909 contains 1328 kinds of Sichuan dishes, but there are no fish dishes, so we deduce that the shredded fish and meat are unlikely to be Qing Dynasty dishes, but should be created in the Republic of China period. The feast is as good as the new record
There is a saying on the Internet that the shredded fish and meat were named by Chiang Kai-shek's chef, and I did not find specific historical materials. However, the practice and flavor type of shredded fish and meat are not very common in Sichuan Province today, and perhaps it can be refuted that shredded fish and meat is indeed made with Sichuan cuisine techniques and flavor types, but it is indeed stimulated by the needs of diners from other provinces. The shredded fish and even the fish flavor are essentially salty, sweet, sour and spicy, and the four flavors are highly harmonious and consistent with ginger, green onion and garlic.
Salty is mainly derived from salt, sweet is mainly derived from sugar, acid needs to be soaked in sea pepper, spicy needs pepper, plus green onion, ginger, garlic and then a variety of ingredients to cook, compound. We see that we still need watercress sauce inside the shredded fish today, which is not used according to the previous recipe. During the Republic of China period, Yu Shilan wrote "Yu's Aerial Cooking" containing shredded fish and meat, that is, soy sauce, chili powder, ginger, sugar, vinegar, garlic stir-fried, not even bubble sea pepper. And this recipe has four pieces of fish in addition to shredded fish and meat. The word "four pieces" is not four raw materials, but a variant of the word "event" handed down from the Tang and Song dynasties, and "event" in the Tang and Song dynasties generally refers to "internal organs". There is a thing worth pondering here, that is, was the shredded fish and meat shredded Sichuan cuisine at that time? Yu Shilan himself is a person from Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and he teaches cooking in Shanghai, coupled with his version of the fish flavor seasoning, raw materials and Sichuan inevitability, these two dishes look more like Jiangsu and Zhejiang home cooking. In connection with Chiang Kai-shek as a Zhejiang native, if he likes fish-scented dishes, it makes sense.
From another point of view, since the 1920s and 1930s, Sichuan fish flavored dishes have begun to increase. But in the early days, it was not fish-flavored meat shreds, but fish-flavored tofu in Chongqing. Later, there were more records of fish and meat slices in Sichuan. At present, it was not until the period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression that Zhang Hexhui's article clearly appeared in the shreds of fish and meat. The biggest difference is not whether the main ingredient or the cut is slice or silk, but the sichuan fish flavor, which must use bubble sea pepper. In addition, Yu's fish flavor, the ingredient is green lettuce, but Sichuan's fish flavor is early onion, and later developed to add wood ear silk. We can understand that the practice of adding green bamboo shoot silk originated in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and was later brought into Sichuan because of the War of Resistance.
In addition, from some historical records, the flavor of fish in Sichuan is not necessarily related to fish, but there are also the use of pickled fish and sea pepper to present the taste. As the name suggests, the red sea pepper and crucian carp are fermented together in a wet state to become a fish spicy, that is, a soaked fish sea pepper. But why has the use of pickled fish and sea pepper to make shredded fish and meat not become the norm in Sichuan cuisine? I think there are only two reasons: one is that the sea pepper is too troublesome; the other is that the sea pepper has little effect on increasing the flavor of the fish. Especially when "fish aroma" becomes a flavor type, the main ingredients it applies to are more and more abundant, such as the fish dishes we see in Sichuan and Chongqing today, the meat has fish fragrant eight pieces of chicken, fish fragrant sea cucumber, fish fragrant ban finger, fish fragrant waist slices, fish fragrant duck diced, fish fragrant minced rice meat, etc.; vegetarian and semi-meat have fish fragrant cabbage, fish fragrant eggplant, fish fragrant tofu, fish fragrant poached egg, fish flavored scrambled egg, fish fragrant rape moss, etc., at this time, the use of bubble sea pepper is obviously more convenient, economical and can be promoted.
Fish eggplant box
Fishy poached eggs