‘Chopstick’ through central China(3)
Kaifeng is also the home of the famous Yu cuisine, which developed during the Song Dynasty around 1,000 AD, building on Yi Yin’s pioneering work. To Yi Yin’s five flavours (bitter, sour, chilli-hot, sweet and salty), Yu cuisine added the “five factors” of colour, fragrance, taste, design and tableware.
So popular did the cuisine become that restaurants specialising in the Yu genre soon opened in major cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Xi’an, Harbin, Tianjin and Kunming.
Yu Cuisine has over 50 cooking techniques in total, including stewing, frying, quick-frying, stir-frying and par-boiling. Stewing is the most distinctive of these, making for a tastily glutinous sauce without the need to add cooking starch.
A major ingredient in Yu cuisine is river carp, a fish known as a pest in some countries but a delicacy here in central China. At a banquet highlighting Yu food, the signature dish of carp cooked in a rich gravy of soy sauce, shallots and millet wine comes as a taste sensation, accenting the subtle flavour of the fish.
Fresh, hot popcorn on sale in downtown Yingxian. Since the opening up of the Henan economy in the 1980s, the provincial capital Zhengzhou has developed rapidly, with a significant population increase made up largely of migrants from western China. Hence, restaurants serving mutton and lamb dishes have experienced a high level of demand.
Mutton soup and Yang Rou Hui Mian (braised noodles with mutton) are popular breakfast and lunch items, with fried dumplings and radish cakes also being popular.
But the summit of Henan cuisine is highlighted in the city’s distinctive restaurants. One extraordinary meal includes such delicacies as Double-boiled Turtle Soup with Ginseng, Baked Goose with Preserved Vegetables, and Wok-fried Lamb with Green Garlic.
The northwest of Henan province has its own distinctive set of flavours, as earthy and stony as the craggy terrain that defines the landscape. In the Yuntai Mountain region near the town of Jiaozuo, the earthy flavours of the soil — including dishes such as wild braised rabbit with chilli, thousand year-old eggs and smoked scorpions — feature on restaurant menus.
