my country’s palace-style dishes are mainly represented by several major ancient capitals, and can be divided into southern and northern flavors. The southern flavor is represented by Jinling, Yidu, Linan, and Yingdu, and the northern flavor is represented by Chang'an, Luoyang, Kaifeng, Beijing, and Shenyang. Its unique feature is that it is luxurious and rare, and the side dishes have certain specifications. This tradition has been preserved since the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. For example, the "Eight Treasures" mentioned in "Book of Rites Nei Principles" (there are many different ways to refer to them), later generations include dragon liver, phoenix marrow, leopard fetus, carp tail, ? Zhi, orang lip, bear paw, and cheese cicada. Bazhen), has been in use for more than two thousand years. However, the specific content is constantly developing and changing. Among the eight land and water treasures of the Tang Dynasty, there is a saying that "the peak of a purple camel comes out of a green cauldron, and the crystal plate has plain scales". They are not only land products, but also aquatic products. In the future, game will dominate the Yinbei Bazhen and Tianchu Bazhen. By the Qing Dynasty, it had been further developed, jumping out of the palace and appearing in shops, with names such as Shan Bazhen, Hai Bazhen, Shang Bazhen, and Xia Bazhen. Since the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, palace cuisine mainly refers to Beijing palace cuisine, which is characterized by strict selection of ingredients, fine preparation, beautiful appearance, and a taste that is clear, fresh, crispy, and tender. Famous dishes include chicken breast, poached tenderloin, Si Da Zhao, Si Da Sauce, Si Da Crisp, small sugar steamed buns, pea yellow, kidney bean yellow, etc. Today, Fangshan in Beijing still sells this traditional palace-flavored dish. Xi'an also successfully imitated the Tang Dynasty palace dishes and supplied them to the outside world. There are mainly four kinds of banquets, including the Eight Scenes of Chang'an, Dragon and Phoenix Banquet, Shaowei Banquet, and Agarwood Banquet, with more than 50 varieties.

Classification of Palace Cuisine

The flavors of palace cuisine in the past dynasties were divided into two styles, Southern style and Northern style, due to the influence of the location where the capital was founded. Although the flavors of palace dishes in the past dynasties can be divided into northern and southern flavors, they all have the same characteristics, that is, they are luxurious and rare, and the side dishes are of classic specifications. What people call palace cuisine nowadays generally refers to the palace-flavored dishes of the Qing Dynasty. The palace cuisine of the Qing Dynasty was mainly developed on the basis of three distinctive flavors: Shandong flavor, Manchu flavor and Suzhou and Hangzhou flavor.

Ingredients for palace cuisine

In the selection of raw materials, palace cuisine has unique and superior conditions that cannot be compared with other flavor cuisines. It can arbitrarily select top-grade folk cooking raw materials, famous and high-quality local products tribute from various places, and widely collect rare treasures from all things in the world. However, there are strict requirements on the origin, texture, size and parts of these raw materials. Sometimes in order to adjust the taste, some common raw materials in the market are also used. However, the exquisiteness of cooking and the expensiveness of auxiliary materials are not comparable to that of folk dishes.

Palace cuisine also pays great attention to the modeling art of the dishes, and the patterns and shapes are required to be as beautiful and pleasing to the eye as bonsai. In terms of modeling methods, the main techniques used are "surrounding, matching, setting and brewing". "Wei" means surrounding meat with vegetables, and surrounding large with small, and pays attention to using the different characteristics of meat and vegetable dishes in terms of color, texture, taste, nutritional ingredients, etc. to coordinate the color and seasoning of the entire dish, highlight the main ingredients, and highlight The main flavor makes the two complement each other in terms of taste, nutrition and other aspects. "Pairing" requires matching two different raw materials in pairs to give a specific meaning, such as "Huang Kui with Snow Plum" made of shrimp balls and meat-filled egg dumplings. "Inlay" refers to embellishing one raw material with another specially processed raw material to make the dish more realistic. For example, "Goldfish Playing with Lotus" uses green peppers, peas, shrimp tails, etc. as inlay ingredients. It is made of fish-shaped embryos made of whole shrimp and puree and is decorated with inlays. "Stuffing" means filling various refined raw materials, such as puree, silk, granules, etc., into the shaping raw materials to make the appearance of the dishes more complete and full, and the taste more mellow and delicious. Surrounding, matching, setting, stuffing Various methods are often used in the cooking and processing of the same dish, so they often tolerate each other and have both. For example, there is matching in the surroundings, setting in the matching, stuffing in the setting, and stuffing in the stuffing. Youwei. Only by paying great attention to their coordinated use can we achieve the unique and special requirements of palace cuisine in terms of shape.

Palace cuisine should avoid using a single ingredient. It is generally required to be a combination of two or more types of dishes. There are also special requirements for the size and specification of the ingredients. Not too big, not too small, No more, no less, just right in the mouth. This is the principle of cutting and matching the raw materials of palace cuisine. When the finished dishes are plated, strive to have a full, flat, loose and round style. In the processing and cutting of raw materials, palace cuisine has strict and meticulous knife skills. requirements. When using knife skills, in addition to shaping factors based on the characteristics of the raw materials, we must also pay attention to making the raw materials easy to taste when cooking. The knife skills are exquisite and rich, and the processing requirements are rigorous. The taste of palace dishes is "nine-nine" Eighty-one bites", and each flavor is named after a wonderful word. Palace cuisine not only pays great attention to the shape of the dishes, but the tableware used is also luxurious in color and quaint in shape. There are gold, silver, jade, crystal, agate, coral, rhinoceros horn, tortoise shell, ivory, etc., and a large number of them are from official kilns. Specially made exquisite porcelain. In addition, palace cuisine also has the characteristics of paying attention to the season, including many pastries, pasta, dried and fresh fruits, many dishes prepared with barbecue and stew techniques, and the ingredients, recipes and seasonings of the dishes are fixed.

Hope to adopt it in time!