When it comes to Cantonese food, what do you think of first?
Delicate and compact morning tea snacks, bright and fragrant Cantonese barbecue meat, authentic seafood of all kinds...
Do you still think of Fujian people?
A girl from Guangdong came home with her Fujian boyfriend. As soon as she opened the door, she asked... Dad, Mom, look what delicious food I have brought back for you!
For thousands of years, Cantonese people have relied on their profound skills in eating to create Cantonese cuisine, a famous cuisine that firmly ranks among the four traditional Chinese cuisines.
Today, my cousin recommends a documentary introducing Cantonese cuisine to everyone to see how Cantonese people eat.
The Taste of Laoguang
This large-scale food documentary is produced by Guangdong Satellite TV and tells the most authentic Cantonese cuisine that Laoguang people remember. Due to its good reputation, "The Taste of Lao Guang" has been filmed for three seasons so far. Today we will only briefly introduce the first season. The first season of
has five episodes. Each episode is not long, more than 40 minutes, which is just enough to eat. The film crew visited 21 cities in Guangdong, going deep into the food hinterland and revealing to the audience the flavor pursuits of the Cantonese people.
Cantonese people are really particular about food!
In order to have a fresh bite, people go into the mountains and forests early in the morning to pick lychee fungi and dried bamboo shoots that have not faded from the dew.
In order to have a bite of the season, people can’t help but taste the cabbage sum in the fields. When the pineapples are in season, they go home and cook them.
In order to have a delicate bite, people in Guangzhou have studied N ways to eat oysters as an ingredient...
Eating by the sea, Guangdong's geographical environment has made people in Guangdong develop the habit of catching and eating. They believe that the longer food leaves its living environment, the less fresh it becomes.
In order to have the freshest bite, the chefs never spare any effort.
At five o'clock in the morning, Shanwei Red Bay.
The sun has not yet risen, but fisherman Huang Kuncheng and his partner are already preparing to go to sea. The most important thing is to get back before noon to keep these seafood fresh.
Huang Kuncheng went into the sea at the age of 18 and has been a fisherman for 34 years.
He said: "Fishing depends not only on experience, but also on the cooperation of weather and tide. If the weather is not good, it is common for thousands of hooks to fail to catch a single fish."
What Huang Kuncheng wants to catch today is Moray, also known as moray eel. This fish is extremely ferocious and full of energy. If one is not careful, it can tear off an entire piece of flesh.
After a long period of setting and retracting the hook, and floating on the boat for 7 hours, Huang Kuncheng only caught two hemp fish. When we returned to the shore, there were many buyers waiting for us.
What’s interesting is that they still use the traditional way of buying and selling: the buyer writes the price on a small piece of paper and gives it to the seller, and the one with the highest price gets it.
After returning home, Huang Kuncheng planned to make a fried fish for his children.
The fresh mackerel meat is firm and the color of the meat is pink and shiny. The fish head and fish bone soup has a rich seafood flavor. Stewed, fried and steamed fish are good choices.
But what Huang Kuncheng likes the most is the combination of mackerel and Chaoshan pickles. Because Chaoshan pickles can not only remove the fishy smell of mackerel, but also improve its freshness.
Sauté the ginger and garlic until fragrant, add the mackerel cubes and stir-fry. When the fish cubes are almost cooked, add Chaoshan pickles. The umami flavor is suddenly brought out, making my mouth water.
Since Ma Fish only appears from mid-November to January of next year, in order to enjoy this delicious flavor in other seasons, Cantonese people also invented another unique cooking method:
Salted Ma Fish.
Marinate the mackerel with salt, which not only removes the water but also solidifies the protein in the fish. Put it in a pot and steam it. The meat tastes tender and slippery, as if the fish is swimming in your mouth. This feeling is very strange when you think about it. Cool.
One thing that is different between Cantonese cuisine and other cuisines is:
Cantonese cuisine is more tolerant of ingredients than Pacific .
In short, Cantonese people eat everything. The wife uses it to make wife cakes, the children use it to make clay pot rice, and the Fujianese... just use it as an after-dinner snack.
No more joking, let’s get back to the topic.
Cantonese people dare to eat, and there are all kinds of strange things on their dining tables.
high energy warning!
Luogang Town, Guangning County, Zhaoqing City .
In the bamboo forest covering an area of 1.08 million, there is such a special delicacy:
Bamboo Rat.
Bamboo rats have round bodies and thick incisors. They feed on the underground stems, branches and leaves of bamboo .
This kind of thing that outsiders don't even want to touch, but the old people who know how to eat take a look at its fat and delicious meat. I don't know which generation started, and they put it on the table.
Local Li Guangsheng goes to the bamboo forest near his home every day to cut 100 kilograms of fresh bamboo to feed the 500 bamboo rats in his home.
The bamboo rats he raised were all round-waisted and fat, with firm and delicious meat.
To grill a bamboo rat, you must first peel the bamboo rat and put it on a skewer. After roasting it until golden brown, brush it with oil and sauce to bring out the meaty aroma, and a sizzling sound will come from under the skin.
At this moment, the bamboo rat has lost its whiteness and tenderness when it was first put on the grill, and its whole body is glowing with a bronze-colored oil.
This is my grandson’s favorite flavor. At this moment, I probably don't have any other ideas in my mind except to eat quickly.
I really admire this little brother. Under the influence of his family since he was a child, he has been able to eat the delicious bamboo rat without fear. A timid cousin like me would have to struggle mentally to eat a roasted bamboo rat. Do you dare to eat it?
In addition to rats, what people like to eat are all kinds of insects.
No, on the beach at low tide in Caotan Town, the two brothers Chen Zhenguo were catching:
sandworms.
Sandworms obtain nutrients by ingesting microorganisms attached to sea sand. They look like soaked earthworms. There are dense spots on their pink and white bodies, and they seem to have a slightly strong taste.
Before eating sandworms, you must first wash them clean, use a bamboo skewer to turn them inside out and pinch off the sandbags, and boil them in boiling water to shape them.
There are many ways to eat sandworms. You can choose from soup, garlic paste, stir-frying and deep-frying. The most common local method is to steam garlic sandworms.
Soak the vermicelli on a plate, place the washed sandworms on it, sprinkle with minced garlic and a little salt, and then put it into the pot.
After putting the food into the pot, you must also control the heat. If the fire is too high, the sandworms will lose their crispy texture. If the fire is too low, the fishy smell cannot be removed.
The sandworms are glowing with crystal luster after being cooked, and the vermicelli spread underneath has already absorbed enough of the flavorful juice, waiting for diners to taste it.
Chen Zhenguo said that after eating this sandworm, women can beautify themselves, men can eat it to nourish their kidneys, and children can stop wetting the bed after eating it. My scalp was numb after seeing it and I almost believed it!
Cantonese people have a special liking for insects. In addition to sandworms, they also have another favorite:
grass insects.
In Zhongshan Shenwan, the local people’s favorite thing is this kind of grass worm that grows in the mud. Its wriggling appearance is a visual feast for those who dare to eat it, but for people like me, it is a feast for the eyes. I have goosebumps all over my body...
The freshly caught grass worms are extremely fresh, and the serous fluid in their bodies is very full. This is the reason why people like to eat raw grass worms.
Seeing the old man finished eating, he exclaimed with a satisfied look on his face: "Fragrant! Crisp! Sweet! Sweet!"
In addition to eating the grass worms raw, there is another way to eat the grass worms, which is called stir-fried grass worms.
The method is simple and can bring out the delicious flavor of grass insects. During the stir-frying process, the body fluids of the grass worms will flow out and mix with the aroma of onions and ginger, making it extremely delicious.
For the people of Shenwan, grass worms are a taste of their hometown. Every Mid-Autumn Festival, they will serve grass worms as a dish at their banquets.
In "The Taste of Lao Guang", the taste experience brought by various kinds of food is very important, but behind it are more emotional traditional dishes like grass insects.
During the rainy season, housewife Xian Aunt went to the street to pick up some kapok, then went to the market to buy some medicinal materials, and cooked a cup of dehumidification soup for her family.
During the dragon boat rowing season, Yang Qiuming, the wife of the dragon boat coach, cooked a plate of dragon boat dices for the hungry stomachs of the team members.
Every holiday, in order to worship the gods, every household in Chaoshan steams a plate of festive red peach cakes.
If snakes, insects, rats, and ants are a unique part of Cantonese cuisine, then morning tea is an extremely colorful part of Cantonese cuisine.
The day of the exquisite old people starts with this drawer of snacks. A small cage contains their inherited eating habits.
In Guangzhou Xiguan , the film crew found Sister MAY. After doing food programs in Hong Kong for more than ten years, she finally chose to return to Guangzhou and specialize in dim sum.
MAY sister believes that authentic dim sum should be small and delicate, and can be eaten in one bite. The details of the dim sum should not be omitted. A shrimp dumpling has at least 12 pleats. Barbecued pork buns should be steamed and have a cracked mouth with slightly exposed fillings.
To make barbecued pork, you buy fresh pork and cook it yourself, marinate it for 45 minutes, and then bake it in the oven for 40 minutes.
The cooked barbecued pork buns should not be dry. When you break them open, the juice will flow out. This can be called a barbecued pork bun with a soul.
You never get tired of eating, and Cantonese dim sum is the most perfect interpretation of this word by Cantonese people.
For thousands of years, there is a reason why Cantonese cuisine has been passed down and has always occupied an irreplaceable position in Chinese cuisine.
An elder brother in the video said it well: " Cantonese people don't eat, they call them 'eating' ."
Eating well every meal is a sense of ritual for them.
Lao Guang people are serious about food. Treating yourself as a "diner" is the most basic respect that people show for food the moment they pick up chopsticks.
After watching this documentary, I feel a little envious of Cantonese people!
