Cantonese cuisine

Background

Guangzhou (Canton) City, the provincial capital of Guangdong and the centre of Cantonese culture, has long been a trading hub, and many imported foods and ingredients are used in Cantonese cuisine. During the early to middle Qing dynasty period from 1757 to 1842, Guangdong, known as Canton at the time, was the only port where trade was permitted between Chinese and foreign merchants. Cantonese cooks aimed to serve European tastes in restaurants, lending to an ongoing European influence on Cantonese cuisine. Staples of the European nobility diet at the time, particularly turtle soup, were available to British merchants and dignitaries visiting Guangdong. The British taught Cantonese cooks how to make the dish, with the Caribbean sea turtle typically used in Europe replaced by the Chinese softshell turtle. Besides pork, beef and chicken, Cantonese cuisine incorporates almost all edible meats, including offal, chicken feet, duck's tongue, frog legs, snakes and snails. Lamb and goat are less commonly used than in the cuisines of northern or western China. Many cooking methods are used, with steaming and stir-frying favoured due to their convenience and rapidity.

Wok hay is the name given to the unique Cantonese cooking technique, emphasizing the energy, or hay, of the cooking vessel itself. Wok hay emphasizes the multiple flavors at play when cooking, using certain ingredients to balance the harshness of others. Additionally, dishes are typically cooked over a medium heat for a more prolonged period. Guangzhou is known for its year-round warm and humid climate; wok hay helps prevent chefs from working in an environment where they can easily overheat from the sweltering kitchen temperatures. This concept lends to a sense of superiority among Cantonese cooks with respect to stir-fry technique. Other techniques include shallow frying, double steaming, braising and deep frying. Compared to other Chinese regional cuisines, the flavours of most traditional Cantonese dishes should be well-balanced and not greasy. Spices should be used in modest amounts to avoid overwhelming the flavours of the primary ingredients, which in turn should be at the peak of their freshness and quality. There is no widespread use of fresh herbs in Cantonese cooking, in contrast with their liberal use in other cuisines such as Sichuanese, Vietnamese, Lao, Thai and European. Garlic chives and coriander leaves are notable exceptions, although the former are often used as a vegetable and the latter are typically used as mere garnish in most dishes.

Guangzhou’s notability in its restaurants, teahouses, and snack shops was targeted by the reforms of the CCP, as top party leaders made efforts to transform Guangzhou from a center of culinary arts into an industrial powerhouse. Well-established culinary institutions were targeted as traditionalist remnants, replaced with communal-style eating halls. “Massification” became key to the reforming of Guangzhou’s culinary scene, with many delicacies such as sharkfin soup, bird's nest soup, and sea cucumber, which were often imported, ushered out of restaurants in favor of less expensive ingredients. Frugality was emphasized as a revolutionary ideal, with restaurants previously reserved for the wealthy elites now serving the working class, who had felt that these “Old Society” delicacies were withheld from them.

Foods

Sauces and condiments

In Cantonese cuisine, ingredients such as sugar, salt, soy sauce, rice wine, corn starch, vinegar, scallion and sesame oil suffice to enhance flavour, although garlic is heavily used in some dishes, especially those in which internal organs, such as entrails, may emit unpleasant odours. Ginger, chili peppers, five-spice powder, powdered black pepper, star anise and a few other spices are also used, but often sparingly.

File:Macharsiew by daxiang stef.jpg|Char siu is often marinated with plum sauce and honey for sweet flavour. File:Steamed Oysters.jpg|Oysters steamed in two ways: with ginger and garlic, and in black bean sauce

Dried and preserved ingredients

Although Cantonese cooks pay much attention to the freshness of their primary ingredients, Cantonese cuisine also uses a long list of preserved food items to add flavour to a dish. This may be influenced by Hakka cuisine, since the Hakkas were once a dominant group occupying imperial Hong Kong and other southern territories.

Some items gain very intense flavours during the drying/preservation/oxidation process and some foods are preserved to increase their shelf life. Some chefs combine both dried and fresh varieties of the same items in a dish. Dried items are usually soaked in water to rehydrate before cooking. These ingredients are generally not served a la carte, but rather with vegetables or other Cantonese dishes.

Traditional dishes

A number of dishes have been part of Cantonese cuisine since the earliest territorial establishments of Guangdong. While many of these are on the menus of typical Cantonese restaurants, some simpler ones are more commonly found in Cantonese homes. Home-made Cantonese dishes are usually served with plain white rice.

Deep-fried dishes

There are a small number of deep-fried dishes in Cantonese cuisine, which can often be found as street food. They have been extensively documented in colonial Hong Kong records of the 19th and 20th centuries. A few are synonymous with Cantonese breakfast and lunch, even though these are also part of other cuisines.

Soups

Old fire soup, or lou fo tong (), is a clear broth prepared by simmering meat and other ingredients over a low heat for several hours. Chinese herbs are often used as ingredients. There are basically two ways to make old fire soup – put ingredients and water in the pot and heat it directly on fire, which is called bou tong (); or put the ingredients in a small stew pot, and put it in a bigger pot filled with water, then heat the bigger pot on fire directly, which is called dun tong (). The latter way can keep the most original taste of the soup.

Soup chain stores or delivery outlets in cities with significant Cantonese populations, such as Hong Kong, serve this dish due to the long preparation time required of slow-simmered soup.

Seafood

Due to Guangdong's location along the South China Sea coast, fresh seafood is prominent in Cantonese cuisine, and many Cantonese restaurants keep aquariums or seafood tanks on the premises. In Cantonese cuisine, as in cuisines from other parts of Asia, if seafood has a repugnant odour, strong spices and marinating juices are added; the freshest seafood is odourless and, in Cantonese culinary arts, is best cooked by steaming. For instance, in some recipes, only a small amount of soy sauce, ginger and spring onion is added to steamed fish. In Cantonese cuisine, the light seasoning is used only to bring out the natural sweetness of the seafood. As a rule of thumb, the spiciness of a dish is usually negatively correlated to the freshness of the ingredients.

File:HK Hotpot foods Dec-2013 Ingredients 蟶子 Solenidae 蟹 Crabs 蝦 Prawn 雞肉腸仔 Sausage n 魚旦 Fishballs.jpg|Typical ingredients for Cantonese-style hotpot are razor shell (蟶子), crab (蟹), prawn (蝦), chicken sausage (雞肉腸仔) and dace fishball (魚旦).

Noodle dishes

Noodles are served either in soup broth or fried. These are available as home-cooked meals, on dim sum side menus, or as street food at dai pai dongs, where they can be served with a variety of toppings such as fish balls, beef balls, or fish slices.

Siu mei

Main article: Siu mei

Siu mei () is essentially the Chinese rotisserie style of cooking. Unlike most other Cantonese dishes, siu mei solely consists of meat, with no vegetables.

All Cantonese-style cooked meats, including siu mei, lou mei and preserved meat can be classified as siu laap ().

Lou mei

Main article: Lou mei

Lou mei () is the name given to dishes made from internal organs, entrails and other left-over parts of animals. It is widely available in southern Chinese regions.

Meat and rice plates

A portion of meat, such as char siu, served on a bed of steamed white rice. A typical variant consists of half-and-half portions of two types of siu mei and lou mei (or sometimes more than two). A steamed vegetable (such as choy sum) is frequently, but not always included.

Little pot rice

Little pot rice () are dishes cooked and served in a flat-bottomed pot (as opposed to a round-bottomed wok). Usually this is a saucepan or braising pan (see clay pot cooking). Such dishes are cooked by covering and steaming, making the rice and ingredients very hot and soft. Usually the ingredients are layered on top of the rice with little or no mixing in between. Many standard combinations exist.

Banquet and dinner dishes

A number of dishes are traditionally served in Cantonese restaurants only at dinner time. Said banquets were typically served in the capital's famous tea houses. Guangzhou’s tea houses have historically served as meeting places for the public, where political movements could foment and lead to action. The main draw of these tea houses was to enjoy dim sum. While eating dim sum in tea houses grew in popularity during the nineteenth century, the different snacks and small bites that were enjoyed grew Guangzhou staples to encompassing culinary traditions from China’s numerous provinces. After the Qing’s defeat in the first Opium War, culinary influences outside of China found their way into the dim sum served at tea houses, with ingredients such as Worcestershire sauce and Ketchup becoming staple ingredients. Dim sum restaurants stop serving bamboo-basket dishes after the yum cha period (equivalent to afternoon tea) and begin offering an entirely different menu in the evening. Some dishes are standard while others are regional. Some are customised for special purposes such as Chinese marriages or banquets. Salt and pepper dishes are one of the few spicy dishes.

Dessert

After the evening meal, most Cantonese restaurants offer tong sui (), a sweet soup. Many varieties of tong sui are also found in other Chinese cuisines. Some desserts are traditional, while others are recent innovations. The more expensive restaurants usually offer their specialty desserts. Sugar water is the general name of dessert in Guangdong province. It is cooked by adding water and sugar to some other cooking ingredients.

Delicacies

Certain Cantonese delicacies consist of parts taken from rare or endangered animals, which raises controversy over animal rights and environmental issues. This is often due to alleged health benefits of certain animal products. For example, the continued spreading of the idea that shark cartilage can cure cancer has led to decreased shark populations even though scientific research has found no evidence to support the credibility of shark cartilage as a cancer cure. Consumption of shark fin soup dates back to the Song dynasty, with the dish ultimately becoming ingrained into Cantonese food culture and Chinese food culture as a whole in the royal banquets of the Ming. Conservation efforts by the Chinese government and various NGOs have been historically difficult to implement. It can be difficult for fishermen who rely on the sale of shark fins to adopt alternative occupations, in addition to corruption at the local level impeding attempts at dismantling the shark fin trade.

References

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