Open the door seven things, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar and tea. All said and done, are not around a “food” word. When it comes to the most famous people who can eat in ancient times, I am afraid it is Su Shi. He loved food, invented food, and even wrote poems for food. Today’s mouth-watering “Dongpo meat” is also from this great writer’s handwriting!
If you look up the resume of Su Shi, you may be surprised to know that this scholar, who was certified by the emperor as “the talent of the prime minister”, won the imperial examination at the age of 20 and spent most of his years in deputation after the age of 35. Because Su Shi insisted on his principles and was unwilling to participate in the party disputes between the old and new factions at that time, he was ostracized by the powerful ministers throughout his life. As he summed up in his poems, “Ask your life’s work, Huangzhou Huizhou Danzhou.” These three places were the three major areas to which he was relegated.
In his life, Su Shi could not be more aptly described as “not having met with talent”, but he held on to the light-hearted attitude of “no storm and no sunshine” in the face of adversity. What’s more, Su Shi made fun of his hardships and discovered gourmet food in every place he visited, and actually used his years of relegation to outline a food roadmap on the map of Song Dynasty. Legend has it that there are 64 dishes named after Su Shi! So, let’s follow the footsteps of this famous food writer and explore the flavorful snacks of the Song Dynasty.
First stop, Huangzhou. Su Shi just arrived in Huangzhou, wrote a poem, generously said his nature of food-loving: “since laughing at life for the mouth busy.” Because he found that the fish in the Yangtze River and bamboo shoots in the mountains were so delicious, even if he was a banished official, it was a great pleasure in life to taste the local food.
This poem is nothing, but the other poem “Ode to Pork” is a classic in aesthetics. Because Su Shi financial constraints, can only afford to buy “cheap as dirt” pork. Pork in Huangzhou is cheap, because the local rich people do not like to eat, and the poor can not do well. But Su Shi invented a unique cooking method to turn it into a delicious and inexpensive special dish.
Look at him in the poem enthusiastically began to cook it: the pot clean, less water, slow stew; patience, do not rush, the fire to the meat aroma naturally floating out. How delicious is this dish? Su Shi said: “Every morning I get up to eat two bowls, and full and satisfied!” This may be the practice of “Dongpo meat”!
The second stop was south to Huizhou, which is today’s Guangdong. This place is as warm as spring in all seasons, the mountain flowers and trees flourish, Su Shi ran to the Luofu Mountain, according to the season to eat all the loquat, plum, litchi and other fruits. Sweet and juicy flowers and fruits also inspired the creation of Su Shi in his “Huizhou a” wrote the famous line: “eat lychee three hundred, do not resign long to do Lingnan people.” So open-minded and transcendent sentiment, who would have thought that this is an old man who was repeatedly deported?
How to eat fruit every day can be satisfied, gourmet Su Shi, of course, must have good meat to accompany. As Huizhou city regulations, only one sheep can be killed every day, Su Shi could not afford it, so he privately instructed the butcher to leave him the lamb backbone that no one wanted. Su Shi was at home and was excited to start cooking a new delicacy: boiling the spine, pouring some wine, sprinkling some salt and baking it over the fire until it was slightly charred. Su Shi tasted the minced meat in the spine and sucked the marrow, just as delicious as eating crab!
Su Shi deliberately wrote to his brother about this practice, and joked, “This is so delicious, but wait, how come the few dogs around me, seem to be very unhappy?”
The third stop, Hainan’s Danzhou. The ancient Hainan is not the current tourist destination, is a real barbaric land. Still, Su Shi discovered the secret snack – oysters (oysters) in the area. He wrote to his son, specifically mentioning his joy in eating seafood, and specifically instructed him, “Don’t tell the ministers of the court that there are delicious oysters here, or they will scramble to the south and compete with me for the food!” Of course, no one would really rush to Hainan to depose, but this is the spirit of Su Shi’s calm optimism!
Su Shi’s enthusiasm for food can be said to be to an unparalleled extent, even in sickness can not resist the temptation of food. For example, in “Zi Zhan suffers from red eyes”, it is said that when Su Shi got an eye disease one day, the doctor strictly forbade him to eat meat, and he argued, “How can I be generous to him and not let his mouth eat meat because his eyes are sick?” But he also vowed in an article on “Health and Wellness”, “From now on, I will not eat more than one glass of wine or one kind of meat at each meal. If I have an honored guest at home, then I will enrich the food three times, only less but not more!” It turns out that Su Shi also had moments of sanity about food, but could he do it or not?
There are many other works of Su Shi about food, such as “Old Gourmets”, which defines people who care about food as “old gourmets”, and “Vegetable Soup Fu”, which makes wild vegetables extremely delicious, and so on. His heirloom works not only show the natural and fine food culture of the ancients, but also let us find the joy of life in eating. “What really attracts us to these works, I am afraid, is the optimistic and humorous spirit that Su Shi conveys in his food!
(Reference: Su Shi’s poem “First Arrival in Huangzhou”, “Ode to Pork”, “One of the Best in Huizhou”, “Qing Summer Penning‧Dongpo Hainan Oyster Eating”, etc.)
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