Home
» City specials
» Hangzhou
Smart recipes with a soft note of strong wine
Print Edition
WHILE Westerners use wine to cook meat and sometimes to make desserts, Chinese people invented recipes that incorporate huangjiu (yellow wine), a brown fermented rice liquor to cover up the smell of raw meat.
Yellow wine is made from water, cereal grains and a starter culture. Shaoxing City in Zhejiang Province is one of the original production places, and remains a vital source of huangjiu due to its clean water and top-quality grains.
Yellow wine is either drunk directly after being cooled or warmed, or used in cooking. For centuries, Zhejiang people have used recipes that require huangjiu. Today, Shanghai Daily introduces three classical ones, which can easily be made at home, or ordered in many local restaurants.
In Shaoxing, huangjiu is used widely in local dishes. With chicken, it is made into soup, cold dishes, and sautéed dishes.
The soup recipe is simple. Use a rice cooker with “soup function,” put a chicken in the mix of cold water and huangjiu with a one-to-one ratio, add ginger, shiitake, and salt, and then press the soup button. Done.
For a cold dish, you only need to cover the chicken with water and huangjiu, then wait until the water is fully bubbled, turn the fire off. Let the remaining temperature heat the chicken for an half hour. Take the chicken out, and put it into iced water. Cut the chicken into pieces and serve it as cold dish.
To saute the chicken, slice it into pieces and marinate the meat in huangjiu with salt for half an hour. Deep fry garlic and add preserved chicken. When the oil of the meat comes out, add huangjiu that covers the meat. Add some sugar and simmer the dish for eight to 10 minutes.
Where to eat:
• Zhangshengji Restaurant
Address: 77 Shuangling Rd
Tel: (0571) 8602-3333
• Zhejiang Sanli New Century Grand Hotel
Address: 2/F, 538 Shaoxing Rd
Tel: (0571) 8500-8888
It is a typical dish made with huangjiu and perhaps one of the most famous traditional Hangzhou dishes. It’s made by pan-frying and then cooking a pork belly in a heavy soybean sauce and lots of yellow wine.
Legend has it that when Su Shi (known as Su Dongpo, 1037-1101), a writer, poet, artist, calligrapher, pharmacologist and statesman of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), was the mayor of Hangzhou, he organized locals to dredge the lake and build the present-day Su Causeway, which controlled the flooding.
Appreciative locals heard that pork was Su’s favorite meat, and sent him large quantities as a gift.
Su, who was busy, said to the people in a hurry, “we can have those together,” but people misunderstood him and thought he had said “we can cook those together.”
They did as they were told, and Su loved the dish so much that he ordered his chef to cut the pork into smaller cubes and distribute them among the people. Thus the pork dish became “Dongpo’s Pork.”
The pork is half fat and half lean meat. The texture is oily but not as greasy as it looks, and the fragrance of the wine offsets the fat of the pork.
After being braised, sauteed, steamed and simmered twice, the meat is so tender you can pry it away easily with chopsticks.
The poet and mayor loved eating pork and had his own theories about cooking meat. He first braised the pork, added Chinese fermented wine, sugar and soybean sauce, and then slowly stewed it on low heat with a small amount of water, ginger and green onions.
Where to eat:
• Zhiweiguan Restaurant
Address: 83 Hubin Rd
Tel: (0571) 8701-8638
Address: 10-12 Yanggong Causeway
Tel: (0571) 8797-0568
• Louwailou Restaurant
Address: 30 Gushan Rd
Tel: (0571) 8796-9682
• Zhangshengji Restaurant
Address: 77 Shuangling Rd
Tel: (0571) 8602-3333
It is believed a simple and effective way to heat the body, warm the stomach, and consolidate the body’s yang (hot) energy.
Prepare a pot, boil huangjiu until it starts to bubble, and infuse the liquid into stirred egg.
If you are worried about bacteria, add the stirred egg into the pot until the egg is cooked. Some sugar can be added. If you only have a microwave oven, heat a bowl of huangjiu with some sugar for one minute, add the raw stirred egg, and again heat the tonic for 20 seconds.
If heated wine tastes and smells too strong, you can mix the wine with more water and brown sugar and it will taste like an exotic dessert.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
