Chinese Eight Great Reginal Cuisines 2

After introduced about Anhui, Cantonese, Fujian, and Hunan cuisines, I will introduce the other four famous cuisines in Chinese traditional cook. They are Jiangsu, Shangdong, Szechuan, and Zhejiang cuisines.

1. Jiangsu cuisine

Jiangsu cuisine is characterized as soft texture, but not to the point of mushy or falling apart. For example, the meat tastes quite soft but would not separate from the bone when picked up. Other characters includes the strict selection of ingredients according to the seasons, emphasis on the matching colour and shape of each dish and emphasis on using soup to improve the flavour. One example is the steamed meatball.

2. Shangdong (Lu) cuisine

Shangdong cuisine is well-known to use local seafood ingredients, such as scallops, prawns, clams, sea cucumbers, and squid. It is somewhat unique for its wide use of corn, peanut crops,  wide variety of small grains such as millet, wheat, oat and barley.Also Shandong cuisine's greatest contribution to Chinese cuisine has been in the area of brewing vinegars. Left picture is sugar and vinegar fish, a very popular dish in restaurants.


3. Szechuan (Chuan) cuisine

Szechuan cuisine is well-known for using garlic and chili peppers, as well as the unique flavor of the Sichuan peppercorn. Peanuts, sesame paste and ginger are also prominent ingredients in Szechuan cooking. The Sichuan peppercorn is is an indigenous plant producing peppercorns which has an intensively fragrant, citrus-like flavor and produces a "tingly-numbing" sensation in the mouth. Common preparation techniques in Szechuan cuisine include stir frying, steaming and braising. One famous dish is double cooked pork, shown in the right picture here.

4. Zhejiang cuisine

Zhejiang cuisine is not greasy, having instead a fresh and soft flavor with a mellow fragrance. It is  characterized by rich variations and the utilization of bamboo shoots. Dongpo Pork is a notable dish in Zhejiang cuisine.  Other representative dishes are beggar's chicken and West Lake fish in vinegar. The picture on the left shows the West Lake fish in vinegar, it is a very classic dish dating back to the Ming Dynasty.