The names of dishes are mainly named according to materials, tastes, shapes, qualities, colors, seasons, cooking techniques, place names, people, allusions, metaphors, expressions and numbers. The following are the names of the dishes: named after the ingredients: lotus leaf chicken, silver carp tofu, mutton fish soup. Named after taste: spiced meat, strange chicken, hot and sour soup. Named after the shape: cherry meat, Tai Chi taro paste, chrysanthemum fish. Named after quality: crisp taste. Named by color: Jinyu Soup, Yulu Ball, Amber Meat. Named after the seasons: winter ling porridge, autumn leaf cake. Named after cooking techniques: slippery tenderloin, steamed pork with rice flour, dry fried hairtail. Named after place names: Beijing roast duck, Nanjing dried salted duck and Fuling mustard tuber. Named after people: Dongpo Meat, Si Wen Tofu and kung pao chicken. Named according to allusions: Liu Lang Wenying, Pearl of the Eye, Yangguan Sandie. Named after metaphors, expressions and expressions: Tongshen cake, dragon leg, longan steamed stuffed bun, unicorn fish, mandarin duck slices, ants climbing trees. Named after numbers: Yiwosi, Changshan, Sanbuzhi, Simei Soup, Five Blessingg Cake, Liuyicai, Qihui Cake, Babao Rice, Jiu Si Soup, Shiyuan Soup, Zuisan Oyster, Twenty-four Wonton, Multicolored Beef Noodles, Babao Sanwei Pear, Hundred Birds Back to Phoenix, Melaleuca Cake and Wannian Purple Abalone.
Banquets also have various names, such as: whole fish seats, whole sheep seats, whole duck seats, vegetarian seats, Manchu-Han banquet, bird's nest seats, bear's paw seats, shark's fin seats, sea cucumber seats and so on. Birthday banquet, wedding banquet, New Year's Eve dinner, summer banquet, Spring Festival banquet, Confucius banquet, hundreds of chicken banquets, thousands of family banquets, and so on.
Another important embodiment of "eating culture" is probably the shape of dishes. When it comes to modeling, it's about knife work. Knife workers in Chinese food mainly cut, batch and chop. Knife methods mainly include straight knife, flat knife, oblique knife and odd knife. , raw materials can be made into blocks, segments, strips, silk, chips, diced, granules, velvet, powder, mud and other shapes; There are more than 200 names of modern knife techniques in China.
The shape of dishes should not only be "reshaped", but also emphasize the color effect. The principle is to reflect the true color of food raw materials and reasonably match the color of ingredients. In the process of cooking, food often changes color. It is a creative problem to keep the original color of raw materials or change them into predetermined colors, which requires superb skills.
In fact, carving skills such as carving melons, painting eggs and mixing dough have existed since ancient times. For example, it is recorded in the "Baked Tail Banquet Food List" that 70 noodles made of Penglai immortals are steamed; According to the Record of Spring Dreams, the fruit bowl is litchi 120 kg, and the jujube persimmon is 260 kg. "Qing Louis" records that a nun is making a large bonsai by imitating 20 scenes with various foods; Peony flower is pickled and fermented from five generations of wuyue fish steaks, but it is difficult to distinguish the authenticity. Let's take a look at Lu You's poem about eating: "With Wu skillfully, bamboo shoots are beautiful and fragrant." The moon turns against the moon, and Luo Hong pours jade mash. Dye a pear with half cheeks and a snow crab with two claws. Huang Jia is as big as a plate, and Hong Ding is as sweet as honey. "It can be seen that the ancients' attainments in" food culture "are no less than those of today.