China covers a large territory and has many nationalities, hence a variety of Chinese food with different but fantastic and mouthwatering flavor. Since China's local dishes have their own typical characteristics, generally, Chinese food can be roughly divided into eight regional cuisines, which has been widely accepted around. Certainly, there are many other local cuisines that are famous, such as Beijing Cuisine and Shanghai Cuisine. So today, I will introduce some of them for you.Shandong CuisineAs an important component of Chinese culinary art, Shandong cuisine, also known as Lu Cai for short, boasts a long history and far-reaching impact. Shandong cuisine can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period (770-221BC). It was quickly developed in the South and North Dynasty (960-1279), and was recognized as an important style of cooking in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Shangdong cuisine is representative of northern China's cooking and its technique has been widely absorbed in northeast China.Shandong is a large peninsula surrounded by the sea, with the Yellow River meandering through the center. As a result, seafood is a majorcomponent of Shandong cuisine. Shandong's most famous dish is the "sweet and sour carp". A truly authentic "sweet and sour carp" must come from the Yellow River.Shangdong cuisine is famous for its wide selection of material and use of different cooking methods. The raw materials are mainly domestic animals and birds, seafood and vegetables. The masterly cooking techniques include Bao (quick frying), Liu (quick frying with corn flour), Pa (stewing), roasting, boiling, using sugar to make fruit, crystallizing with honey.Condiments such as sauce paste, fistulous onion and garlic are freely used, so Shangdong dishes usually taste pungent. Soups are given much emphasis in Shangdong dishes. Clear soup (or thin soup) features clear and fresh while milk soup (or creamy soup) looks thick and tastes strong, both of which are often choicely made to add freshness to the dishes. The dishes are mainly clear, fresh and fatty, perfect with Shandong's own famous beer, Qingdao Beer.In addition to sweet and sour carp, typical courses in Shandong cuisine include braised abalone with shells, fried sea cucumber with fistulous onion, fragrant calamus in milk soup, quick-fried double fats (a verytraditional Shandong dish consisting of pork tripe and chicken gizzards), and Dezhou stewed chicken. Dezhou stewed chicken is known throughout the country; the chicken is so well cooked that the meat easily separates from the bone although the shape of the chicken is preserved.Sichuan CuisineOf the eight major schools of China's culinary art, Sichuan cuisine is perhaps the most popular. Originating in Sichuan Province of western China, Sichuan cuisine, known as Chuan Cai in Chinese, enjoys an international reputation for being spicy and flavorful. Yet the highly distinctive pungency is not its only characteristic. In fact, Sichuan cuisine boasts a variety of flavors and different methods of cooking, featuring the taste of hot, sweet, sour, salty, or tongue-numbing.The origin of Sichuan cuisine can be traced back to the Qin and Han dynasties (221BC-220AD), its recognition as a distinct regional system took place in the Han dynasties (206BC-220AD). As a unique style of food, Sichuan cuisine was famous more than 800 years ago during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) when Sichuan restaurants wereopened in Lin'an, now called Hangzhou, the capital. The hot pepper was introduced into China from South America around the end of the 17th century. Once it came to Sichuan, it became a favored food flavoring. In the late Qing Dynasty around 19th century, Sichuan cuisine became a unique local flavor, enjoying the same reputation with Shandong, Guangdong (Canton) and Huaiyang cuisines.Sichuan has high humidity and many rainy or overcast days. Hot pepper helps reduce internal dampness, so it was used frequently in dishes, and hot dishes became the norm in Sichuan cuisine. The region's warm, humid climate also necessitates sophisticated food-preservation techniques which include picking, salting, drying and smoking.Sichuan has been known as the land of plenty since ancient times. It produces abundant domestic animals, poultry, and freshwater fish and crayfish. Sichuan cuisine is well known for cooking fish. The raw materials are delicacies from land and river, edible wild herbs, and the meat of domestic animals and birds. Beef is more common in Sichuan cuisine than it is in other Chinese cuisines, perhaps due to the widespread use of oxen in the region. Stir-fried beef is often cooked until chewy, while steamed beef is sometimes coated with rice flour to produce rich gravy.Sichuan dishes consist of Chengdu, Chongqing and vegetarian dishes. Masterly used cooking techniques are sauteing, stir-frying without stewing, dry-braising, Pao (soaking in water) and Hui (frying then braising with corn flour sauce). Sichuan cuisine is famous for its distinct and various flavors, the most outstanding ones are fish flavors, pepper powder boiled in oil, strange flavor and sticky-hot.Statistics show that the number of Sichuan dishes has surpassed 5,000. Dishes typical of Sichuan are twice cooked pork, spicy diced chicken with peanuts, dry-fried shark fin, and fish-flavored pork shred. One of the popular dishes is Pockmarked Woman's bean curd (or Mapo Doufu in Chinese) which was invented by a Chengdu chef's pockmarked wife decades ago in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). The cubed bean curd is cooked over a low flame in a sauce which contains ground beef, chili, and pepper. When served, the bean curd is tender, spicy, and appetizing. Although many Sichuan dishes live up to their spicy reputation, often ignored are the large percentage of recipes that use little or no spice at all, including recipes such as "tea smoked duck".Guangdong CuisineGuangdong cuisine, known as Cantonese cuisine in the West, originates from Guangdong, the southernmost province in China. It is developed in Guangzhou, Huizhou and Chaozhou of Guangdong Province and Hainan Island. The recipes of Cantonese dishes appeared in the literature of the Han (206BC-220AD), Wei, South and North dynasties (220-587), became famous both at home and abroad at the beginning of the 20th century. The majority of overseas Chinese, especially in Southeast Asia, are from Guangdong (Canton), so Cantonese food is perhaps the most widely available Chinese regional cuisine outside China.Long, warm, wet days in Guangdong throughout the year create the perfect environment for cultivating almost everything. Cantonese are known to have an adventurous palate, able to eat many different kinds of meats and vegetables and other exotic ingredients. In fact, it seems that, to the Cantonese, almost everything that walks, crawls, flies, or swims is edible. A humorous saying goes like this, "Cantonese will eat anything that flies except airplanes, anything that moves on the ground except trains, and anything that moves in the water except boats." This statement is far from the truth, but Cantonese food is surely one of the most diverse and richest cuisines in China. It usually has fowl and other meats thatproduce its unique dishes. Various unusual materials are used for their dishes, including snakes, cats and pangolins. Cooked snake is considered a delicacy in Guangdong.As the climate of Guangdong is hot, Cantonese food does not use much spice, bringing out the natural flavor of the vegetables and meats. The dishes are fresh, crisp, tender, and lightly seasoned.Guangdong cuisine has absorbed the cooking skills of the West as well as that of other Chinese regions, to develop its own unique methods. The basic cooking techniques include roasting, stir-frying, sauteing, deep-frying, braising, stewing and steaming. Steaming and stir-frying are most commonly used to preserve the ingredients' natural flavors. Guangdong chefs also pay much attention to the artistic presentation of their dishes.The most famous snake dish in Guangdong is the "dragon and tiger locked in battle", in which cobra, leopard cat, and over twenty spices are used. "Roasted snake with chrysanthemum blooms" is provided in autumn; the dish is creamy in color and garnished with beautiful petals of chrysanthemum, mushrooms, and various flavorings. Other delicacies in Guangdong cuisine are braised whole abalone with vegetable anddelicious sauce, roasted suckling pig, duck web in oyster sauce, shark's fin with brown sauce, sauteed sliced beef with vegetable, fish belly in clear soup, fried shrimp, drunken shrimp (shrimp that are still alive, yet drowning in liquor), bird's nest with wax gourd, Dongjiang salted chicken and braised chicken feed with wild herbs.In addition, Guangdong is also well known for its dim sum, snack-like delicacies of savory and sweet buns, steamed meat with vegetable and pastries. Dim sum is usually served for breakfast and lunch.Jiangsu CuisineJiangsu cuisine, also known as Su Cai for short, is one of the major components of Chinese cuisine, and consists of the styles of Yangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou and Zhenjiang dishes. It is very famous in the whole world for its distinctive style and taste. It is especially popular in the lower reach of the Yangtze River.Known as "a land of fish and rice" in China, Jiangsu Province has a rich variety of ingredients available for cooking. Jiangsu cuisine has the characteristics of strictly selected ingredients, exquisite workmanship,elegant shape, and rich culture trait. The typical raw materials are fresh and live aquatic products. It highlights the freshness of ingredients. Other cooking ingredients are often carefully selected tea leaves, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, pears, and dates. Its carving techniques are delicate, of which the melon carving technique is especially well known. Due to using the methods of stewing, braising, quick-frying, warming-up, stir-frying, wine sauce pickling and adding some sugar as condiments, Jiangsu dishes taste fresh, light and mellow.Jiangsu dishes can be classified into that of Suzhou-Wuxi style and Zhenjiang-Yangzhou style. The feature of Suzhou-style dishes is their natural flavor in original stock and a mixture of salty and sweet taste. The characteristics of Zhenjiang-Yangzhou style food are best described by the saying that "the soup is so clear that you can see the bottom of the bowl and the sauce is so thick that it turns creamy white".Typical courses of Jiangsu cuisine are Jinling salted dried duck (Nanjing's most famous dish), crystal meat (pork heals in a bright, brown sauce), clear crab shell meatballs (pork meatballs in crab shell powder, fatty, yet fresh), Yangzhou steamed Jerky strips (dried tofu, chicken, ham and pea leaves), triple combo duck, dried duck, and Farewell My Concubine (soft-shelled turtle stewed with many other ingredients such as chicken,mushrooms and wine).。
