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Cooking TipsCantonese Regional Cuisine
by:
Kirsten Hawkins
Easily the most well-known of the Chinese regional cuisines, Yue culinary art comes from the region about Canton in Southern China. Simple spices and a wide variety of foods used in cookery characterize Yue cuisine. Of all the Chinese regions, Canton (Guangdong province) has the most accessible food resources. Its proximity to the sea offers a veritable marine profusion to be accessorial to its dishes, devising possible such delicate matings as Seven Happiness, a dish that includes shrimp, scallops, fish and lobster on
with chicken, beef and pork. The light, delicate sauce, quick cookery and subtle spicing allows the natural flavors to shine through rather than being flooded and blending together.
The spices used in Yue cookery tend to be light and simple: ginger, salt, soy sauce, white pepper, spring onion and rice wine. For galore who are used to the more rich, spicy and complex flavors of Hunan province and Province cooking, Yue cookery may seem bland – but the subtle blends of flavor and aroma are created by the hand of a master chef.
All Chinese culinary art takes far more into account than the flavor of a dish. Chinese cookery is a presentation of texture, color, shape and aroma with even as the name of the dish conducive to its overall presentation. In true Oriental fashion, a meal is poetry, with every part of it conducive to the overall effect. Chinese courtesy demands that a guest be treated with honor, and to present a guest with thing
less than perfection is the height of rudeness.
As an honor to guests, freshness is one of the ultimate ‘ingredients’ in Yue regional cooking. In galore restaurants, guests can choose their meal from a food
tank in the eating room. It’s not unusual for a patron to be brought a live fish or crab at the table as proof of the freshness of the meal just about to be prepared. Vegetables are likewise fresh, crisp and sweet, and the quick cookery methods preserve each flavor individually to play against the others.
Light sauces with subtle seasonings bring out the natural sweetness of food
– but the Yue cook
wish only use the really freshest food
in those dishes. For ‘stale’ seafood, Yue culinary art offers thick, spicy sauces meant to mask the characteristic odor of fish. Pungent/sweet dishes like sweet and sour butterfly shrimp mightiness be served this way.
There are few Yue desserts that are autochthonal to the region, although galore restaurants serve a mango based pudding or tapioca. Most meals are served with plain poached rice, and attended
by either tea or rice wine.
Wherever in the earth you are, you’re likely to find restaurants that serve Yue cuisine. It has been carried across the earth by emigrants from the Quangdong province, and its light, delicate flavors are easy on the Western palate. To truly appreciate it though, takes more than the taste buds. Yue culinary art is a treat for the eyes and the nose as more as for the mouth. Appreciate it.
Just just about the author:
Kirsten Hawkins is a food and nutrition expert specializing the Mexican, Chinese, and Italian food. Visit http://www.food-and-nutrition.com/for more information on cookery delicious and healthy meals.
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