Friday, February 22, 2013

What is Cantonese Cuisine?

What is Cantonese Cuisine?
Cantonese cuisine comes from Guangdong province and is one of the Eight Culinary Traditions of Chinese cuisine.
Cantonese chefs are highly sought after throughout China.
Guangdong has long been a trading port and many imported foods and ingredients are used in Cantonese cuisine. Besides pork, beef and chicken, Cantonese cuisine incorporates almost all edible meats, including offal, chicken feet, duck's tongue, snakes, and snails. However, lamb and goat are rarely eaten.
For many traditional Cantonese cooks, the flavors of a finished dish should be well balanced n not oily.
Steaming and boiling are used more often than frying to prepare food. Vegetables are cooked in the shortest time in order to retain the natural crispness and flavor.
In Cantonese cuisine, a number of ingredients such as spring onion, sugar, salt, soy sauce, rice wine, cornstarch, vinegar, scallion oil, and sesame oil are used to enhance flavor, although garlic is heavily used in some dishes, also ginger, chili peppers, five-spice powder, powdered black pepper, star anise and a few other spices are also used often.
Dim sum, literally "touch your heart", is a Cantonese term for small hearty dishes.
These bite-sized portions are prepared using traditional cooking methods such as frying, steaming, stewing and baking.
It is designed so that one person may taste a variety of different dishes. Dim sum refers to a style of Chinese food prepared as small bite-sized or individual portions of food traditionally served
in small steamer baskets or on small plates. Dim sum is also well known for the unique way it is served in some restaurants.
A Spring roll is a roll consisting of various types of vegetables like sliced carrot, cabbage, mushroom and wood ear fungus and sometimes meat are rolled inside a thin flour skin and deep fried.
A wonton is a type of dumpling commonly found in a number of Chinese cuisines.
In Cantonese cuisine, shrimp filled wonton within minced pork is most commonly served with thin noodles to make wonton noodles.
The drinking of tea is as important to dim sum as the food.
' The ritual of bowing to someone in appreciation '...
It is customary to pour tea for others during dim sum before filling one's own cup.

A custom unique to the Cantonese is to thank the person pouring the tea by tapping the bent index finger if you are single, or by tapping both the index and middle finger if you are married, which symbolizes 'bowing' to them.
Cantonese style cuisine makes an emphasis in the freshness of the ingredients and the contrast of flavors and textures.

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