Custard with Double Creme

Custard with double creme was a classic dessert since late Qing Dynasty and it was first spread in Shunde, Guangdong Province. Later, it became the specialty of Shunde and then circulated to the large areas of China with people's preference.

The founder of Renxin custard, Dong Jiewen and her father Dong Xiaohua raised buffalo for a living in Baishi village and milked the cow in late Qing Dynasty.The pasture in Daliang, with many small hills, was good for the buffalo they raised. Though the buffalo produced little milk, it was of high quality, with less water but more fat and extreme fragrance. So their milk was welcomed and their buffalo cultivation continued its prosperity. However, a problem troubled Dong Jiewen and her father. It's really difficult to preserve the milk without a refrigerator at that time. One day, her father tried to boil the milk to keep it longer. But there appeared thin skin on the surface of the boiled milk. They took a bite and found it sweet and delicious! The Dong's were fascinated by it and after several times of trial, they made the primal custard with double creme.

The manager of a seventy-year old Renxin Custard Store introduces that dessert were more likely to attract people's attention when they made innovations to compete with others. For instance, the most famous custard with double creme in Shunde had got two distinct ways of eating: hot and cold. The custard could change flavor when accompanied by red bean, green bean, lotus seed and egg. These gave new concept to the original custard.
The rich and full-bodied fragrance makes custard with double creme the most favorite of all in Guangzhou. With red bean on the surface,it is more tasty and palatable. At the same time, the traditional model of "passing skills to linear elatives rather than outsiders" ables sweet bean custard with double creme more valuable and treasurable.

Sweetheart Cake

Sweetheart cake is famous around Guangzhou and it shares an elegant name "Dongrongsu". A legend came as this when we talked about wife cake. Once upon a time, a poor couple loved each other very much. But their father was seriously ill. Without any money to invite a doctor, the wife sold herself to a landlord to earn money for her father. Instead of being despaired, the husband created delicious cakes. He ransomed her with the money he made on selling cakes. They lived happily again and was a model of connubial love. People started to name the tasty cake as "sweetheart cake" when it was known by others.

Another tale was different. A dessert cook from Chaozhou came to Gunagzhou and worked in a restaurant. He brought many local desserts in Guangzhou for his family when he went home. Much to his surprise, the dessert he took from Guangzhou didn't satisfy his wife. "It was no better than the wax gourd cake I made myself." Doubtfully, he asked his wife to pan the wax gourd cake for him. Using wax gourd as the stuffing and the flour as the skin, his wife made the wax gourd cakes that taste very delicious. When he was about to leave for Guangzhou, he asked his wife to cook a large package of it for other fellow cooks. Unexpectedly, the co-workers praised the wax gourd cake as well. Because the cake was made by the wife of this Chaozhou cook, it was named "Chaozhou sweetheart cake". With some improvement and adjustment, the cake became well-known in Guangzhou.
These two warm and sweet legends add a touch of romantic feature for the cake.

Chinese Herbal Tea

Chinese herbal tea enjoys a long history. It was said that in 306 AD, a doctor of Taoism named Ge Hong in East Jin Dynasty traveled to the south and found that malignant malaria was prevalent due to its warm and humid climate. He studied the medicines that were used to cure diseases caused by dampness and wrote many books targeted at the diseases caused by the climat of south of the Five Ridges. Based on Ge Hong's medical theory, coupled with their richful experience in the process of long-term prevention of disease, people in the south boiled Chinese medicine that was cold and cool in essence as a drink to relieve the summer heat. This was a summary of the rich experience formed in the process of fighting against diseases. Thus the Chinese herbal tea was created in the south, with the profound rich cultural deposits there. The formula and terms were passed from one generation to another. Stories about Chinese herbal tea were popular both in the south and overseas.

In 1796, the first year of Jiaqing in Qing Dynasty, a doctor named Wang Zebang (A Ji was his pet name) realized that many of the diseases were caused by excessive internal heat in the hot weather when he was treating the patients. As a result, he and his son gathered Chinese herbal medicine from Baiyun Mountain, devoted himself to the relevant study and made a prescription of cool tea as a treatment. It worked well. Once in a year, flu broke out in the South Sea Islands and many caught the flu. Knowing the epidemic, A Ji offered his prescription of the Chinese Herbal Tea and saved many people's life. In memory of A Ji, the tea was named after him, "Wanglaoji". This was the story about the earliest cool tea. Later, Wanglaoji was spread to other foreign countries and popular with Chinese people all over the world for more than 170 years. It was truly the pioneer of the drinks that can relieve the internal heat.
For hundreds of years, the numerous cool tea stores in Gungdong, Hong Kong and Macao have formed unique scenery of the south culture. The profound cultural connotation of Chinese herbal tea enables its enduring spreading force, an unmatchable advantage over any other drinks in the world at present.

Sausage in Guangdong

Traditionally, cured meat is processed of meat or poultry with salt and spices and wind-dried in low temperature for one winter. Due to its special taste and flavor, it has a long history in China and is closely connected to culture.

There was a story in Huangpu involving the origin of Guangdong sausage. In 1866, a porridge store owner named Wang Hong in Huangpu, Zhongshan City cut the leftover meat into small pieces and stirred with sugar and cooking wine in case that the meat went bad next day. He put the meat into pig's small intestine and hung them in the warm stove to dry. It turned out to be very delicious! So he made meat in this way afterwards and earned a large sum of money. Neighbors began to imitate, with some of them making improvements upon the procedures. Finally, the sausage came into being.
The trend that people in Guangzhou rush to purchase sausage well demonstrates their love for it. They always bring a box of sausage when visiting friends and relatives. At home, they never forget to put pieces of sausage when cooking. Their feelings toward sausage are deeply rooted in the diet culture of Guangzhou and the eating habits they have from childhood.
It's time to eat sausage when wind starts to blow in autumn. For people in Guangzhou, the scent of sausage really gives off in November or even in December. At this time of the year, north wind sweeps over Guangdong and the sausage is more fragrant. Walking on the newly built street, golden and oily cured meat is hanging on a bamboo stick in the windows in front of or behind the house. The pleasant smell of cured fish, meat, sausage, and duck smells seem to tell us that the New Year is coming to us on the way.

Cantonese Soup

Soup in Guangzhou is usually boiled by strong fire and there is little condiment except the food materials and salt. Sometimes, small amount of ginger is added to reduce the fishy smell of meat. Only in this way can we get the original taste and flavor of the food materials. Often, there is a saying of "three-hour cook and four-hour stew". More specifically, three hours for the strong fire cooked soup and four hours for the water stewed soup.
A bowl of hot soup on the table makes people lick their chaps in winter and spring when soup helps them keep warm and stimulates the appetite. As for the food materials for cooking soup, meat that suits shall contains high protein such as beef, mutton, pork, chicken and duck. No spices are allowed in the soup except a piece of ginger if it's necessary. The fragrance of the soup will go off naturally when it is boiled with slow fire for hours. The ease and comfort are embodied in the simple and unforgettable fragrance.

People say that you'd better praise a housewife in Guangdong for the fine soup she makes rather than the beauty she was born with. In Guangdong, the secret of cooking soup is passed down from mother to daughter or from mother-in-law to daughter-in-law. Each family has its own secret weapon to make its unique soup. The housewives are quite familiar with the matching of food materials as they are grown accompanied by their mother's soup. Different food materials are selected in accordance with season or climate (hot or cold). In summer, almond, pawpaw and white fungus soup is served for the family while watercress and duck's gizzard soup is prepared in winter. Such a housewife will undoubtedly keep a healthy diet for all members of the family.

Porridge

Porridge is the essence of the long-standing culture of Guangdong.
Taking a vital position in Guangdong people's diet, porridge is well-known for its diversity form rich to simple as well as from elegant to ordinary, lacking for nothing. Cooking porridge has been very peculiar in Guangzhou. The best is cooked in crock with high heat at first and slow fire afterwards. Though the ingredients come from daily life, they are fully utilized.

It is not an overstatement to say porridge in Guangdong is the best. People are amazed by the varieties and deliciousness of Guangzhou porridge without any exception. As an ideal food for people in Guangdong, porridge is so highly advocated and it is probably because of its location resulting in hot and damp weather.
People in the north make porridge as well, but use cereals and crops as materials. It's the tradition and custom to have porridge on the warm Kang using a very large bowl, which makes the customs in the north more prominent. However, porridge in Guangzhou is made of seafood or fresh vegetables, Fish, crab, chicken and pork are often added in the porridge. People slowly take a sip and enjoy the porridge using a small blue-white china bowl.
In Guangdong, have the porridge and you will feel the the style and charm there.

Crisped Grass Carp in Zhongshan

By a pure chance, crisped grass carp swam out the Yangtze water reservoir. In a year, a villager caught a crisped grass carp in a pit near Fuhuo Village and brought it home. He cooked the carp and found the meat crisp. That's very rare for a grass carp. The Hakkas who resided near the Yangtze water reservoir were very superstitious and they were on the pins and needles for they thought they had eaten the fabled "holy fish". However, other families caught the crisp carp very soon and the veil of the crisped grass carp group was uncovered gradually.

Thirty years ago, there was a transfer terminal next to the Yangtze water reservoir. A huge amount of broad beans were loaded there. And lots of beans dropped into the reservoir due to the loose package. The reservoir was mainly occupied with grass carp at that time and the fish ate the broad beans, therefore the meat became more crisp.
The water of west river mouth in Zhongshan is clear without pollution and is deemed as the most suitable habitat for crisped grass carp. The carps are wild and torrently brave. They love surfing, swimming and diving. That's why their meat is tighter. And the meat turns crisp when they are fed with natural broad beans from Northeast. As a sport champion, crisped grass carp has much more meat than bones which contains 12%more protein than ordinary carp. To make the carps meat crisper, you need to wait until the strong north wind sweeps Guangzhou and the temperature decreases due to the reason that the carp has to keep swimming to keep warm, thus the meat of course turning fresher and crisper.