Luoyang Swallow Dish

Luoyang swallow dish (with the name of "Luoyang Yancai" in Chinese), also known as Peony Yancai, is a unique traditional dish in Luoyang, Henan province. The major ingredients of this fine dish are radish, sea cucumber and chicken, not as complicated as you might think. It slightly differs from the top grade restaurants to the cafes off street:top grade restaurants usually add invigorant like sleeve-fish while the home-cook cafes seem plain and simple but the taste is no inferior to that of the top restaurants.

When you take a quick glance at the Luoyang Yancai, it seems just like a graceful eye-dazzling peony as white as polished jade floating on the soup. People couldn't help screaming "Is this a banquet of flower?" Only by a close observation can you notice that it is made of shredded radish and some other ingredients in the fresh soup. Such a luxury and tasty dish impresses the diner at large and they keep wowing about its wonderfulness.

A legend has been told about the origin of Luoyang Yancai. As is well-known, Luoyang peony thrived in Tang Dynasty when the Emperess Wu Zetian was in reign. She took a inspection tour Vairocana Buddha (curved as a mirror of the Emperess's appearance) in Longmen (today's Longmen Grettoes) to see how much they had completed. When the Emperess presented herself in Xianju Palace in Luoyang, a super radish was found in Guanxiayuan village with a length of three feet and weight over 15 kilograms. The green top and white bottom radish was taken as a foreign substance by farmers and they thought it as some kind of auspicious sign. So the radish was submitted to the Emperess as a holy artice.

The royal chefs were puzzled. In general, few could make a fine dish out of radish. Feared by the power of the Emperess, the chefs had to make innovation. They thought it over and over again and decided to make an imperial soup in a combination of the radish and some delicacies. The Emperess was glad when she tasted the mellow and fragrant radish soup. She bestowed the name "artificial Yancai" on the basis of its nest-like shred.

With time passing by, the dish name is shortened as Yancai. And it is improved to perfection due to the efforts of chefs one generation after another to make it more nutritious and tasty in addition to the preservation of its delicacy and fragrance. Their efforts paid off as Yancai has become a famous traditional Luoyang dish.It stands for the essence of Luoyang culture and so gets the name of Luoyang Yancai till now.

Fried Pork with Perilla

The tale of Fried Pork with Perilla dated back to Ming Dynasty. The King Zhao named Zhu Gaosui (son of Emperor Chengzu) had a beautiful and intelligent maid who was a master of lyre, Chinese chess, writing and painting. She was so fond of painting bamboo that King Zhao built a bamboo garden for her to live in. The maid in return showed her solicitude for the King and catered to his flavor of barbecue. She selected fine pork and cooked with perilla, matching it with lotus-leaves-shaped pancake, shallot and sweet sauce. When the dish was done, she invited King Zhao to the bamboo garden to have dinner with her. The King was amazed by this dish and wondered what its name was. Considering that Perilla had been a great contributor to this dish, she named it "perilla meat".

Beauties were ill-fated since ancient times. The maid died of disease soon. King Zhao missed her so much that he was too fragile to eat anything. Concerned with the King's health, a chef tried his best to imitate perilla meat. It was not as delicious as the maid's but tasty as well for the King. King Zhao restored his appetite when he saw the perilla meat and gradually recovered. Perilla meat was spread out of the King's palace to folks and was inherited till today.

Fried pork with perillanooy brings the delicous tous, but also expresses the value of affection and the spirit of mutual concern and love.

Iron Pot Eggs

Speaking of cooking eggs, all of us are quite skillful. Even a novice in kitchen knows how to suck an egg onto the noodles so as to add some flavor and nutrition. In terms of how to cook eggs, what we are familiar with including steamed eggs, boiled eggs, tea eggs, fried eggs, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, seaweed and egg soup. All these practices cover almost each way of cooking: steaming, boiling, frying, and stewing. What an all-rounder it is!

There is a legend concerning the birth of Iron Pot Eggs. Rumor had it that a chef in a Henan restaurant was adept at cooking tender and tasty eggs in Ming or Qing Dynasty, and diners streamed in and out continuously.The business was booming. Nonetheless, the chef was neither conceited nor self-satisfied. Instead, he was thinking about improving his skills to a higher level and refining on its flavor from time to time. One day, he was enlightened all of a sudden. So he sucked the eggs and added shrimp, ham shreds, mushroom shreds and fresh soup. He stirred them in a tailor-made pot with thick iron wall and half-boiled them. After that, he baked the eggs on the surface with a hot iron pot cover. The eggs were pulled up and expanded to an extreme tenderness and fragrance. It was titled as "Iron Pot Egg" because it was cooked in an iron pot.

There was another story that the "Iron Pot Egg" was created in late Qing Dynasty by a master of Zhongzhou dish Chen Liantang, who was from Qi County. Iron Pot Egg enjoys good reputation at home and abroad. It is produced and sold in sixteen commercial ports of China including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenyang, Nanjing and Chongqing, as well as Hong Kong and US. It is accredited as a unique Zhongzhou flavor dish popular with persons of all circles.

Shredded Pork Skin with Osmanthus Flower

Shredded pork skin with osmanthus flower is a famous traditional dish originated from Henan, meticulously prepared with pork skin as the main ingredient. As the legend goes, a long time ago, a local official of Xinyang only ate pork without skin. Every time the family chef cooked the pork for dinner, he thought it was a waste to drop off the skin. But he had to respect the master's eating habits. At the same time, he had a smart idea to deal with the pork skin.

Before preparing a pork dish, the chef would cut off the skin from the meat first and hung it under the eave. One day, he took off the dried pork skin, cut it into shreds, and stir-fried it before adding some osmanthus flowers. It turned out that the style of pork skin cooking was very delicious beyond expectation. When the local official had a try, he couldn't help cheering up, "Well done!" Since then, the dish of pork skin cooked in this way was becoming more and more popular.

Hutu Noodles

Generally, Hutu noodles are of strong flavor. But where should you go if you are expecting light flavor Hutu noodles? Locals will tell you a bowl of Hutu noodles is much better than a bottle of wine when you want to live far away from soberness for a moment. And the Qingliang Temple beyond the illusive Zhaoge (an old place name, today's Qi County in Henan Province) is your ideal destination if you want to have it.

Twenty Li off the northwest Qi County, there stands the Jianshan Mountain. In its rearly located Qingliang temple there provides the Buddhist pilgrims meals. At each noon, people in the temple boil the spring water by the firewood they picked up in the mountain. They make Hutu noodles with corn powder, dry cabbage leaves, black locust leaves and machine-made noodles. The Hutu noodle here is of very light taste with only a small amount of salt. Other condiments like aginomoto, chicken powder, pepper, foeniculum vulgare, shallot or garlic are discarded. Only the natural fragrance of crop and vegetables are kept, containing little oil and no meat.

Sitting on a rock under a tree with one bowl of Hutu noodles on your hand, you can view the whole city simultaneously. The valley is quiet with cloud floating over high and the mountain wind blowing as gentle as flowing water. The world seems still and nothing existing except you. With a taste of Hutu noodles, try putting away your stubborness and embracing the composure. Old days emerged, but let them go with the wind, just like the clouds over your head.

Wuzhi Oil Tea

Liu Bang (founding emperor of Han Dynasty) once composed a poem, "Fine dishes derived from Wude, surpass the feast in Palace." Liu Bang sighed that the oil tea of Henan even transcended the grand banquet in Palace. History had it that Liu Bang was forced to stay in Wude County when he was wounded in the Competition between Chu and Han in 206 BC. He dwelled in a Lv's family who attended him carefully and fed him with Gaotang like tea, making him restored in three months. Liu Bang was thinking about rewarding Lv for his life-saving grace after Liu took the throne. Meanwhile, he was eager to have the tasty Gaotang again. Then he decided to call Lv in Palace and conferred him the oil tea taster of the fifth grade. And oil tea was titled as imperial food.

So the oil tea is spread till now. With the improvement of traditional technology and manufacturing methods, oil tea adopted a more convenient package and expanded its market. Previously, students who studied in Britain and France sold oil tea with a pot (a ware covered with quilt to keep the oil tea warm in it and was much larger than the usual tea pot) at the streets of London and Paris to support themselves. The oil tea was welcomed by the local because of its nice flavor. So far, some Chinese lived in Paris still regard oil tea as first-rate soup.

Soup with Pepper

Pepper was introduced from Middle East to China through the Silk Road in Tang Dynasty. As experts have verified, the forefather of spicy soup was spicy and sour soup and broth. According to the widely circulated Prescription of Peaceful Benevolent Dispensary in Song Dynasty, if dry and hot elements were added into food, they would help to dispel the effect of alcohol and beneficial to digestion. From the content of this book, it might be a trend of the society to add some spice in food. Judging from this point of view, spicy soup was developed on the foundation of these two foods.

Another legend was that Yan Song, a cabinet member in the year of Jiajing in Ming Dynasty, strived to please the Emperor by searching for a formula to prolong the Emperor's life. But the medicine must be taken with soup. The soup was extremely delicious and pleased the Emperor greatly and it was titled "imperial soup". When Ming Dynasty was out of existence, the royal chef Zhao Ji ran to Xiaoyao (Today's Xiaoyao town in Huaxi County) with the secret formula to make the soup. So natives in Xiaoyao changed its name to Spicy Soup due to its pungent spiciness.

Another tale was related to Hu. There appeared a celebrated, honest and upright official Yu Qian who had caught cold for years. He resided in Kaifeng during the time when he was appointed the Grand Coordinator of Henan and Shanxi. It happened to be his birthday when he was inspecting Zhengzhou (capital of Henan Province). For the convention of frugality, he found a food stall named Huji to have a bowl of spicy soup in celebration of his birthday. It was this bowl of spicy soup that impressed Yu Qian deeply. He deemed it as a special birthday present.

One day, Yu Qian passed by Zhengzhou back from the tour of inspection in Shanxi. Busy and wearied, he caught another cold and didn't recover for several days. The soup of Huji occurred in his mind one night and he sent a servant to buy a bowl of it. The owner of Huji made the soup with heart and put sufficient spice into it when he was instructed that the Grand Coordinator would have it. Yu Qian sweated a lot and felt comfortable and energetic the next day, dispelling the cold. Feeling grateful, Yu Qian rewarded the owner ten liang (a unit of weight in ancient China) silver. Yu Qian suggested naming the soup with the owner's surname Hu, hence this soup being called Hu Spicy Soup since then.