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Anhui Cuisine
Anhui cuisine is known for its use of wild game and herbs, both land and sea.
Beijing (Mandarin) Cuisine
Beijing cuisine has been influenced by culinary traditions from all over China.
Cantonese (Guangdong) Cuisine
Of the various regional styles of Chinese cuisine, Cantonese is the most well-known outside of China.
Hunan Cuisine
Hunan cuisine is known for its hot spicy flavor, deep color and being dry hot, or purely hot. Hunan dishes are often more oily and look darker than Szechuan dishes.
Jiangsu Cuisine
Jiangsu cuisine's texture is characterized as soft, but not to the point of mushy or falling apart.
Shangdong Cuisine
Shangdong cuisine is characterized by seafood, with light tastes, also famed for its soup and utilizing soups in its dishes.
Shanghai Cuisine
Shanghai cuisine is epitomized by the use of alcohol. Fish, eel, crab, and chicken are "drunken" with spirits and are briskly cooked/steamed or served raw. The use of sugar is common.
Szechuan (Sichuan) Cuisine
Szechwan (Sichuan) cuisine is known for being hot and numbing, because of the common ingredient Sichuan peppercorn, chilli, ginger and spicy herbs. This emphasis on spice may derive from the region's warm, humid climate.
Zhejiang Cuisine
Zhejiang cuisine is characterized in poultry, freshwater fish, seafood, and the utilization of bamboo shoots.
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Fujian Cuisine
Fujian cuisine is derived from the native cooking style of the province of Fujian, China. Well-known dishes include: oyster omelette, Popiah, yu wan (Fujian fish balls), and ban mien bian ruo (noodles with dumplings). Fujian cuisine is famed for using seafoods, and for the visual presentation of its dishes.
Fujian cuisine consists of four styles:
Fuzhou cuisine: taste is light compared to other styles, often with a mixed sweet and sour taste. Emphasis is also on utilizing soup, and there is a saying in Fuzhou style: One soup can be changed in ten forms.
Western Fujian cuisine: often there is a spicy taste and the cooking methods are often steam, fry and stir-fry.
Southern Fujian cuisine: often there is a mix of spicy and sweet taste, and the selection of sauces is elaborate.
Quanzhou cuisine: least oily among all Fujian cuisine, but with strongest taste/flavor, also put emphasis on the shape of the material for each dish.
Fujian cuisine was a latecomer in southeast China along the coast. The cuisine emphasizes seafood, river fish, and shrimp. The Fujian coastal area produces 167 varieties of fish and 90 kinds of turtles and shellfish. It also produces edible bird's nest, cuttlefish, and sturgeon. These special products are all used in Fujian cuisine.
The Fujian economy and culture began to flouring after the Southern Song Dynasty. During the middle Qing Dynasty famous Fujian officials and literati promoted the Fujian cuisine so it gradually became known to other parts of China.
The most characteristic aspect of Fujian cuisine is that its dishes are served in soup. Its cooking methods are stewing, boiling, braising, quick-boiling, and steaming, The most famous dish is Buddha Jumps Over the Wall. The name implies the dish is so delicious that even the Buddha would jump over a wall to eat it once he smelled it. A mixture of seafood, chicken, duck, and pork is put into a rice-wine jar and simmered over a low fire. Sea mussel quick-boiled in chicken soup is another Fujian delicacy.
Cutting is important in the Fujian cuisine. Most dishes are made of seafood, and if the seafood is not cut well the dishes will fail to have their true flavor. Fujian dishes are slightly sweet and sour, and less salty. For example, litchi pork, sweet and sour pork, soft fish with onion flavor, and razor clams stir-fried with fresh bamboo shoots without soy sauce all have this taste. When a dish is less salty, it tastes more delicious. Sweetness makes a dish more tasty, while sourness helps remove the seafood smell.
In the Fujian cuisine, an important flavoring and coloring material is red distiller's grain. It is a glutinous rice fermented with red yeast. After being kept in a sealed vessel for one year, the grain acquires a sweet and sour flavor and a rose-red color. Chicken, duck, fish, and pork can be flavored with the red grain as well as spiral shells, clams, mussels, bamboo shoots, and even vegetables. When the red distiller's grain is used for flavoring, the fishes can be cooked in many ways, including quick-frying, frying, quick-boiling, and pickling.
Fujian cuisine comprises three branches - Fuzhou, southern Fujian, and western Fujian. There are slight differences among them. Fuzhou dishes are more fresh, delicious, and less salty, sweet, and sour. Southern Fujian dishes are sweet and hot and use hot sauces, custard, and orange juice as flavorings. Western Fujian dishes are salty and hot. As Fujian people emigrate overseas, their cuisine has become popular in Taiwan and abroad.
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