On a misty morning at a market by a stone bridge, baskets brim with fish, prawns, lotus root, bamboo shoots, greens, shiitake, melons and fruit, while a vendor ladles soup into a bowl and shoppers reach in to choose.
Produce & Seafood
Vegetables, bamboo shoots, mushrooms and other mountain foods, freshwater fish and shrimp, fresh and dried seafood, and fruit: the fresh ingredients behind the regional cuisines and everyday meals, where place and season often decide what goes into a dish and how it is cooked.
Freshwater Fish, Shrimp and Shellfish
Seafood
Fruits and NutsVegetables, fish and fruit are among the freshest and most seasonal parts of the diet, and one ingredient tastes and is used differently through the year. This class sorts them by where they come from: cultivated and seasonal vegetables; bamboo shoots, mushrooms and other foods gathered in the hills; freshwater fish, shrimp, crab and shellfish; marine foods fresh and dried; and fruits and native nuts. Wild greens go with the mountain foods, cultivated vegetables with the seasonal vegetables, and crops that arrived later are classed elsewhere, so each ingredient appears in one place only.
These ingredients were written about early. The Book of Songs already has the lines on gathering feng and fei greens and on bamboo shoots and rushes, and the ode Yu li on fish, which show that vegetables and fish were common food in the Zhou. The Qimin yaoshu of the Northern Wei has chapters on growing melons, mallow, scallions and garlic, and a chapter on fish raising, so vegetable growing and pond culture both had set methods. Wu Zimu's Mengliang lu of the Southern Song records vegetable, fish, crab and fruit guilds in Lin'an, showing that the fresh-food trade was organized by type of goods.
Under this classification the fresh ingredients in one dish may belong to different classes: the bamboo shoots in a stir-fry belong to the mountain foods, the scallions that accompany them to the seasonal vegetables, and the fish on the same table to the freshwater fish and shellfish. A reader can enter from any one ingredient.
Today cold storage and transport free many ingredients from their own place and season, but place and season still affect what goes into a dish and how it is cooked. The names and uses of one ingredient differ from place to place, and the regional cuisines describe those differences; particular well-known produce and brands are recorded separately as entries.
Produce & Seafood is the class for fresh ingredients in the chapter on the Cuisine. It covers seasonal vegetables, bamboo shoots, mushrooms and other mountain foods, freshwater fish, shrimp and shellfish, seafood, and fruits and nuts, which are the main source of ingredients for the regional cuisines and everyday meals. These ingredients are fresh and change with the season, and place and season often decide what goes into a dish and how it is cooked. Wild greens go with the mountain foods, cultivated vegetables with the seasonal vegetables, and crops that arrived later are classed elsewhere.
Produce & Seafood records classes of fresh ingredients, not a single dish, and its thread can be followed in early poems, statutes and farming books.
The Book of Songs has the lines on gathering feng and fei greens, on bamboo shoots and rushes, and the ode Yu li, showing that many kinds of vegetables and fish were eaten in the Zhou. These poems speak of gathering and feasting, and put the names of the ingredients into verse.
The Offices of Heaven in the Rites of Zhou set fishermen and turtle keepers over the taking of fish, turtles and shellfish in season, so the gathering of aquatic foods was regulated and followed the seasons.
The vessels kept by the pickle officer in the Offices of Heaven of the Rites of Zhou held pickled leeks, turnips and mallow, and those of the basket officer held dates, chestnuts, peaches and hazelnuts, showing that the processing and storage of vegetables and fruit also had officers in charge.
Jia Sixie's Qimin yaoshu of the Northern Wei has chapters on growing melons, mallow, scallions and garlic and a chapter on fish raising, recording methods of vegetable growing and pond culture, so ingredients no longer came from gathering alone but also from deliberate growing and raising.
Wu Zimu's Mengliang lu of the Southern Song records vegetable, fish, crab and fruit guilds in Lin'an, showing that the fresh-food trade was organized by type of goods. Its preface dates from 1274.
Zhu Su's Materia Medica for Famine Relief of the Ming (1406) records more than four hundred edible wild plants, 276 of them new to the older herbals, so foods of the hills were set down in a whole book. Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica (completed 1578) gives vegetables, fruits, scaly creatures and shelled creatures classes of their own, so produce and aquatic foods had their own places in the medical and food canon too.
From the later sixteenth century American crops such as maize and the sweet potato arrived overland and by sea, the sweet potato reputedly from Luzon to Fujian; Xu Guangqi's Nongzheng quanshu has an entry on it.
A cook went to the market early. The bamboo seller said it had just rained in the hills and the shoots were tender; the fish seller said the nets had come up from the lake last night and the fish were still alive.
The cook stood at the stall a while and said: I will not fix today's menu yet. Let me see what you have brought. A melon seller nearby heard and said with a smile: then you had better look at a few more stalls.
He did walk the market from end to end, pausing at each stall to ask where the goods came from and when they were picked. Back in the kitchen he laid the shoots and the fish on the table and looked at them, and handled the melon he had brought back, before he decided what to cook. His apprentice asked why he had not written the menu first, and he said: a menu is written for people to read, material is for people to use, and you look at the material first.
In the evening the guests came, and the dishes on the table were not the same as the day before. Someone asked when the menu had been fixed, and the cook said: this morning, at the market.
Later the apprentice became a cook himself and also got into the habit of walking the market first. He often told new apprentices: what you buy today is not what you thought of yesterday; it is what the market tells you today.
Fresh ingredients change with season and place, so a cook often looks at the material first and chooses the method after. This class sorts ingredients by where they come from so that such material can be found by type and a reader can start from any one ingredient and find the dishes that use it. (This is an illustrative story, not a historical account.)