A woman cuts a roast goose into pieces on a round wooden block beside a small dish of sauce, a clay pot of slow-cooked soup steams nearby, a basket holds ginger, scallion and coriander, and a lake and hills lie beyond.
Shandong Cuisine
Sichuan Cuisine
Cantonese Cuisine
Jiangsu Cuisine
Fujian Cuisine
Zhejiang Cuisine
Hunan Cuisine
Anhui Cuisine
Shanghai Cuisine
Beijing-Tianjin Cuisine
Northeastern Cuisine
Northwestern Cuisine
Yunnan-Guizhou Cuisine
Henan Cuisine
Hubei Cuisine
Jiangxi Cuisine
Shanxi Cuisine
Taiwanese Cuisine
Guangxi Cuisine
Hainan Cuisine
Halal Cuisine
Mongolian Cuisine
Tibetan Cuisine
Xinjiang Cuisine
Ethnic Korean Cuisine of China
Overseas Chinese Cuisine
Hebei CuisineCantonese Cuisine
Freshness comes first
Introduction
The regional cooking of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau, prized for live, fresh ingredients and light flavours.
Cantonese cuisine is the regional cooking of Guangdong and has three branches, Guangfu, Chaozhou and Hakka; the food of Hong Kong and Macau also falls within its scope. Guangfu cooking prizes live, fresh ingredients and light flavour; its soups are mostly slow-boiled or stewed in winter and spring, and scalding food in the manner called bai zhuo is also common. Chaozhou cooks excel with seafood, and Hakka cooking uses pickles and dried vegetables for a salty, savoury taste. Macau has Macanese food, which is based on Portuguese cooking and blends spices from Africa, South America and Southeast Asia with local ingredients. The Lingbiao Lu Yi, written in the Tang by Liu Xun, records the produce and food customs of Lingnan. The waterways of the Pearl River delta are often seen as one reason the cuisine values freshness, and the morning tea and dim sum of Guangzhou are also well known. White-cut chicken, roast goose and long-simmered soup are often given as examples.