A large lion's-head meatball rests on napa cabbage leaves in a clay pot, a bowl beside it holds hair-fine braised tofu threads with shrimp and ham strips, and a squirrel-cut mandarin fish is glazed with sweet-and-sour sauce.
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Hebei CuisineJiangsu Cuisine
Jinling and Huai-Yang
Introduction
The regional cooking of Jiangsu, divided into the Jinling, Huai-Yang, Su-Xi and Xu-Hai style areas.
Jiangsu cuisine is the regional cooking of Jiangsu and is usually divided into the Jinling, Huai-Yang, Su-Xi and Xu-Hai style areas. Huai-Yang cooking stresses knife work and a light taste that keeps the natural flavour of each ingredient, Jinling cooking makes much use of stewing, braising and simmering, and the Suzhou and Wuxi area prefers a sweeter taste. In the Qing, Yuan Mei lived at his Sui Garden in Nanjing, and his Sui Yuan Shi Dan, which survives in an edition of 1792, records the dishes and cooking principles mainly of Nanjing, with those of the wider Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui area, making it an important source for the cuisine. Ingredients lean on the fish and other produce of rivers and lakes and on seasonal vegetables. Familiar dishes include clear-stewed crab-meat lion's head, simmered shredded tofu and squirrel-shaped mandarin fish. The benbang and Haipai cooking of Shanghai is closely related to Jiangsu cuisine and is classed as Shanghai cuisine.