Chinese royal cuisine comes to Seoul
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The "lion head" dish / Courtesy of Millennium Seoul Hilton
By Yun Suh-young
Royal cuisine in Korea has a tradition of being mild, less spicy and cooked slowly with meticulous care.
Chinese royal cuisine is no different. It is characterized by its mildness due to the lack of spices.
Huaiyang cuisine, as it is called, is China's most prestigious cooking style, frequently provided at official banquets hosted by the Chinese central government when foreign dignitaries visit. It has been the cuisine for kings in the thousands of years of China's rich history.
In Korea, it is rare to find Huaiyang style cuisine, as the more popularly known ones are Shandong or Sichuan styles. Hence it will be a rare opportunity to enjoy China's Huaiyang cuisine which is offered in a promotion at the Chinese restaurant Taipan in the Millennium Seoul Hilton until Dec. 22. The limited promotion event has invited master chef Qi Zhi Hai from the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel in Singapore, a sister hotel of the Millennium Seoul Hilton, to
prepare the courses.
Huaiyang cuisine is one of the four major Chinese cuisines along with Sichuan, Shandong and Cantonese.
Whereas Sichuan cuisine is hot and spicy, and Shandong cuisine (prevalent in northern China) is characterized by hot, stir-fried dishes, Huaiyang cuisine is more about stewing, braising and steaming over a low fire. Huaiyang used to be the "city of salt," hence the cuisine uses no other seasoning than salt, which explains its mildness. Other than its delicate taste, it is also characterized by a strict selection of ingredients, exquisite workmanship, and elegant shape.
Chef Qi Zhi Hai of the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel in Singapore / Courtesy of Millennium Seoul Hilton
"Huaiyang cuisine is not burdensome for the stomach because it hardly involves seasoning or spices. Everything is cooked solely with salt and is intended to bring out the natural flavors of the ingredients," said Qi Zhi Hai, master chef of the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel in Singapore, during an interview with The Korea Times. He was in Seoul to cook for the promotional event at the Millennium Seoul Hilton.
"Ingredients are naturally fermented or cooked slowly and manually. It's like slow-food. Even the lion head dish is aged for two to three days. It's a dish that is mandatorily served to VIPs in China. Even if it takes time, they used to eat this way in the palace."
The "lion head" dish is a traditional meatball soup from Jiangsu, East China. It began to be called "lion head" because of the way the meatball looks -- like the mane of a lion.
Huaiyang cuisine has developed since the Tang Empire. It is mostly influenced from the native cooking style in the lower reaches of the Huai and Yangtze canals. The food is said to have been delivered to the emperor through the canal and has since settled as royal cuisine.
Huaiyang cuisine may be confused with Shanghainese due to the city's geological proximity to the region, but are the two are very different, according to Qi.
"Huaiyang is traditional cuisine whereas Shanghainese is more fusion. Because it's a metropolitan city, the dishes have been transformed there. Huaiyang cuisine has sweet and sour taste whereas Shanghainese is just sweet," said the chef.
Some of the staples offered for the promotional meal include chilled chicken with spring onion, braised pork rib in sweet and sour sauce, hot and sour soup with sea cucumber and roast duck, stir-fried lobster with Shanghainese rice cake, fresh crab meat soup with egg white, poached “lion head” meatballs, sauteed diced fish fillet with capsicum and carrot and yang zhou fried rice. For more information, call (02) 317-3237.