Chapter 823 What is Wang Gua? A vivid high-end dish - peacock shark fin! [Please subscribe]

"Brother, what ingredients are needed to make peacock fins?"

Since you want to learn this dish, you have to prepare the ingredients first. Fortunately, there are ready-made shark fins in the store, which can be used at any time.

Xie Baomin said:

“There are quite a lot of ingredients. In addition to shark fin, we also need sea cucumber, shredded chicken, eggs, egg whites, minced chicken, fresh bamboo shoots, rapeseed, Jinhua ham, chicken fat, stock, king melon slices and various condiments...

…”

Wang Guapian?

Lin Xu asked curiously:

"What is Wang Gua?"

"It's just cucumber, but in high-end dishes, it's usually called king melon."

More than a hundred years ago, if you asked a vegetable vendor for two cucumbers, he would be confused, but if you asked for two cucumbers, the vendor would immediately understand.

Before the Republic of China, the official name of cucumber was always Wanggua, but cucumber was a niche and unpopular name.

The reason why it is called king melon is because cucumbers "are born before other melons, so they are king", which means that cucumbers grow the earliest. During the Qing Dynasty, greenhouse technology was mature, and the first cucumbers were on the market every February of the lunar calendar.

However, cucumbers at that time were extremely expensive and not affordable for ordinary people.

There is such a poem in "Kyoto Bamboo Branch Poems" criticizing the preciousness of the first crop of cucumbers:

"At first glance, cucumbers are as small as ginseng, as small as a hairpin, and are worth several gold. If a small thing cannot increase your life span, what's the point of eating a thousand dollars for it?"

Xie Baomin said with a smile:

"It is said that in the late Qing Dynasty, there was a famous scholar named Pan Bingnian in the capital. He once invited his new foreign friends to dinner at Guangheju in Badaju. After they were seated, he asked the guests to order. The guest felt that the meat dishes were too expensive, so he ordered a plate.

After eating the cucumber, I thought it was good, so I ordered another plate, three plates in a row... Pan Bingnian's face almost turned green, because cucumbers cost six taels per plate, and ordering a table of meat and vegetables didn't cost that much, so he paid the bill

After that, he immediately wrote a letter and broke up with that friend."

The car boy who was recording the purchase order asked curiously:

"Why don't you just say it? Such an expensive cucumber is so unfair."

Lin Xu smiled:

"If you are inviting an acquaintance to dinner, you can tell them in advance that cucumbers are more expensive and you should try something new. However, if you have just met someone, it is not appropriate to say this. For example, if a businessman invites a customer to dinner, he will say this before he starts ordering.

The cucumbers are expensive, so we must not order them. What do you think people will think of them?"

In fact, this is also related to the cultural traditions of the Chinese people. If you don't say anything directly, you have to beat around the bush. For example, Pan Bingnian, who spent eighteen taels of silver, still did not fall out on the spot, but chose to write a letter to break off the relationship.

This is the reserve and stubbornness of cultural people.

However, this kind of thing happened during that period, the menu did not clearly indicate prices, and cucumbers were extremely valuable.

Now, if you eat a bowl of cucumbers one after another, the person who is treating you will not choose to break up the relationship, but will only think that the green cucumbers are some kind of hint from your friends.

After talking about cucumbers, Xie Baomin rolled up his sleeves and began to teach Lin Xu how to make peacock shark fins.

Shen Jiayue also wants to see it:

"Brother, can you guys go to the small kitchen to cook? I also want to experience it."

Xie Baomin said with a smile:

"Then let's just film it. It just so happens that I haven't shown off my cooking skills recently, so I don't want netizens to think that my skills have deteriorated."

When Shen Jiayue heard this, she quickly went to the small kitchen to prepare a camera and fill light, while Lin Xu prepared the ingredients and ingredients needed to make peacock shark fin.

All ingredients and seasonings are ready, let’s start making.

"Hello everyone, I'm Lin Xu. I'm not busy today, so I asked my senior brother to teach me how to make a relatively time-consuming main dish for a banquet - peacock shark's fin."

At high-end banquets, elegant high-end dishes such as peacock shark's fin are always the main course.

Xie Baomin waved to the camera, said hello to netizens, briefly introduced peacock shark fin, and said at the same time:

"In fact, there is another way to make peacock shark's fin, which is to stuff the shark's fin into the peacock's belly and stew it. The shark's fin is stewed with real peacocks. It feels very explosive."

Lin Xu asked curiously:

"Can peacocks be eaten?"

"It's okay to breed peacock meat. It's available at some banquets in the south. But overall, it's not as delicious as chicken. It just looks novel. Some restaurants that sell peacock meat also come with peacock feathers, which is more attractive."

Lin Xu really opened his eyes, but when he thought about how before the Animal Protection Law came out, the golden pheasant was almost extinct, the flying dragon was eaten at a sky-high price, and all kinds of rare animals became food.

After Xie Baomin finished speaking, he cracked a dozen eggs into a small basin, added a little salt, stirred the eggs with chopsticks, and used a sieve to remove the air bubbles inside.

Then take some cornstarch, pour it into the egg liquid, and stir slowly.

He stirred and said:

"For the dish of peacock and shark fin, you need to use starch-steamed chicken cake to carve the head and body of the peacock. At the same time, this is also the staple food of the whole dish. You can eat it with the shark fin..."

Stir dry starch and egg liquid into a paste, filter it through a tight filter to sift out the unstirred starch granules, then cover the mouth of the basin with plastic wrap and put it in a steamer to start steaming.

Xie Baomin reminded:

"This starch chicken cake needs to be steamed more. In addition to the body and head of the peacock, the decoration on the peacock feathers will also be used."

Steam the starch chicken cake and bring over the shark fin.

The cooked shark fin is soaked in water, which is very similar to vermicelli. Xie Baomin uses tweezers to pick out the impurities and bone fragments in the shark fin, then drains the water and prepares for processing.

To make peacock shark fin, you need to use large pieces of high-end shark fin, because when you put it on the plate, you need to use the shark fin to make the peacock's feathers. The longer the shark fin, the more realistic and beautiful the peacock will be.

Take out the shark fins, set them aside to control the water, and then start making onion and ginger stock.

Place the wok on the stove, add chicken oil, heat the oil, add the onion and ginger segments, fry until the surface is golden brown, pour in the broth, simmer for a few more minutes, take out the onion and ginger and throw them away, the broth in the pot will be filled with

The chicken fat-flavored scallion and ginger stock is the key to making shark fin and the final sauce.

Then he took the chicken breast and chopped some minced chicken.

Chop it well and add egg white, dry starch, salt, pepper and other condiments, stir it into a thick paste, filter it again, and set it aside for later use.

At this time, the chicken cake has also been steamed. Lin Xu helped take it out of the steamer, put the basin into cold water, and cooled it with water.

When it is no longer hot, take a larger plate and put it on the mouth of the basin, turn it over, and turn the egg cake in the basin upside down on the plate.

The egg cake is very beautiful, with a warm yellow color and fine texture, and it also exudes a rich egg fragrance.

Xie Baomin used the tip of a knife to draw the outline of a peacock, but instead of carving, he cut off the excess corners, which were about two fist-sized pieces of cake.

He cut off the excess corners of the cake and shaped it into a drop shape with a pointed end and a rounded end.

Lin Xu was a little surprised:

"Brother, what are you doing?"

"Decorate the peacock's feathers. Only by adding these decorations will the whole dish look more like a peacock."

After the water drop shape is ready, turn the cake over and cut the water drop shape into slices horizontally. Each slice is about two to three millimeters thick. After cutting, it will become a piece of water drop.

Lin Xu counted, there were more than a dozen pieces in total.

After doing this, Xie Baomin took a thicker cucumber and cut it into slices with a diagonal knife, trimmed it and made it into a water drop shape.

Compared with the water droplets made from yellow cake, the cucumber slices are a bit bigger.

Finally, take out the Jinhua ham, take the upper part of the essence, and make it into an oval with one end larger and one smaller. The area is two circles smaller than the drop-shaped egg cake.

After everything was done, Xie Baomin brought over the minced chicken that had just been smashed and began to decorate the feathers.

Bring the cucumber slices over. When you cut them with a slanted knife, there is more green on one side. Place this side up.

Spread a little chicken mince on top, and then place the yellow cake slices on top, with the tips of the water droplets overlapping, so that the green cucumber skin and the yellow cake are staggered in a step-like manner.

Spread a layer of chicken mince on the cake slices, place the red ham slices in the middle, and align the tip of the ham with the tip of the water droplets, so as to show a sense of consistency in the direction.

After placing it, the three colors of red, yellow and green really look like the feathers on a peacock's tail.

Xie Baomin held the cucumber slices and carefully placed them on the grid-shaped steaming plate. All the feather decorations were completed and placed in the steamer for steaming.

This step not only allows the three ingredients to be completely bonded together, but also makes the cucumbers darker in color after being chopped raw, and the color of the ham after being steamed will be more delicious, which will elevate your vision and taste to a new level.

While steaming Yu Ling, Lin Xu took out the shark's fin, blanched it twice with green onion and ginger to remove the peculiar smell from the shark's fin, then carefully took it out, drained the water and put it into the pot, then added half of the chicken oil and simmered it.

Prepare the onion and ginger stock, simmer over low heat, and simmer the flavor of the stock into the shark fin.

This step took at least ten minutes. Xie Baomin asked Lin Xu to watch the fire while he cut the chicken breast into shreds, the bamboo shoots into shreds, and the soaked sea cucumbers into shreds as well.

Put the wok back on, add chicken oil to the pan, heat it up, pour the chicken breasts in and stir-fry, then add shredded bamboo shoots and sea cucumbers, add salt and pepper, cut them raw and serve them out.

These ingredients are used as the base to set off the shark fin.

But you can’t mess around just because it’s at the bottom. In fact, these ingredients should be arranged as silk as possible later, because the shark fin is translucent, and the ingredients below are arranged too messily, which will give people a very messy feeling.
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Put these ingredients into a large bowl first. The steamed feathers are now decorated. Xie Baomin took them out from the steamer and set them aside to dry.

Shen Jiayue couldn't help but exclaimed after seeing it:
To be continued...