Dunhuang Hotel is a local four-star hotel with a history of 30 years. It is known as the "State Guesthouse" in Dunhuang, and its status and image can be imagined. In the past decades, it has successfully received hundreds of Chinese and foreign dignitaries and celebrities. Elegant and unique architectural style and high-quality and diversified services left unforgettable memories for the guests. Especially the food in Dunhuang Hotel is famous for its delicious taste. The most famous hotel in Dunhuang is a "Dunhuang Banquet" based on the records of Dunhuang murals and Dunhuang suicide notes, on the basis of widely absorbing the characteristics of local folk snacks, and through the unremitting efforts of three generations of local famous chefs. In order to make all kinds of food for Dunhuang banquet, chefs mostly choose local ingredients. Places of interest, historical allusions, folklore and medicated diet with suicide note have also become important elements of ingredients, which are reflected in every detail of food.
Zhang Kefa, a China culinary master and general manager of Dunhuang Hotel, said, "I think Dunhuang cuisine is like my own child. From conception to birth, she stumbled and stumbled until she was slim and graceful and became a good-looking person. This requires attention, cultivation, development, excavation and innovation. Dunhuang cuisine has developed for 40 years, and she has received many foreign heads of state and dozens of China parties and countries. "
The Dunhuang banquet not only showed all kinds of delicious food to outsiders, but also showed Dunhuang culture and the spirit of Dunhuang people. In 2002, Dunhuang Hotel represented the catering industry in Gansu Province and participated in the third China Food Festival held by China Hotel Association in Hangzhou. "Dunhuang Banquet", "Dunhuang Dance Banquet" and "Dream Dunhuang Banquet" made their debut in China for the first time, making a blockbuster. It has conquered the catering industry in China with brand-new creativity, exquisite skills, exquisite singing and dancing, unique regional characteristics and rich cultural heritage, and won the highest awards including the National Food Festival. The achievement of these honors is by no means a personal effort, nor is it a temporary achievement. It is the painstaking efforts and wisdom of the older generation of Dunhuang chefs for hundreds of years, and it is also the crystallization of the efforts of three generations of Dunhuang hotels for more than 40 years.
Dunhuang in midsummer, under Mingsha Mountain after the rain, Gobi and desert are tightly surrounded by a charming oasis. The air after the rain exudes a rare coolness, sweeping away the unbearable heat in Dunhuang in summer. From the city to the countryside, in a green corn field that is about to mature, Zhang Kefa's pace is slow, and through a little calmness in his calm eyes, he still continues the secret in his crock. He wants to introduce a delicious food-a sweet corn. Only under Mingsha Mountain, the temperature difference between day and night is large, which makes sweet corn mature ahead of time in summer and become a good local food. In order to ensure the quality of ingredients, newly picked sweet corn must enter the production process quickly to ensure the purity of nutrition and taste.
Zhang Kefa is cooking a kind of delicious food called pulp surface. Collect fresh noodle soup in casserole, add proper amount of ginger, celery, pepper and other seasonings, and naturally ferment for three to five days under the action of microorganisms, and it will become a sour and delicious food, which can be directly drunk or prepared with sesame oil and cauliflower, and is a good local food for relieving summer heat.
Dunhuang people have a long-standing preference for pasta. Many kinds of pasta with exact written records, including paste noodles, can be traced back to the Sui and Tang Dynasties 1600 years ago. From Dunhuang frescoes to documents unearthed in Tibetan scriptures caves, there are rich pictures and records about diet. Therefore, the traditional customs of Dunhuang people paying attention to eating and advocating food have a profound historical origin.
Zhang Kefa's crock also has rich food culture connotation. In order to make the traditional noodle paste more natural flavor of grain, he added sweet corn just picked into it. This time, Zhang Kefa achieved great success. A week later, the new guests in the hotel began to be provoked by more than a dozen exquisite dishes of Dunhuang banquet, but in the end Zhang Kefa's bowl of paddle water lifted his appetite.
Among the 45,000-square-meter murals in 492 grottoes in Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, there are dozens of murals that vividly show a variety of delicious food that we can't imagine today. There are also a lot of documents unearthed in Dunhuang Tibetan scriptures cave, which also records a lot of information related to Dunhuang people's diet. These materials are recorded in detail from the name of raw materials to the method of making, from the amount of food to the number of people to eat. Its research results in various aspects have attracted the attention of the world. Gao Qi 'an, director and professor of Dunhuang Business Culture Institute of Lanzhou Business School, said: "In the whole pattern of Chinese food civilization, Dunhuang food culture has its unique position. It can be seen from the types of food, the customs and habits of food, and the exchange of food culture that Dunhuang does gather a lot of oriental food, western food, and even the food of neighboring ethnic minorities. This feature is not available in many places in the mainland, and because the literature is very detailed, it makes up for the dietary phenomenon recorded in traditional history books, including some shortcomings of dietary varieties. "
10 for many years, Professor Gao devoted himself to the study of Dunhuang food culture, and published three books successively: A Probe into Dunhuang Food Culture, A Study of Dunhuang Food Culture in the Tang and Five Dynasties, and A Lamb of Wine-Dunhuang Food Culture, which paid full attention to the spiritual pursuit of Dunhuang people, uncovered the secrets of Dunhuang ancient people's food more than 1000 years ago, and filled the study of Dunhuang studies.
According to Gao Qi 'an's research, there were more than 50 kinds of food names in Dunhuang people more than 0/000 years ago, which truly reflected the raw materials, preparation methods and even origins of food. These foods were popular in China at that time, which was a true record of food varieties at that time. Things that are still popular in Dunhuang, Hexi and even the whole country, such as steamed bread, various cakes, stuffed skin, yellow noodles, cold noodles, wonton, noodle soup, dried noodles, jiaozi and fried noodles. The exact source has been found in Dunhuang murals and Dunhuang documents.
Why are there so many kinds of food in Dunhuang? Is food just to fill the stomach, or is it a way of communication and communication in society at that time?
Gao said: "There are more than 40 wedding photos in Dunhuang murals. This wedding photo is from the Maitreya Buddhist Sutra, which means that women get married at the age of 500. But such sentences are very rich in painters' murals, and to what extent? It has the wedding banquet, the dance in the wedding banquet and the whole program of the wedding banquet. Yulin Cave is of course the most famous, and it is also such a well-preserved mural. Such a painting is actually very rich in content, from which we can see that the etiquette between ethnic minorities and Han nationality is different. We know that the banquet in the Central Plains is not for men and women to sit together, but it is also a kind of food etiquette for men and women to sit together in this place. "
In Dunhuang, a small oasis agricultural area, the main reason for this phenomenon is the continuous absorption, accumulation and precipitation of foreign food culture since the Han Dynasty. The excavation of these food varieties undoubtedly provides a correct direction for us to study the influence of Dunhuang food varieties on the food development in the Central Plains and later generations. Nowadays, when we face these colorful cuisines and taste these Dunhuang cuisines, the taste of the prosperous times of Han and Tang dynasties seems to have restored thousands of years of memories from our tongue.
"A street didn't turn out, one share fragrance is appetizing. Follow the scent to the food street. It's rare to see so many varieties. There are many kinds of snacks here, and the yellow noodles of donkey meat are the characteristics. Dunhuang minced meat noodles are delicious, and I miss two bowls after eating one bowl. Firecrackers rub caviar and smooth leather. Meat and steamed buns are really satisfying, and mutton powder soup tastes delicious. Beef and mutton casserole rice, and mutton skewers. Stir-fried cabbage with vermicelli and chicken stew, delicious! There are so many kinds of rice that the time relationship has come to an end. When it comes to the diversity of food, this is a problem-there are many ways. Zhang Han, a famous rapper in Dunhuang, introduced Allegro Dunhuang to CCTV in his early years. In an allegro describing Dunhuang cuisine, he listed dozens of tempting food varieties in one breath, and his humorous language aroused people's appetite for modern Dunhuang cuisine. ...
Every year in the tourist season, when night falls, the night market in Dunhuang Shazhou is prosperous, with flashing lights, just like daytime, and tourists rush to patronize and enjoy themselves. This market, affectionately praised by tourists as "Dunhuang parlor", is vividly called "Starlight Night Market" by CCTV. The most attractive thing is the "famous snack square" in the center of the night market. Thousands of snacks are presented to tourists, and all kinds of delicious food from all over the world once again gather in Dunhuang, making it hard for them to resist the temptation of delicious food.
The profound history has made the connotation of Dunhuang's unique food culture and its infinite artistic charm. From the Han Dynasty to today's civilized thoroughfare, Dunhuang people have achieved the ultimate in food culture from their bones. When we stroll in Dunhuang city, we can see famous shops that have been passed down for a hundred years everywhere, and we can taste Dunhuang cuisine that has been passed down for a thousand years at any time.
Zhang Zheng is the fourth generation descendant of "Zhang Shun" with yellow face, ranking second among brothers. Because the business in the store is booming, they often work from morning till evening 10 before they can catch their breath. According to Zhang Zheng, the yellow face of "Zhang Shun" is the only ancestral yellow face in Dunhuang, which has been handed down from generation to generation for a hundred years. As early as the 1940s, the name "Zhang Shun" had become a household name in Dunhuang, and Lamian Noodles's superb skills made Dunhuang people feast their eyes and became a must for Chinese and foreign celebrities to taste Dunhuang cuisine. Zhang Zheng inherited the mantle of "Zhang Shun" yellow noodle craft from his ancestors and father. It is understood that the descendants of "Zhang Shun" have made authentic Dunhuang yellow noodles for famous people such as Peng, Zhao Nanqi, Yang, Li and so on, and "Zhang Shun" yellow noodles have left them an unforgettable taste.
With a shout, a plate of yellow noodles with halogen seeds was served on the table. The butter of noodles is bright, which melts in the mouth and has an endless aftertaste. Add special halogen seeds, a plate of fresh donkey meat, supplemented by a small plate of garlic paste and a small plate of pepper, which makes people appetite. "Zhang Shun" yellow noodles are delicious, mainly because the halogen seeds are well made. This marinated tofu is made of mushroom powder, donkey meat and Dunhuang old tofu. There is soup, and tofu is cut into small pieces, which is a bit hard and chewy. Pot-stewed vegetables poured on yellow noodles exude a mellow meat flavor and the sweetness of mushrooms. When I smelled that smell, my appetite suddenly increased.
In management, Zhang Shun has always followed the old adage that "the fragrance of wine is not afraid of the depth of the alley". It does not advertise, does not accept any honor, and only relies on the reputation of customers. However, something happened, but Zhang Zheng completely changed such an old saying. A man named Daning used to be an apprentice in a shop in Zhang Shun. A few years ago, he opened a donkey noodle restaurant near Zhang Shun alone. Daning, who is willing to study and study, has not only made achievements in Lamian Noodles's skills, but also made great efforts in sauce donkey meat. He gradually became famous, won awards, expanded his shop and finally drove to the main street. His business is booming, and he finally won the honor of "China Famous Snack".
The society is progressing, and the catering industry is striving for the market to the maximum while paying attention to the cultural taste. As a "Zhang Shun", people have a deep understanding of this. So Zhang Zheng also secretly struggle. After consulting with his brother Zhang Bin and sister Zhang Cailian, he moved the storefront in the alley to the lively farmers' market and jointly invested in building a magnificent second floor. At the same time, relying on the original authentic yellow noodle skills, he studied and improved the brine of dishes and took the initiative to participate in various catering competitions, which greatly improved the taste of "Zhang Shun" and made his business more prosperous than before.
The folk food hidden in Dunhuang is not limited to all kinds of pasta. You see, the Xiajiahe juice in this lane is small in appearance, but it is also crowded. After careful inquiry, it is a century-old shop and a Dunhuang snack that has been passed down for more than 1000 years. Dunhuang, a unique mutton mixed juice, fully absorbed the dietary characteristics of the western regions and the Central Plains. The soup is rich in meat, crispy and delicious, and the vermicelli is soft and smooth. "Gaza" and "Maruko" have unique flavors, and with green cauliflower, they can be called "full of color, fragrance and taste".
Hidden in the downtown area, the "Zhong Jia Nianpi" is a small shop in the eyes of outsiders, but a necessity in the eyes of Dunhuang people. According to the documents unearthed from the Tibetan Sutra Cave in Dunhuang, Rangpi was a very popular snack in Dunhuang market in Tang Dynasty. It is made of fine white flour through a special process, white and translucent. When eating, fold the dough, cut it into strips with a knife, put it on steamed gluten slices and pour the prepared seasoning.
Zhong Zhang, an expert in Dunhuang literature and history, said, "Zhang Daqian, who came to Dunhuang during the Republic of China, was a famous gourmet in China. I remember seeing Zhang Daqian at close range when I was a teenager. According to Yu Youren's evaluation, roast mutton was the most famous in the northwest of Dunhuang at that time. The roast mutton in Dunhuang is cooked and then roasted on the grill. It's not charcoal fire, but a kind of red willow wood produced in Dunhuang. Red willow grows on saline-alkali land. It has been saline-alkali since the seedling, so it is rich in saline-alkali components. After roasting with it, smoke comes out, and the saline-alkali components penetrate into the meat through the smoke, and the roasted meat is particularly fragrant. Because Yu Youren came to Dunhuang in 194 1, he personally squatted on a mutton cart in the old Dunhuang city and ate it twice. He said that this true northwest flavor is not available elsewhere. "
Most of these ancient food varieties can still appear in our sight occasionally, but many varieties have been quietly hidden in the simple folk, and we rarely see their true meaning again.