Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1431 Kaiseki cuisine

"Then let's go talk to Lao Sakamoto? Let's go to Jingjiatang to have a look?"

"Well, I have another project that I want to talk to them about."

"What project?"

"Now that our Hanwen large font library is complete, the digital library project can be put on the agenda." Zhou Zhi said: "This is also something that can enhance the impact of the library, which is a win-win situation. I wonder if we can through similar cooperation projects, Let the country’s ancient books return in digital form.”

"No wonder the two old men like you so much, they really mean it." Master Ma patted Zhou Zhi on the shoulder: "You have a good elbow, you are better than me at this point!"

"I don't know if this counts as looking for work for ourselves." Zhou Zhi said with a wry smile, "Shu University is already preparing to launch the Confucian Canon project, and Peking University's counterparts are the Taoist Canon and the Buddhist Canon. I think it's not enough to rely solely on official promotion. Private libraries around the world should also get involved. First, they can help the official authorities by filling in the gaps. Second, private libraries have flexible mechanisms and are good at organizing things. Their ideas are often more unconventional than those of the official authorities, but they are very effective and are totally worth learning from."

"To put it nicely, it means participating in a grand event together. To put it simply, it means blasting gongs, playing cymbals, and playing drums to create a lively atmosphere." Mr. Ma laughed so hard that he understood, and said, "Then let's go shopping in Kyoto, Sakamoto You should have some respect there, and you should be able to get into Jingjia Hall.”

Kyoto is very close to Osaka, it only takes more than half an hour by car, and it is part of the Osaka city circle.

But in ancient times, Kyoto, as the birthplace of Japanese culture and the old capital, was famous for its many places of interest.

There are 17 world cultural heritage sites gathered in this small city, and they have miraculously escaped the turmoil and war. The places where many historical events and stories took place are still well preserved, which cannot but be said to be miraculous.

Some subcultures are also well preserved here, such as the pottery "Kiomizu-yaki" used for tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and incense ceremony; such as the traditional silk dyeing technique "Yuzen dyeing"; the silk brocade weaving "Nishijin-ori"; and the food Gekkeikan sake, Uji Gyokuro tea, wagashi, yudofu, kaiseki cuisine.

Sakamoto Goro is now wearing a kimono, and is hosting a banquet for Zhou Zhima, Ikeda-oka, to taste Kyoto's best "kaiseki" in a place full of ancient charm and shaped like a temple.

Because Zhou Zhi and Ma Ye's knowledge reserve in this matter was completely insufficient, Miss Ikeda patiently introduced Zhou Zhi and the others to the top "package" in this island country when she was overjoyed.

There is a legend about the origin of "Kaiseki". In order to resist hunger while listening to Zen for a long time, a monk held a stone in his arms and was allowed to eat simple food such as snacks to satisfy his hunger. This kind of simple food is called "Kaiseki".

However, this statement spread among the islanders was corrected by Goro Sakamoto, who said that this statement originated from Chapter 70 of the Tao Te Ching.

Zhou Zhi immediately understood: "It is because a saint is surrounded by brown and jade."

Sakamoto Goro gave a thumbs up: "Zhou Sang's level of Sinology is admirable."

This sentence in the Tao Te Ching means that the sage wears coarse cloth but carries a precious jade in his chest, implying that the external value is ignored and the inner spirit is emphasized. This concept is completely consistent with the spirit of the tea ceremony.

Sakamoto Goro said: "In the Azuchi Momoyama period in the 16th century, Zen Buddhism and tea ceremony in my country began to be established and integrated. At that time, Sen no Rikyu, the founder of tea ceremony, created a Zen-like tea ceremony, and simple meals would be served when entertaining guests with tea. His descendant, Tachibana Michiyama, named this type of cuisine "Cha Kaiseki". "After that, as the shoguns, daimyo, upper-class samurai and other upper-class society respected the tea ceremony, it became fashionable to hold tea parties. More and more attention was paid to the exquisiteness of food. As the scale of tea parties became larger and larger, cooking became the protagonist, and relatively fixed procedures and etiquette were formed, which gradually developed what we now know as "Kaiseki cuisine."

This makes it clear. It turns out that the island country’s cuisine developed from the monks’ diet. No wonder it pays attention to lightness, health, and not making people fat.

The earliest Kaiseki cuisine only had "one sauce and three dishes", which is ridiculously simple. The sauce is the juice, which is seafood soup or miso soup. The three dishes are a sashimi, a stew and a roast.

Later, a lot of tricks were developed. In addition to the most basic "one juice and three dishes", there were also Xianfu, Baocun, Xiangfu, Gaiwu, Shaowu, Oily food, Sauce dishes, and Zhongzukou. , strong dishes, royal rice, bowls, fragrant things, water things, etc.

Zhou Zhi feels that the way the island country names these things is actually full of the flavor of the Song Dynasty in China, but the translation is just that.

The first pay is appetizers, the eight-inch meal is seasonal seafood sushi and side dishes, the xiangfu is seasonal sashimi plus the soup dish from the "one juice and three dishes", the gaimo is the soup in a tureen, and the yakimono is Grilled fish, oily food means barbecued meat, sour food means pickled vegetables and cold noodles, zhongguo means clear and sour soup, strong food means big dish, which is actually barbecued meat or roasted poultry, and royal rice means seafood rice made from rice. The main course is vegetable and seafood miso soup, which indicates that the banquet is about to end, followed by desserts such as kimchi called hyangmono and after-dinner fruit called sumono.

After careful consideration, it seems that the serving process of high-end Sichuan cuisine is not much different from this one. The only difference is that Sichuan cuisine is a shared meal system, while kaiseki cuisine is a separate meal system. Sichuan cuisine has large portions, while kaiseki cuisine has small and exquisite portions, so Sichuan cuisine There are not so many dishes, but there are more than a dozen dishes before and after Kaiseki, and each one can be cooked with just one chopstick.

If we were in Sichuan, treating guests without making them full would be the biggest form of indolence; in Kyoto, it would become "elegant", euphemistically known as leaving enough space for drinking tea.

However, from the store decoration to the bowls and chopsticks, they are all carefully selected and full of ancient charm, with excessive sophistication everywhere. Even looking at relatively simple things, Zhou Zhi and Ma Ye can tell that they are handmade in Xiaochai Kiln. Selected after firing.

This thing can still be found in many small rural kilns in China, and the price is very cheap, but here, it is probably a bit expensive.

Zhou Zhi even thought about whether to go back and suggest to the Light Industry Department in Sichuan to do the reverse operation and export some of these things. The profit might be much higher than the fine porcelain exported from Jingdezhen.

I never tire of fine food, and I am not picky about being thoughtful. Except for the tea ceremony full of green powder at the end, which was a bit showy, I quite liked everything else about this "cultural meal".

In particular, a tiger-spot pufferfish weighing nearly ten kilograms was presented by the chef, which showed the sincerity of Sakamoto Goro's hospitality.

However, the subsequent "yakimono" is made of fugu "tamago", which tastes like soft tofu and tastes like dairy products.

"Xianfu" is made from pufferfish sashimi, and "zhiwan" also uses pufferfish skeleton to make soup, plus pufferfish skin.

After seeing the big pufferfish, Mr. Ma was a little hesitant to eat, especially after learning that Yuzi was the pufferfish's testicles, the chopsticks seemed to weigh a thousand pounds and he couldn't lift them.

(End of this chapter)