Shanghai Benbangcaiyaochuantongpengrenjiyi
01 · Historical Records
The traditional cooking craft of Shanghai local cuisine (benbang cuisine) originated in the late Qing dynasty; later, as industry, commerce and port trade in Shanghai flourished day by day and restaurants from various places came to Shanghai one after another, the craft gradually prospered. The traditional cooking craft of Shanghai local cuisine has been handed down to the present mainly through oral instruction and personal example between masters and apprentices; this distinctive flavour has become a kind of collective memory of the people of Shanghai.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The traditional cooking craft of Shanghai local cuisine is based mainly on red-braising (hongshao), simmering (wei) and wine-lees preparation (zao), with a taste that is salty with a hint of sweetness, oily but not greasy. The red-braising technique pursues a 'self-thickening' effect achieved without the use of starch, so that the finished dish looks as glossy and clinging as glue and lacquer and has a soft, glutinous and smooth mouthfeel; it is rich in Jiangnan characteristics and places high demands on heat control and seasoning. In its production a kind of aromatic wine lees unique to Shanghai must be used as a raw material, supplemented by aged Huadiao wine and other secret recipes, and it is obtained by repeated filtering after storage.
Self-starched sauce
Braised dishes need no added starch: the natural gel of the ingredients and the caramel colour reduce to a lacquer-like glaze, so the cooks rely instead on pan movement and reduction to achieve it.
Ageing and repeatedly filtering the wine lees
The signature lees of Shanghai cooking are made from the local aromatic lees with aged Huadiao wine and secret seasonings, stored and filtered repeatedly until clear; longer storage gives a mellower result.
The standard of thick oil and dark sauce
Shanghai cooking is summarised as generous oil, strong flavour, heavy sugar and bright colour, the result salty-sweet yet never greasy; sugar seasons, thickens and colours at once, so sugar and heat must be judged together.
The braising and the lees-soaking sequences
The two sequences that most define Shanghai cooking are the braising series, thick and starchy, and the lees-soaking series, scented and slightly sweet, supported by other methods such as simmering and stewing.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The traditional cooking craft of Shanghai local cuisine is the cooking craft of the local-flavour dishes of Shanghai, with 'thick oil and red sauce' as its main characteristic; it is an inseparable and important component of Shanghai's regional culture, circulating mainly in the old city quarters of Shanghai and the surrounding areas, with its influence extending over Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and with certain lines of transmission in large cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen as well as in overseas Chinese communities. So-called benbang cuisine, that is, Shanghai local cuisine, is known for 'thick oil and red sauce', which can be summarised briefly as plenty of oil, strong flavour, heavy sugar and bright colour. In more than a century of development, Shanghai benbang cuisine has accumulated a large number of famous dishes with vivid regional characteristics, such as prawn-roe large sea cucumber, eight-treasure duck, quick-fried river shrimp, wine-lees crock and black-carp 'bald lung'. The cooking techniques rich in Shanghai regional characteristics are the red-braising series and the wine-lees and drunken series. The wine-lees and drunken techniques are richly regional in character. Overall, the traditional cooking craft of Shanghai local cuisine started from the everyday diet of local people and gradually absorbed the strengths of the cooking techniques of other cuisines such as Anhui cuisine, Huaiyang cuisine, Suzhou-Wuxi cuisine and Cantonese cuisine, so that it has an inclusive character.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Since Shanghai developed into an international metropolis, its restaurant industry has been extraordinarily prosperous; benbang cuisine has shone brilliantly amid fierce market competition and to this day continues to be transmitted in an orderly way and to develop innovatively. The traditional cooking craft of Shanghai local cuisine condenses the essence of Shanghai-style (haipai) culture and reflects the process by which Shanghai catering has borrowed, absorbed, transformed and innovated; it embodies the features of haipai culture and has become a calling card of Shanghai's urban culture, possessing considerable economic, historical and social-cultural value.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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