Eating crabs became a trend in the Song Dynasty. Song Renzong hated the Queen Mother because she was fasted by crabs.

If you want to talk about which country on this planet is the best for Americans to eat crabs, of course China is our country. Chinese people regard crabs as the most delicious food in the world, such as spicy crab, crab roe, steamed river crab, crab roe glutinous rice balls and crab meat lion head, all of which are deeply loved by Chinese people. Especially during the two traditional festivals, the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Double Ninth Festival, eating crabs, admiring the moon, and climbing mountains have become indispensable attractions across the country.

What I want to say today is that this dietary fashion did not start today, but it was popular as early as the Song Dynasty.

1. Song Renzong liked crabs since he was a child.

Let us talk about Song Renzong, the first big man to eat crabs in the Song Dynasty.

According to Sima Guang, Song Renzong loved to eat crabs when he was a child, but when he refused, he didn't eat a single meal because he was too greedy. Don't stop his car. Because I ate too many crabs without restraint, I ended up with problems: dizziness, numbness in my limbs, coughing and spitting, and constipation.

As we all know, crabs are good things, but they are cold in nature and should not be eaten too much. Eating too much will cause wind and phlegm. What disease is wind phlegm? Song Renzong's symptoms.

At that time, Song Renzong was still young and had not yet mastered himself. The real person in power is his nominal mother, Queen Liu. Empress Dowager Liu saw that the little emperor was in bad health after eating crabs, so she immediately issued an edict: Shrimps, crabs, and sea creatures are not allowed! Not only crabs, but also shrimps are not allowed into the palace!

Song Renzong wanted the eunuchs and maids to secretly buy one or two crabs in an outside hotel. Everyone was afraid of being severely punished by Empress Dowager Liu, so no one dared to agree, which made Song Renzong greedy. At this time, the other empress dowager couldn't bear it anymore. She is the good sister of Queen Mother Liu who was raised by Yang. Queen Mother Yang said, why did the Queen Mother abuse my son like this? Why does Queen Liu treat our little baby so badly? If you win, I won't let him eat crabs. I'll let him eat it! So she often hid to eat, and often got some crabs from secret channels for Song Renzong to eat.

When he grew up, he was grateful to Queen Mother Yang, but resented Queen Mother Liu. Why does he hate Queen Mother Liu? Half of it was because Queen Liu had been in politics for too long, making him a puppet; and the other half was because Queen Liu was too strict with him, so don't let him take advantage of him if he wins.

2. No official in Song Dynasty can live without crabs.

Ouyang Xiu, a great writer in the Song Dynasty, also loved eating crabs. Before retiring, he wrote to his eldest son Ouyang Fa, saying: The pork and mutton in Fuyang, Anhui are not as tender as those in Beijing, but the crabs produced in Fuyang West Lake are much better than those sold in the market in Beijing, and the price is very cheap. I must move there in my later years. Go to Fuyang.

In fact, in his later years, Ouyang Xiu really bought land by the West Lake in Fuyang, built a house, drank wine and ate crabs, idle all day long, and lived a fairy life that Su Dongpo, another great writer in the Song Dynasty, envied.

Su Dongpo is also a typical crab lover. Dongpo wrote the book Lao Tao Fu, describing his favorite food: a cup on top, two tongs before chewing butter. Rotten cherry beads fried with honey, steamed lamb with apricot cheese. The half-cooked clams contain wine, while the crabs are slightly undercooked. The beauty of polymers feeds the foodie in me.

The above item refers to the tender meat neck of the pig's back, the two pincers before frost refer to the two pincers after autumn when the crabs are mature, the fried honey with cherry beads refers to candied cherries, and the steamed apricot cheese Mutton refers to steamed mutton, half-cooked clams mixed with wine are drunken clams, and slightly undercooked crabs naturally refer to drunken crabs. This verse mentions six dishes, two of which involve crab.

But the Song Dynasty official who loved eating crabs the most was neither Ouyang Xiu nor Su Dongpo, but a Hangzhou cadre named Qian Kun. Qian Kun, a descendant of King Qian of Wuyue, is not well-known in the literary history of the Song Dynasty, but he has a famous saying that will last forever.

The sentence is similar to that of the current deputy mayor, but much more severe than the deputy mayor. Any orders or cases the mayor wants to issue must be signed by the chief judge before they can be approved. Therefore, Qian Kun wants to be the mayor of a city without ordinary sentences, so that he will not be restricted by others.

Why does he want crabs at work? Of course, since he loves crabs, he can't live without them.

3. People in the Song Dynasty also ate crabs.

Many people in the Song Dynasty also loved eating crabs.

Hongmai Xianchun Lin'an Zhi of the Southern Song Dynasty mentioned this example:

There was a doctor named Sha in Huzhou, Zhejiang. His old mother is addicted to crabs. Every year, crabs are in season. She would buy dozens of crabs every day, put them in an urn and let them crawl around. When she saw one crawling out, she threw it into the pot first. If you pile up all the crabs that this old lady has eaten all her life, you can build a mountain of crabs.

There is also an old lady in Hongzhou, Jiangxi who loves to eat crabs and treats them with bad ones. This shows that she especially likes to eat bad crabs.

There is a painter named Shen in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province. He loves crabs and is good at cooking. He could not support his family by painting, so he painted and cooked crabs to make money.

Elder Meng described the snacks in Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty. He said that downstairs of Pan, the largest restaurant at that time, there was a stall selling crabs every morning. During the season when crabs are on the market, fresh crabs are sold, while bad crabs are sold in other seasons.

Zhou Miyi Jianzhi described the catering market in Hangzhou, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, saying that there were so many crab vendors in Hangzhou that an industry association called Crab Shops was actually organized.

Normally speaking, there must have been a group of people who loved crabs in Kaifeng in the Northern Song Dynasty and Hangzhou in the Southern Song Dynasty. Otherwise, crabs would not be sold all year round downstairs, and there would not be a city of crab sellers in Lin.

4. Those Song Dynasty people who did not dare to eat crabs.

Some people in the Song Dynasty were not as lucky as me and had no food. They don't have crabs that I haven't seen, and even if they did, they wouldn't make me afraid to eat them.

Shen Kuo wrote in the Tokyo Menghualu Year:

Crabs do not grow in rivers in Shaanxi, so most Shaanxi people have never seen crabs in their lives. There was a rich man in Shaanxi who got a crab from nowhere. He didn't dare eat it until it was dry, so he had to hang it on the wall as a decoration. When I visited his neighbor's house, I saw a crab hanging on the wall and ran away thinking it was a monster. Later, the neighbor went there more often and was no longer afraid, but believed that crabs could ward off evil spirits. Whenever someone's child was frightened, they would take out the crab and hang it respectfully at the door of that house, hoping to keep the little devil out of the house and protect the child from being frightened.

There are also some places where Song people dare to eat crabs, but unfortunately I don’t know how to eat them.

Now that we eat crabs, the most scientific cooking method is steaming. However, in the Song Dynasty, most northern diners didn't know how to steam, and they were keen to adopt the following incredible cooking methods:

One is deep-frying. Mentioned that there is a kind of fried crab sold on the streets of Bianliang, Tokyo. The method is as follows: wash the big crab, remove the sand, chop off the claws, remove the internal organs, chop into four pieces, sprinkle with flour, fry in the oil pan, then remove the oil and dip it in noodles. Eating crabs this way will destroy all of the crab's unique flavor. It's such a bummer.

The second is boiling. Tokyo Menghualu Bieji Tokyo Menghualu mentioned that during the Northern Song Dynasty, Zhongyuan Hotel once made a kind of crab soup. It is also to wash the crabs first, then chop them into four sections, throw them into a pot of boiling water, cook until the crab meat turns red, and finally sprinkle with salt and vinegar, drink crab soup and eat crab meat.

The third type is raw pickling. Liu Chun's net-gluing method is the most incredible, but it was very popular in the Song Dynasty, even at the emperor's royal banquet. It doesn't matter if you marinate the ingredients. The key is to eat it raw and not cook it. Clean the crabs, chop them with a knife, and chop the crab roe, cream, crab, and crab meat into a puree, shovel it into a basin, and mix it with salt, vinegar, pepper, fennel, orange juice, garlic, etc. Eat it directly. Wu, the female chef from Pujiang in the south

There were also some foodies in the Song Dynasty who really knew how to eat crabs. They can make crab oranges and crab buns.

Crab stuffed oranges are steamed crabs, but the cooking method is clever: stuff crab meat or whole small crab balls into a hollow orange, and then steam them on a grate.

The orange flavor can refresh you, the orange juice can remove the fishy smell, and the orange peel can lock the crab meat soup to prevent it from dripping into the pot. It really kills three birds with one stone.

Crab-stuffed oranges were also called orange urns in the Song Dynasty, because the oranges were hollow and had a big belly, which really looked a bit like an urn. It is said that the most exquisite chefs in the Song Dynasty did not use the whole crab or crab paste when making orange urn. They only picked out a little crab meat and double claws from the crab and threw away the other parts. I think this is really a waste of time.

Crab buns are similar to the crab dumplings commonly seen in Yangzhou restaurants. They are both delicious and stuffed with crab roe and fatty pork. However, crab roe soup dumplings are made of flour, while crab roe soup dumplings in the Song Dynasty are made of tofu. Tofu is greasy bean skin (don#). Don’t confuse it with the thousands of cheap tofu. It is a thin film of oil, much thinner than the dough. It is used to fill stuffing and make steamed buns, and the crab roe and The fat pork is clearly visible. It’s really spectacular.

There should also be crab roe soup dumplings in the Song Dynasty. According to Zeng Minhang’s records, when the traitor Cai Jing was the prime minister in the Northern Song Dynasty, he invited everyone to have a meeting at home. Drink. After finishing the staple food, everyone was served a plate of crab roe steamed buns. We know that the steamed buns that people in the Song Dynasty call are what we call steamed buns now, so crab roe steamed buns may be crab roe steamed buns.