Touring in Sichuan, eating is pleasant, enjoyable and full of characteristics.
Sichuan has been a wonderful place since ancient times. The Land of Abundance with fertile lands, adequate rivers, abundant foods and products, has brought up so many outstanding people. Since the roads of Sichuan were hard and dangerous, it was less influenced by wars in historical times, so Sichuan natives could create and develop their eating culture with unique feature during the long history. And there is a saying goes “Best Eating in Sichuan” and “Wonderful Sapor in Sichuan”.
As one of the four cuisines of China, Sichuan Cuisine flavour is particularly unique and is famous for its rich and various tastes. It usually employs spicy seasonings but not only spicy-flavored, it forms a complex taste after mixture, based on the six basic tastes of Sichuan Cuisine. The characteristic of its flavor is to give prominence to the main flavor, and the method is concentrating on a certain flavor. Sichuan Cuisine usually concentrates one of salty-sweet, sour-spicy or spice flavor into one dish, and then adds other ingredients to make the main flavor prominent, such as Tender Stewed Beef, Salty Fish, etc.
The types of compound flavors in Sichuan Cuisine are as many as tens, mainly including the tastes of salt-freshness, family taste, spicy-flavored spice, sweet-sourness, lichi, mustard, fragrance, complex taste, etc. The various and abundant tastes form the unique style of both delicious and rich flavors of Sichuan Cuisine. Another thing that needs to be pointed out is that different types of dishes in Sichuan Cuisine need to choose different seasonings, in short, flavors coexist with its unique seasonings. For example, dishes of spicy and familial’s tastes must use the seasoning of County Pi in Sichuan, but fish-fragrance type must use that of Sichuan flavored spice.
Sichuan Cuisine has gone through thousands of years, and it boasts more than 4,000 dishes, among which more than 1,000 are frequently used in banquets and restaurants, and 300 more are rare and precious dishes. Sichuan Cuisine has so many characteristics: rich ingredients, various seasonings, serious choice of materials; delicate shredding and arrangement, complicated cooking, unique flavor; uncountable types of dishes with varied tastes.
People in Sichuan advocate eating, not only for the need of living and development, but for spiritual and emotional pleasures that eating brings about. While eating, people savour life, enjoy life, express feelings, which makes “Wonderful Sapor in Sichuan” having much strong sentiment of rural atmosphere.