One Cantonese saying goes that anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies is edible. Another says that the only four-legged things that Cantonese people won't eat are tables and chairs.

Guangdong Province in South China, with its mild, subtropical climate, grows an abundance of foods all year, including rice, fruit and vegetables. And plentiful feed for livestock means high-quality meat and poultry is in abundance.

As a result, Cantonese chefs take pride in their cooking. They use fresh ingredients every day to retain the unique flavour and texture of each dish. No wonder that for centuries local residents have been noted for their sophisticated cuisine, and their keen interest in food. Because their food is of such superlative quality, local people consider themselves connoisseurs of both flavour and taste. Its recipes, first appearing in the literature of the Han, Wei, Southern and Northern Dynasties (220-589), have become famous both at home and abroad since the beginning of the 20th century. With a long culinary history, the Cantonese are very inventive, and happy to incorporate non-native ingredients in their cooking.

With the advantage of all delicacies from all over the country, Guangdong cuisine has gradually formed its own characteristics. Hong Kong is the world capital for this style of cooking.

Using a wide variety of ingredients, it offers food of all tastes, shapes and colours, serving different types of dishes for all seasons. Light food is provided in summer and autumn, while winter and spring see strong and mellow food.

Spinach, cabbage, peppers, broccoli and dried mushrooms are widely used. Ginger, spring onion, sugar, salt, soy sauce, rice wine, corn starch and oil are main ingredients used in most Cantonese cooking.

Cantonese cuisine is characterized by the use of very mild spices. Five spices (prickly ash, star aniseed, cinnamon, clove and fennel), white pepper powder and many other spices are used in Cantonese dishes, but usually very lightly.

Cantonese cooking also specializes in the quick stir-frying of vegetables, which helps to retain colour, flavour and nutrients, and roasting a wide variety of meats, poultry, and seafood.

Cantonese cuisine, known as 'yue cai', one of the main cuisine styles in China, is composed of Guangzhou, Chaozhou and Dongjiang cuisines.

Guangzhou, capital city of the province, is the place of origin of Cantonese cuisine, offering more than 2,000 kinds of dishes. Prepared with a variety of high-quality ingredients, Guangzhou cuisine is composed of light, delicious, refreshing and nutritious dishes with sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, salty and delicious tastes.

Chaozhou cuisine focuses on the seafood dishes since Chaozhou is a coastal city.

Dongjiang cuisine, or Hakka food, is very popular in the cities of Heyuan and Meizhou. Fatty, salty and well-done, many dishes of Hakka cuisine are believed to help nourish diners' kidneys, reduce temperature, clear the lungs and improve both the eyes and skin.

Dongjiang salted chicken, one of the famous Hakka dishes, is a traditional dish with a golden yellow colour, crisp and tender meat and a fragrant smell. There are two cooking methods. The traditional one is to wrap the clean chicken in paper then put it into heated salt, the heat from the salt cooks the chicken. The other way is to soak the chicken in hot soup until it is 80 per cent cooked, then pick it up and chop it into several parts. Following that salt, oil and sesame oil are put in. Stir it to make the ingredients even, and lastly cook it until it is totally ready.

Through a long history, these three Cantonese cuisines have effectively integrated with each other and can be enjoyed at many places in the province.

Guangzhou's most omnipresent speciality is the snack dim sum. Often eaten at breakfast or lunch, dim sum are savoury dumplings stuffed with prawns, beef and pork. The most popular dim sum items are: 'ha gau' (shrimp dumpling), 'siu mai' (prawn and pork dumpling), 'pai gwat' (steamed spareribs), 'chun guen' (spring rolls), 'cha siu pau' (steamed barbecued pork buns), and 'cheung fun' (steamed rice flour rolls with barbecue pork, beef, or shrimp). While other parts of China also produce dim sum, Guangdong people believe that the Cantonese style transcends all in both variety and delicacy.

The region also produces a great variety of snacks with different tastes, such as moon cakes, porridge, chicken cakes, pastries, red sweetened bean paste and double skin milk.

Cantonese snacks have many peculiar ingredients, some sweet and some salty, enjoying the reputation of "100 kinds of snacks having 100 tastes and 100 shapes."

Seafood plays an important part in Guangdong cuisine. The long coastline gives access to the rich fishing grounds of the South China Sea with their enormous variety of fish and seafood. Prawns, shrimps, scallops, lobster and crab are in plentiful supply. Locals believe that the best way to cook fresh seafood is by stir-frying or steaming, usually with ginger and onion to offset their "fishiness". The light seasoning is used only to enhance the natural sweetness of the seafood. Seafood is also frequently used in meat dishes - giving the food a distinctive savoury quality. Oyster sauce, shrimp sauce and shrimp paste are widely used. For instance, beef with oyster sauce is a favorite dish in the region.

Last, but certainly not least, is Cantonese soup cooked on low heat. The soup is usually a clear broth prepared by simmering meat and other ingredients for several hours. Chinese herbal medicines are sometimes added to the clay pot, to make the soup nutritious and healthy. The ingredients of a more expensive Cantonese slow cooked soup include fresh chicken, dried cod fish bladder, dried sea cucumber and dried abalone. Another more affordable combination includes pork bones and watercress with two types of almonds. Other ingredients include ginger, dates and other Chinese herbal medicines.

The method used to cook the soup is to put the raw materials in when the water is boiling, then turn down the heat and simmer for two to four hours. The main attraction is the liquid in the pot, the solids are usually thrown away unless they are expensive ingredients such as abalone or snake. Local residents believe all soup improves their health.

Cantonese people attach great importance to the health-giving properties of soup in different seasons. Different soup is cooked in different seasons using the best seasonal ingredients available, catering to people's varying tastes and needs.

Source: www. xinhuanet.com