When you became a small Beijing official in the Tang Dynasty, on the days when you were not at work on vacation, you took off your official clothes with your friends and colleagues and went to visit the East and West markets together. When you are tired of shopping and hungry, you can walk into a nearby restaurant called "Zhangjialou" and experience the service quality of the catering industry in Datang Capital.

Pick a table near the entrance of the hall and sit down, what is the first thing you want to say when you open your mouth?

Who's in for a treat? It's still so stingy to dress as a Tang Dynasty official, you might as well go through the Cheng Yan prison students.

Pour a pot of tea? I don't think so, please turn to the book and drink tea.

Got a menu? Thank you, until the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, there was no paper menu in the restaurant, and at most there was a water sign on the counter to write today's special offer. What dish you order, it all depends on the name of the dish in the running hall, and the art of cross talk comes from life.

Little two! Five pounds of beef and ten bowls of good wine!

Come over two big men, first look at the looks of a few of you - not familiar faces, and then look at the people on the street outside the store are peaceful, it doesn't seem like an ambush Liangshan heroes, look at each other and nod their heads, stretch out their big hands like a fan, and grab your collar, I lose it—

Stumbling out of the store, you're confused again, aren't you? Are you afraid of a pot-bellied man when you open a restaurant? Even if something is wrong, come and correct it, why do you kick people casually? Did the people of the Tang Dynasty do business so unconsciously and make money?

Alas, it is true that the people of the Tang Dynasty were more ferocious and had personalities, but under normal circumstances, those who do business would not offend their guests so much. The reason for your expulsion was that you said things that were taboo at the time, and the owner of the restaurant was afraid of being fished and enforced by the law.

What is taboo?

"Tang Law Volume 15 Stable Library": "The Lord commits suicide to Ma Niu for one year." "If the owner kills his own horse or cow, he has to serve a year of hard labor, that is, the state prohibits the killing of these two large animals, and of course it is forbidden to eat beef. Your sentence "five catties of beef" will send the owner of the restaurant to hard labor if you are not careful.

Therefore, after you travel to the Tang Dynasty, you don't have to expect to see boiled beef, Hangzhou pepper beef tenderloin, Dengying beef, spicy fat beef, roasted beef brisket with tomatoes, shredded beef with dried stirring, beef stew with potatoes, and Philip mignon in the restaurant...... None of them are available.

What the? You said that you grew up eating a Big Mac, and you can't live without beef if you don't have cows? It's all a habitual problem. Well, if you have to eat beef even if you have to fight for your life, the Tang people are not without workarounds.

The easiest way is to go to the countryside and buy some beef privately, or raise a few cows yourself, kill them secretly in the dark, and cook them yourself behind closed doors so that no one else can see them. Even if a neighbor smells wrong and pushes the door in, and catches your family eating beef on the spot, you can argue with strong words: "I killed the cow is not wrong, but it was manslaughter!" Manslaughter! It's just a momentary miss! ”

Tang Law clearly stipulates that killing one's own cattle and horses for one year, but "killing by mistake, not sitting". As for how to prove that it was manslaughter, not intentional killing, and quickly put a plate of boiled beef on a plate and give it to a neighbor, it must be manslaughter......

If your cooking skills are similar to the author's deer, then it is not recommended to cook beef at home, as you will spoil this hard-won treasure and poison yourself by the way. Take it out and leave it to a familiar restaurant to clean up! Note that you must be familiar with each other and have a very good relationship with the shopkeeper, otherwise people may report you to the government.

In ordinary restaurants, the method of remediating beef is probably to boil it in water and put some seasonings such as green onion and ginger sauce. To put it a little more advanced, build a fire in the yard, roast (at that time, called roasting) beef until it is eight ripe, and after the burnt flavor wafts out, then sprinkle some pepper, which is a rare delicacy.

If you want to talk about the famous beef dishes of the Tang Dynasty, I solemnly recommend a "bull head praise" to you.

This famous dish is mainly popular in the southern region, the sky is high and the emperor is far away, and there is a living space for the famous beef dish in Chang'an. The production process is as follows:

Take the head of the calf with light skin and tender flesh, first burn it on the fire to lose the hair, and then scald it with boiling water to remove the hair roots. Put wine, tempeh, green onions, and ginger in the pot, boil the cow's head, peel off the meat and cut it into palm-sized pieces, mix it with ghee, Sichuan pepper, lime, etc., stuff it into a bottle urn, and seal the mouth of the urn with mud. Finally, bury the meat urn in the fire pit and slowly heat it with a weak fire to bring out the flavor.

This kind of dish was called "Bao" in the Tang Dynasty, and I don't know if it has anything to do with the claypot rice in the Lingnan area now. In short, it was very difficult for the people of the Tang Dynasty to eat beef, so mad cow disease could not be contagious.

So, what was the most common meat eaten by the people of the Tang Dynasty?

Wrong, it's not pork, it's mutton.

I can't help but envy and hate the relatives and nobles of the emperor's relatives and countries, as long as these guys are officials and have achieved more than five grades, then the public will give a lot of meat to eat for free every month. From the prince to the second-rank officials, they supply 20 sheep and 60 catties of pork every month, the third-grade officials only give 12 sheep every month, and the fourth-grade and fifth-grade officials give 9 sheep every month, and they don't give pork, which shows that mutton is much more popular than pork.

Do you think mutton smells bad? It doesn't matter, we pay more attention to the cooking method, keep improving, and the master can make the lamb delicious.

Ordinary people in the Tang Dynasty ate roasted mutton, steamed mutton head, and mutton noodles, so I won't say much. Just say that one day your colleague invites you to dinner at home, saying that the main dish of the banquet is "sheep in the hall", this is a world-famous delicacy, you must not miss this opportunity.

On the day of the banquet, you and the other invited guests gather in the lobby of the host's house, and after some pushing, the respected guest of honor takes a seat at the dining table near the entrance of the hall.

The main hall of the Tang Dynasty was often without walls on the south side, and only a few pillars were used to support the eaves. The south side can be surrounded by screens and barriers when you need to block the wind, and it is a semi-open-air building that can be simply removed in summer. When people sit in the church, they can directly see the scene in the courtyard outside the hall.

The distinguished guest sits in the seat at the entrance of the hall, on the one hand, it is convenient to salute him first when the food is served; On the other hand, it is also convenient to watch singing and dancing - at that time, formal banquets were held, and eighty percent of the courtyards in the hall had singing and dancing programs to accompany the meal.

After three rounds of wine, several dishes are offered, the song and dance are over, and the main course is about to be played.

I saw a servant[40] leading a live sheep to the foot of the front steps of the hall, bowing to the hall, turning over his hand and drawing a sharp knife that shook brightly, skillfully inserting it into the neck of the live sheep, killing the sheep and bloodletting, skinning and cutting the flesh.

At this time, the host invited all the guests to come down to the court, and also came to the fat sheep that had just been killed, and the guests looked at it, and saw which piece of mutton was good, and cut it off with their own knives. The servants on the side served different colored brocades, wrapped the mutton of their choice, and sent it to be steamed.

When the time is up, the steamed lamb is sent back piece by piece. You can identify the piece of brocade you chose, open it, put the mutton into your own eating container, cut it into slices with the bamboo knife provided by the host, sprinkle pepper, pour apricot sauce, and everyone eat!

It is precisely because mutton is the most commonly eaten meat in the Tang Dynasty, and mutton has a strong smell, so pepper that can be removed is particularly valued. This thing is an import from the Western Regions and South Asia, and it sells very expensively, so don't be surprised if you hear that when the prime minister was convicted of a crime and his house was raided, 800 stone (64,000 kilograms) of pepper were copied from his home. [41]

There is another guest over there who said, Lao Tzu doesn't like to eat fishy beef and mutton, Lao Tzu wants to eat pork, and if you don't supply pork, you will complain about Tang wearing a group to slaughter customers. Alas, as for the guests, don't get excited, who said that there was no pork in the Tang Dynasty. Although it is not as expensive as beef and not as popular as mutton, pork is also one of the common meats of people, and it will not be unavailable.

The people of the Tang Dynasty ate pork, and the most common practice was to eat it steamed. In "Journey to the West", you can get a big steamer to serve the master and the second senior brother at every turn, which has a foundation for life.

Beef and mutton should be sprinkled with pepper, and pork must be eaten with garlic. You are a guest at someone's house, and the host brings you a plate of hot steamed pork, you stir up the slices of meat, pour garlic sauce and garlic paste, and then add some bean sauce, wrap it in a freshly baked golden dough roll, and send it to your mouth to bite in, and the oil flows down the side, not to mention how delicious it is.

In addition to pigs, sheep and cows, the people of the Tang Dynasty also ate donkey meat, dog meat, and from time to time they could also eat some wild animal meat. At that time, the natural environment was good, the population was small, there were mountains, forests and wilderness everywhere, and the people of the Tang Dynasty liked to hunt, so rabbit meat, wild boar, bear meat, and even snake meat and civet meat all entered the recipes of the Tang people. What kind of animal meat is most often found in these game meats, you ask? I won't tell you it's venison!

But there is another problem, for example, if you go out hunting with a few friends, you are busy for a long time, you put down a big wild boar, find firewood to make a fire, peel and cut meat, barbecue in the field, and a few beautiful brothers have a meal, and then there is a lot of wild boar left! I can't finish a meal if I ask someone to carry it home, what if it is broken? The tyrannical creatures will be struck by thunder from the sky.

In the same way, before the Chinese New Year, there will be a lot of meat that cannot be eaten for a while. At this time, it is necessary to use scientific and technological means - artificial preservatives or something weakly exploded, the ancients used salt, vinegar, wine, pepper and other spices, plus air-dried, drying, fermentation and other production techniques, you can make preserved food, wax, vinegar, sorrel [42] and other pure natural, pollution-free, shelf life and very long food, and it is very delicious.