Luoyang Swallow Dish,Rag to Rich
2 min readLuoyang swallow dish(with the name of”Luoyang Yancai” in Chinese),also known as Peony Yancai,is a unique traditional dish in Luoyan g,Henan province.The major ingredients of this fine dish are radish,sea cucumber and chicken,not as complicated as you might think.It slightly differs from the top grade restaurants to the cafés off street:top grade restaurants usually add invigorant like sleeve-fish while the home-cook cafés seem plain and simple but the taste is no inferior to that of the top restaurants.
When you take a quick glance at the Luoyang Yancai,it seems just like a graceful eye-dazzling peony as white as polished jade floating on the soup.People couldn’t help screaming”Is this a banquet of flower?”Only by a close observation can you notice that it is made of shredded radish and some other ingredients in the fresh soup.Such a luxury and tasty dish impresses the diner at large and they keep wowing about its wonderfulness.
A legend has been told about the origin of Luoyang Yancai.As is well-known, Luoyang peony thrived in Tang Dynasty when the Emperess Wu Zetian was in reign. She took a inspection tour Vairocana Buddha(curved as a mirror of the Emperess’s dppearance)in Longmen(today’s Longmen Grettoes)to see how much they had Completed.When the Emperess presented herself in Xianju Palace in Luoyang,a Super radish was found in Guanxiayuan village with a length of three feet and Weight over 15 kilograms.The green top and white bottom radish was taken as a Toreign substance by farmers and they thought it as some kind of auspicious sign.So the radish was submitted to the Emperess as a holy article.
The royal chefs were puzzled.In general,few could make a fine dish out of radish.Feared by the power of the Emperess,the chefs had to make innovation. They thought it over and over again and decided to make an imperial soup in a combination of the radish and some delicacies.The Emperess was glad when she tasted the mellow and fragrant radish soup.She bestowed the name “artificial Yancai”on the basis of its nest-like shred.
With time passing by,the dish name is shortened as Yancai.And it is improved to perfection due to the efforts of chefs one generation after another to make it more nutritious and tasty in addition to the preservation of its delicacy and fragrance.Their efforts paid off as Yancai has become a famous traditional Luoyang dish.It stands for the essence of Luoyang culture and so gets the name of Luoyang Yancai till now.
