Contestants carefully make medicinal cuisine.
What kind of spark will be ignited when traditional Chinese medicine meets modern cooking? From August 30th to 31st, the 2nd Traditional Chinese Medicine (Zhuang-Yao Medicine) Medicinal Cuisine Competition in Guilin was held at Guangxi Business Vocational College. A total of 31 participating teams from Guilin, Nanning, Hechi, Laibin, and other places gathered together. They used medicinal cuisine as a medium to connect and make friends through it, presenting a duel of ingenuity that combines traditional Chinese medicine principles with culinary skills.
The theme of this competition is “Inherit the quintessence of traditional Chinese medicine, promote the culture of medicinal cuisine,” aiming to leverage our city’s authentic medicinal resources and various ethnic culinary characteristics, adhere to the inheritance of innovative development, explore medicinal cuisine works with authentic Chinese medicine characteristics, build our city’s unique brand of Chinese medicine medicinal cuisine, and promote the integrated development of traditional Chinese medicine with planting, tourism, health preservation, and rehabilitation fields.
The “Guixiang Dongpo” to moisten the lungs and aid digestion, the “Liyun Xiaqiu Niu” to tonify the heart and spleen, the “Shandougen Crispy Guiyuan” to clear heat and benefit the throat, and the “Shihu Yuzhu Zhegu Tang” to nourish the stomach and generate fluids… At the competition venue, the medicinal cuisine masters incorporated regional characteristic medicinal materials into ingredients and used methods such as stewing, baking, braising, simmering, steaming, boiling, and simmering to create dishes that are outstanding in color, fragrance, taste, shape, meaning, and nutrition, fully showcasing the essence of medicinal cuisine being “rich in cultural heritage, flavor, nutrition, and standards.” A variety of exquisite medicinal cuisine presentations and delicate plating made the audience drool, and once they were showcased, they immediately prompted spectators to take photos and give likes.
Grounding herbs like purple perilla leaves into powder and combining them with local Heinuo fish to make fish paste; putting plums, tangerine peel, Liubao tea into a teapot to boil, then adding a little dried osmanthus into the cup… A set of medicinal cuisines brought by the Guiyang Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital, including the spleen-nourishing and stomach-freshening Xiangyu, the warmth-reinforcing and spleen-strengthening Lu Niujin, the nourishing yin and moisturizing mushroom meat soup, the Arhat fruit tangerine peel Liubao tea, and the Yu Gui tangerine peel thin roll, not only focused on the combination of medicinal food ingredients but also showcased the characteristics of Guilin, winning the first prize in the group competition.
“During the end of summer period, one should nourish yin and moisten dryness, increase acidity, and reduce pungency in diet. Therefore, we prepared five medicinal cuisines including Lily Um Plum Glass Button, Sibao Stew Small Ribs, Ginseng Health Zong Guo, Shihu Yuzhu Patridge Soup, and Jingou Gehua Drink, which consisted of tea drinks, hot dishes, cold dishes, soup, and pastries.” The autumn nourishing medicinal cuisines brought by the Guilin Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital excelled in both appearance and taste, being nutritious and creative, which helped them clinch the first prize in the group competition. Team member Kong Yixuan said that by competing with medicinal cuisine masters from various places, she learned a lot about the pairing of medicinal and food ingredients. This award has strengthened her confidence and determination to popularize medicinal cuisine among the public, actively promoting the culture of medicinal cuisine therapy.
During the competition, an exhibition area for medicinal (Zhuang-Yao Medicine) health-preserving and therapeutic products was set up outside the venue. More than 20 participating units from the entire region showcased a wide variety of inventive and uniquely characteristic medicinal cuisine health-preserving and therapeutic products, allowing people to appreciate the unique charm of combining medicine with food in medicinal cuisine.
Dai Bo, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Director of the Guilin Municipal Health Commission, said that this medicinal cuisine competition is not only a “culinary showdown of food and medicine integration” but also an important window to showcase the unique charm of traditional Chinese medicine culture. In the next step, the Commission will take this competition as an opportunity to work together with Chinese medicine practitioners throughout the city, make good use of and fully leverage the advantages of the “same origin of food and medicine,” further integrate the health preservation concepts and methods of traditional Chinese medicine with modern health concepts, make traditional Chinese medicine part of people’s daily lives and habits, and continuously meet the increasing demand for traditional Chinese medicine health preservation services from the public.
Source: Guilin Daily
