It is the hardest to categorize, emphasizes light cooking with seemingly limitless range of ingredients. Cantonese cuisine took shape in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In the process of its development, it has borrowed the culinary essence of northern China and of the Western-style food, while maintaining its traditional local flavor.
The cooking methods of Canton cuisine are complicated and Canton cuisine is elaborate and refined. Chefs have to spend much time to prepare the materials and cook, that’s why the Canton cuisine restaurants are less than Sichuan cuisine restaurants.
The most characteristic cooking methods are cooking in salt or wine, baking in a pan, and soft frying. Guangdong cuisine emphasizes unique mixed flavorings. For example, one flavoring liquid is a mixture prepared from onion, garlic, sugar, salt, and spices. The gravy is prepared from a mixture of peanut oil, ginger, onion, Shaoxing rice wine, crystallized sugar, anise, cassia bark, licorice root, clove, ginger powder, and dried tangerine peel. Spiced salt is prepared from refined salt, sugar, powdered spices, and anise. These flavorings, along with other favorite condiments such as oyster sauce, fish sauce, clam oil, and curry, give Canton cuisine a unique taste.
For many people of Canton, everything that walks, crawls, flies, or swims is edible, such as cat, snake, honeybee pupae and so on. In order to esteem the eating habits of other areas, some of materials are eliminated. Therefore, a lot of strange food no longer appears to today’s Canton cuisines.