Do you know that Hongkongers eat ghosts for breakfast?
No, not real ghosts (if they are real to begin with), but a kind of
ghost called “Deep Fried Ghost” (油炸鬼).
You still have no idea what I am talking about? OK, 油炸鬼is actually a kind of slightly salted fried breadstick
which is not only popular in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China, but also in
East Asian regions like Singapore and Malaysia.
Where
does this weird name come from though? 油炸鬼 [jau4
zaa3 gwai 2] is actually the Cantonese name of the food, it’s mostly called 油條 (“oil stick”) in Mandarin speaking region.
It
is said that during Song Dynasty (AD960 - 1279), the notorious government
official 秦檜 (Qin
Hui) framed the famous and patriotic general 岳飛 (Yue Fei). This led to Yue Fei’s death and people
were angry with Qin Hui’s doing because Yue Fei had been fighting hard for the
country. Out of anger and hatred, people made this kind of food and called it油炸檜 (“deep-fried Qin Hui”, 檜 [kui2] and 鬼 [gwai2] are kind of similar in Cantonese),
symbolizing “traitorous people like Qin Hui deserved to be deep-fried and
eaten”. Changing its name to 油炸鬼 is
probably a way to further derogate Qin Hui.
Well…no
one knows if the story is real or should we eat it with hatred, but that doesn’t
stop us from loving this food, and it’s a popular choice for breakfast. Just
order this and a bowl of congee, and you will have the most classic combination
of Hong Kong-style breakfast!
Make
sure you don’t eat too many油炸鬼
though, since it’s oily and probably not the healthiest food in the world…
沒有留言:
張貼留言