Shawan Ancient Town 沙湾古镇 is located within the Panyu district of
Guangzhou city. Shawan is famed for their water buffalo milk dishes and
unique cuisine. The ancient town founded during the Southern Song dynasty is a Must
Visit on any foodie trip to Guangzhou.
Note: Images are screengrabs from CCTV
video 沙湾：食不厌精.
Shawan Ancient Town was founded by the 何 He family some 800 years ago during the Southern Song dynasty (1127 - 1279). During its heyday, the He family owned 60,000 hectares of land, mostly paddy fields.
The He family had many water buffaloes to work the fields. There was, therefore, an abundance of water buffalo milk. In order not to waste any milk, the residents of Shawan Ancient Town created many dishes using water buffalo milk, hence their famed milk banquet.
Even if you had not been to Shawan before, you may have tried ginger juice milk curd 薑汁撞奶. It is exactly what its name says, milk curd made with ginger juice - milk curd is smoother than soy bean curd. This popular sweet milky dessert is easily available in Guangdong province, Hong Kong and HK cha chaan teng (tea shop) around the world.
With the help of white vinegar, buffalo milk is made into milk curd in the shape of little flat discs. There are many ways to use these milk discs.
The milk discs can be eaten with congee for extra flavour and nutrition. They can also be used in soups, stews, made into rolls, stir fried and even deep fried.
Shawan has a dace fish dish known interestingly as "Climb the Gold Mountain".
It is fresh dace fish from the Pearl River hand sliced into precise 3mm
slices.
The big ball of dace fish slices is slammed hard into a basin many times to
stretch the fibres and mell the meat together. This gives the meat a nice
chewy spring when eaten.
The ball of dace fish with slivers of spring onion, dried mandarin peel, etc., embedded inside is simply set in a shallow pan of soup to cook. To eat, the diner simply scrapes the meat off the heap of fish slices. Digging for the goodness of fish is auspiciously called "爬金山 Climb the Gold Mountain".
"五代同堂 Five Generations Together" is a special herbal soup where a quail egg is stuffed into a quail, into a pigeon, into a black chicken which is stuffed into a pig stomach.
The whole ball or bag is boiled with herbs in a large claypot to make a nutritious soup. The idea of stuffing the ingredients one into another is to preserve their original flavours. In the old days, a swallow egg is used but these are hard to find nowadays and so it is replaced with quail egg.
The next dish, "鸡丝酿芽菜 Bean Sprout Stuffed with Chicken", is rarely seen nowadays simply because it is too tedious to make. And, you read correct, it is literally bean sprout stuffed with a finely cut sliver of chicken meat 🤦
The head and root are plucked off a bean sprout and a slit is carefully cut along the stem. In this slit, a sliver of chicken meat is pressed into it.
The bean sprouts with chicken are then lightly stir fried with spring onion, light soy sauce and oil. The tender chicken tastes sweet and the bean sprout retained their crunch and sweet juiciness.
The filling in this spring roll is exactly the same as others - it is made with julienned vegetables, minced pork and prawn slices. But, instead of wrapping the filling with dried tofu skin, lacey pork caul membrane is used instead. Pork caul makes a tight wrap, has a sightly chewy texture and adds a nice lardy flavour.
The next time I am in Guangzhou city, I will surely schedule a day trip to Shawan Ancient Town to try these dishes. (The last time I was in Guangzhou was in 2004. That's too long ago already.)
Translated by Tony Boey on 17 July 2021
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