Kaiyang pucai.

The preparation of the eel is a good example of how much effort is made in the food style. The eel is boiled until the pot is seething, and then simmered for 15 minutes with an array of seasonings - ginger, shallot, yellow rice wine, salt and vinegar. Then the eel is taken out, and rinsed with water. Chefs will slice it open to take only the flesh on the back, frying it in salad oil with soy sauce, black pepper, yellow rice wine, starch and garlic slices.

Chef Cai says Huai'an food offers simple but good countryside taste, like that made by "an old mom". Compared with Cantonese food, which uses a lot of seasoning, Huai'an cuisine relies more on the taste of the ingredients themselves. Although the dishes look simple, the chef's effort is apparent in the food and its taste.

To adapt to modern tastes, Cai says local chefs have meshed modern concepts of health into Huai'an food. Local people, who once used pork fat in the cooking, now replace it with vegetable oil. "Clear water" beef is braised in vegetable juice during preparation to make it more tender and healthy.

Quick-boiled bean-curd slices, brined "oily chicken", and Qingong pork meatball processed with an iron pole are also classic Huai'an specialties.

The chef says he and his team have worked to present "the tastes we had in childhood". Although he depicts Huai'an cuisine as that made by a countryside grandma, the amount of effort put into the food, and its simple but natural taste, may explain why the food style has earned its place in a museum.

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