Qinhu Lake Eight Delicacies 溱湖八鲜

Qinhu Lake Eight Delicacies (溱湖八鲜) is the name Jiangyan District (姜堰区) of Taizhou (泰州) gives to eight groups of foods from Qinhu Lake (溱湖) and the Qintong (溱潼) area, and to the local dishes cooked from them. JSChina counts more than a hundred dishes made from the eight, changing with the seasons.

Ingredients

JSChina lists the eight as Qinhu fence crabs (簖蟹), soft-shelled turtle (甲鱼), freshwater shrimp (青虾), whitebait (银鱼), waterfowl (水禽), snails and shellfish (螺贝), the Qinhu 'four happinesses' (四喜) and water vegetables (水蔬). Fence crabs are the crabs that, heading back from inland rivers to the Yangtze in August and September, manage to climb over the trap fences (簖箔) set upright in the water and into the nets; all of them are sturdy, top-grade crabs. Xinhua's Jiangyan food page describes them as green-eyed and red-haired, with thick roe and plump meat. Qinhu whitebait, described as rare in the Lixiahe (里下河) region, breeds in the lake's slow, clean water and comes to market in midsummer; the fish are transparent and shaped like willow leaves.

How it is made

Each ingredient has its own treatment. Fence crabs are washed, tied with cotton string, steamed and served with minced ginger and rice vinegar. Soft-shelled turtle is cooked in a white sauce in summer, in soup in winter and red-braised in spring and autumn, giving a sauce as sticky as glue. Whitebait is steamed with eggs or made into crisp-fried whitebait, whitebait balls in clear soup and whitebait broth. Freshwater shrimp are shelled and chopped into a paste with chicken stock, egg white and ginger-scallion water, then shaped into balls. Clams, river snails and mussels follow the season, in dishes such as clam and tofu soup and river mussel with salted pork.

Where it comes from

Jiangyan set up a Qinhu Eight Delicacies food culture association on 27 September 2021. In a contest reported by Taizhou Daily (泰州日报) in December 2024, more than a hundred chefs from around China cooked with the eight in Jiangyan. One winning dish, 'hundred birds return to the nest' (百鸟归巢), set Qinhu tiger-head goby (虎头鲨), shaped like birds, in nests made of noodles, while a Shanghai team made 13 kinds of lion's head meatballs and its leader cooked a freshwater-shrimp version.