意大利前外交官的“辣酱情缘”

◇ 文 |本刊记者 胡 婷 图| 游 宇

01 成为辣椒酱商人前，张卢卡的身份是意大利驻重庆总领馆商务处处长

6 月14 日晚，两江新区奥利嘉餐厅，一名意大利厨师靠着一罐重庆风味的辣酱，完成了一次对传统意大利菜的改造。

他的成果，摆在自助餐桌上：意式牛丸配川味豆瓣酱、烤虾串淋上渝味麻辣酱、风味炸鸡块蘸宫保辣酱……

这些混搭菜品，让在场中外食客们赞不绝口。而这场混搭盛宴中，真正的主角无疑是张卢卡研制的中式辣酱。

On the evening of June 14, an Italian chef completed a transformation of traditional Italian dishes by using a can of Chongqing-flavored thick chilli sauce at OriganoRoma in Liangjiang New Area.

02 ChinEAT 的各种产品

03 张卢卡及其团队

The dishes created by him were on the buffet table: Italian beef balls with Sichuan thick broad-bean sauce, grilled shrimp skewer drizzled with Chongqing spicy sauce, and fried chicken nuggets dipped in spicy diced thick chilli sauce …

These dishes mixed Chinese and Italian flavors were highly praised by the Chinese and foreign diners present. And the real protagonist in the mix-and-match feast was undoubtedly Chinese thick chilli sauce developed by Zhang Luka.

外交官 “辞官从食”Diplomatist “Engaging in Dishes while Giving up Government Post”

31 岁的张卢卡来自意大利南部的巴里，今年是他来重庆的第五个年头。

在成为做辣酱的商人之前，他的身份是意大利驻重庆总领馆商务处处长，主要工作是为重庆人到意大利旅游投资牵线搭桥。

而张卢卡“弃官”，竟是因为“好吃”。

2014 年，张卢卡来到意大利驻重庆总领馆，正如很多外国人一样，他爱上了这里的美食。不过，他发现，这么好吃的中国酱料在国外超市却少之又少。“比如，在国外虽然有老干妈，但一般都是在华人圈子里流行，外国人买的少。”

这是为什么呢？他做了一番调研，发现大多数中国调味酱都是用来烹饪的，外加中国餐饮明火烹饪的形式，使得中国的调味酱有更多的油、更重的盐、味精以及其他调料，这显然不太适合外国人直接用调味酱佐餐的习惯。而且对外国人来说中国的调味用起来过于复杂，“我曾经也买过水煮鱼的调料，却不知道该怎么使用，最后只得放弃。”

怎么让更多外国人品尝到东方美味呢？张卢卡萌发了一个大胆的想法：他要做出既有中国味，又适合外国人饮食习惯的调味酱。

去年1 月，张卢卡辞去了总领馆的工作，在重庆创立了自己的中国调味酱品牌——ChinEAT：LOGO 形状酷似中文“家”字，而红黄两种主色，在张卢卡眼里就寓意着中国的喜庆、吉祥。

Zhang Luca, 31 years old, from Bari in Southern Italy, is in his fifth year in Chongqing.

He served as the Section Chief of the Commercial Counselor's Office of the Consulate General of Italy in Chongqing before becoming a merchant of making thick chilli sauce, where he acted as a go-between for people from Chongqing to invest in Italy.

The reason for Zhang Luca "Giving up Government Post" owes to his "Passion for Dishes".

In 2014, Zhang Luca came to the Consulate General of Italy in Chongqing, where, like many foreigners, he fell in love with the cuisine in Chongqing. He found that such delicious Chinese sauce was scarce in foreign supermarkets. "For example, although there are Laoganma in my country, they are generally popular among the overseas Chinese community. Few foreigners buy Laoganma."

04 将制作过程拍摄成视频后，上传至互联网

But why is this? He did a research and found that most Chinese sauces are cooked by using open fire, which makes Chinese sauces contain more oil, salt, monosodium glutamate and other seasonings, and it is obviously not suitable for foreigners to eat directly with sauces. For foreigners, Chinese seasoning is too complicated to use. "I used to buy seasoning for boiled fish, but I didn't know how to use it, so I had to give up."

How could we let more foreigners taste Chinese delicious food? Zhang Luca came up with an adventurous idea: he intended to make a kind of sauce with Chinese flavor that suits the eating habits of foreigners.

Hence, in the January of last year, Zhang Luca resigned from the Consulate General and founded his own Chinese sauce brand, ChinEAT: The shape of the LOGO resembles the Chinese character " 家(Family)", and the two main colors of red and yellow symbolize festivity and auspiciousness in China in Zhang Luca's eyes.

“辣酱工”的日常有点“辣”The Daily Life of “Chili Sauce Maker” is a little “Spicy”

从吃货到行家的转变并不容易，张卢卡把他的家都变成了调味实验室。

走进他的家，客厅左边一米见方的矮方桌上，摆了丁香粉、肉桂粉等满满当当70 多种香辛料，旁边高一点的长桌上，则是各式破壁机、粉碎机、计量秤等。桌子下几大纸箱瓶瓶罐罐，都是从全世界搜罗来的各种调味酱。张卢卡说，从去年到现在，他几乎尝遍了世界各地的辣酱，大约有一千多瓶。

在张卢卡看来，要符合外国人的餐饮习惯，同时保留本土特色，这是辣酱开发的难点，也是重点。为此，他和研发团队花了一年多时间做市场调研，还去了芝加哥全球最大的国际餐饮及酒店用品展览会、意大利的国际辣椒节、新墨西哥国际食品展览等展会，邀请外国食客们现场试吃，收集食客们的问卷调查和意见。

通过不断的尝试、对比、调试、改良，张卢卡的辣酱慢慢有了自己的味道。

“手被辣红，眼睛被辣得掉泪，都是家常便饭。”从辣椒去蒂、切段开始，到腌制调味，一瓶酱的制作周期大概在一个月左右，其中每一道工序张卢卡都了如指掌。

虽然“泪点”满满，但这些泪显然没有白流，比如“用一斤的小米椒制作辣酱，放入的盐应为6 克，糖应为10 克”。这些精准的搭配比例都是他自己亲身实验，用一次次泪流满面得来的。

It was not easy to transform from a foodie to an expert, and Zhang Luka turned his home into a seasoning lab.

When you enter his home, you can see cloves powder, cinnamon powder and other 70 kinds of spices on the left side of a meter square table in the sitting room, next to it is a little higher long table, and all kinds of broken wall machine, crusher, scale and so on are arranged on it. There are cartons, bottles and cans of seasoning sauce under the table from all over the world. Zhang Luka said that he has tasted almost every thick chilli sauce in the world since last year, with about a thousand bottles.

In his view, the difficulties and focuses to make sauce are to conform to the food habits of foreigners and preserve local characteristics. For this reason, he and his research and development team spent more than a year to make a market research, and they also went to the world's largest International Food, Beverage and Hotel Supplies Exhibition in Chicago, the International Chili Festival in Italy, and the New Mexico International Food Exhibition, inviting foreign diners to eat on-site, so as to collect diners' questionnaires and opinions.

Through constant attempts, comparison, mixing of seasonings, and improvement, the thick chilli sauce of Zhang Luca gradually took on its own flavor.

"It's not uncommon for his hands to turn red and his eyes to tear". It takes about a month to make a bottle of sauce from peeling and slicing chili peppers to salting and seasoning, and Zhang Luca knows every step well.

Although it is full of hardships, but these hardships are clearly not in vain, for example, he knows that "6 grams of salt and 10 grams of sugar are needed to make the thick chilli sauce with 1 kilogram of millet pepper." These precise matching ratios come from his own experiments, with a burst of tears.

国际化与本土特色并存Coexistence of Internationalization and Local Characteristics

经过一次次调研、改良，今年5 月1 日，ChinEAT 的辣酱正式在广交会上发布，一共推出四个系列：印有熊猫与竹子图案的川味豆瓣辣酱，印有兵马俑图案的陕味番茄辣酱，印有穿龙袍的皇帝和北京天坛图案的宫保辣酱，印有重庆山水、吊脚楼、过江索道与九宫格火锅图案的渝味麻辣酱。

那么，张卢卡大费周章捣鼓出来的辣酱，究竟与国内传统的辣酱有何区别？

05 张卢卡展示刀工

06 辣酱的制作工序之一

07 试制辣酱

08 ChinaEAT 辣酱制作工作室

“我尝一口就晓得它是我们川渝豆瓣酱的味道。”陈瑜是一个土生土长的重庆人，在她第一次她尝过ChinEAT 川味豆瓣辣酱后这样说，“但是仔细回味后又会发现不同，相比通常的四川豆瓣酱，它的味道更温和一些，没有那么咸、辣，口感也更细腻，没有整颗的豆瓣。”

口感似是而非，吃法更是大相径庭。

传统的川渝豆瓣酱一般用来二次烹饪，比如炒菜，但是张卢卡的版本很简单，就像吃薯条蘸番茄酱一样，只要直接浇在食物上就行。

“我可以把中国的味道放在自己喜欢的东西上。”今年夏天，意大利姑娘茱莉亚第一次来到重庆，便对 ChinEAT 的辣酱爱不释“口”。在四款辣酱中，她最喜欢的就是宫保辣酱：可以用宫保辣酱抹面包，拌意大利面，或者蘸炸鸡翅……这样的混搭真是既熟悉又新奇。

就这样，张卢卡用一罐罐辣酱，让越来越多的外国朋友爱上中国味道，也向全世界讲述着他的重庆故事。

After a lot of researches and improvements, on May 1 this year, ChinEAT's thick chilli sauce officially launched four series at the Canton Fair: Sichuan-flavored Thick Broad-bean Sauce with Panda and Bamboo Patterns, Shaanxiflavored Tomato Sauce with Terra-Cotta Warriors Pattern, Spicy Diced Chili Sauce with the Emperor in the Dragon Robe and Beijing Temple of Heaven Patterns, and Chongqing-flavored Chili Sauce with Chongqing Landscape, Diaojiaolou, Cablo and Hotpot with Nine Separations Patterns.

09 ChinaEAT 的中国风包装

So what's the difference between the thick chilli sauce made by Zhang Luka and the traditional thick chilli sauce in China?

"I knew it was Sichuan-Chongqing thick broad-bean sauce after a bite of it." said Chen Yu, a native of Chongqing, after her first taste of Chin EAT Sichuan-flavored thick broad-bean sauce, "But it tastes milder, less salty and spicy than the usual Sichuan-flavored thick broad-bean sauce, it has a finer palate and has no whole bean paste."

The taste and the way you eat it are quite different.

The traditional Sichuan-Chongqing thick broad-bean sauce is usually used for secondary cooking, like cooking, but the sauce made by Zhang Luka is simple, you just need to poured the sauce directly on the food like eating potato chips dipped in ketchup.

"I can integrate the taste of China in something I like." This summer, when Julia, an Italian girl, first visited Chongqing, she fell in love with ChinEAT's thick chilli sauce. Her favorite of the four sauces is spicy diced chili sauce: you can spread spicy diced chili sauce on bread, mix it into pasta, or dip it in chicken wings … it's a familiar and novel mix.

In this way, Zhang Luka used various cans of thick chilli sauce to make more and more foreign friends fall in love with the Chinese flavor, and also told the world his story in Chongqing.