Ding Baozhen and Gong Bao Chicken

Ding Baozhen (1820–1886), a Guizhou-born official of the late Qing, served as governor of Shandong and later as governor-general of Sichuan, where he held office until his death. The dish that carries his name, gong bao jiding (宫保鸡丁), is the best known of the Sichuanese classics, and Fuchsia Dunlop in Land of Plenty places its origin in his career and his title of Gong Bao, Palace Guardian, an honorary rank conferred on him. The name rests on that title; the stories told about how the dish first reached his table are many, and Dunlop treats them as tradition rather than record.

Land of Plenty is the book in which an English-language reader first meets gong bao chicken as a Sichuanese dish with a history, rather than as a sweet, glossy export. Dunlop writes of the dish as it is cooked in Sichuan: diced chicken, marinated in soy sauce and a little starch, stir-fried with dried chillies and whole Sichuan pepper (Zanthoxylum bungeanum), then finished with a sauce of sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, ginger and spring onion, and fried peanuts or cashews added at the last moment. The flavour she describes is the Sichuanese one called lychee, in which sweet, sour and savoury meet and the chillies give fragrance and heat without overwhelming the rest. The sauce is where the dish lives or dies. The balance of sugar and vinegar must be struck so that neither is dominant, and the chillies are fried in the oil until they darken to a deep red without burning, since a bitter chilli spoils everything cooked after it. The chicken is cut into small cubes of even size so that it cooks through in the brief time the wok allows, and the peanuts go in last so that they keep their crispness. Dunlop's account links the dish to the career of its namesake. Ding Baozhen's title, Gong Bao, is the source of the name, and the dish is remembered in Sichuan as his. In Guizhou, his native province, a similar dish is also claimed, and in Shandong, where he governed before Sichuan, a version is told as his as well; Dunlop sets these claims beside one another without resolving them. What the history supports is the title, the office and the name; the stories of the household cook and the particular dinner belong to local tradition. The dish has also had a political history in the twentieth century. During the Cultural Revolution the name of an imperial official was thought unsuitable, and the dish was for a time renamed in Sichuan, appearing under labels such as fast-fried chicken cubes with a sauce of sweet and sour flavour. The old name returned once the period had passed. Dunlop uses this passage to show how closely a Sichuanese dish can follow the course of the country's affairs. The version abroad is a different matter. In many Western kitchens the dish arrived as chicken in a thick, sweet red sauce with vegetables added, and Dunlop sets the Sichuanese original against it, giving the cook the proportions and the order of work that make the dish taste as it does in Chengdu. For a capable cook the lesson of her pages is that the dish is built from few elements, each handled with care, and that its reputation depends on the restraint of the sauce.

Gong bao chicken is eaten in Sichuan as one dish among several at a shared meal, with rice, and alongside plainer vegetable dishes and a soup that set off its heat and sweetness. The sauce is the pleasure of the dish: a lychee flavour in which sourness, sweetness and the numbing fragrance of Sichuan pepper come in turn, with the peanuts giving crunch against the tender chicken.