designed for shortage and storage, as the food historian E. N. Anderson noted in The Food of China .
Despite the opulent images of the country’s emperors, much of China was traditional y poor, so everything on an animal was eaten: ears, feet, tongue, intestines, liver. Since refrigeration did not exist for much of Chinese culinary history, food had to be dried or pickled to make it through the winter. With cooking fuel scarce, stir-frying was a popular technique because it used little oil and consumed energy efficiently. Many of General Tso’s family stil burn dried branches for their woks, a device that, with its rounded bottom, evenly distributes high heat along its surface. In contrast, the Chinese historical y had little use for baking, one of the least energy-efficient ways of cooking. American Chinese food developed under few such constraints. Refrigeration aided a fundamental shift in the American diet. Oil, necessary for deep-frying, was readily available. Refined sugar was easily accessible. Meat, much demanded and made plentiful by our agricultural-industrial complex, has become incredibly cheap by historical standards.
Americans like chicken, sweetness, and deep-frying.
These three desires converged in General Tso’s chicken.
I final y found a promising lead in my hunt for the general’s chicken in Changsha: Tang Keyuan, the general manager of the Xinchangfu Restaurant, who had been in the hospitality business for over two decades.
I first showed him a picture of corpulent pieces of General Tso’s chicken laid on a bed of broccoli. He squinted. “Is that oxtail?”
No, it’s chicken, I said. It’s a dish in America cal ed General Tso’s chicken— Zuo Zong ji —which is exceptional y famous.
His eyes lit up. “Ah! Zuo Zongtang tuji! ” he said, using the long form of the translation of “General Tso’s chicken.” My heart skipped a beat. Final y, I’d found someone in Hunan who knew of the dish!
“But that is not how you make it,” he sniffed.
“It’s total y different. The pieces are too big. You have to cut the pieces of chicken smal er.
“My brother knows how to make this dish,”
he added.
Where had he learned of it?
He thought. The dish had been introduced in Changsha by a Chef Peng in the 1990s. (The 1990s?
I thought. That’s more than a decade after the dish had already made the greatest-hits list in America.) Chef Peng had featured the dish when he opened up the Peng Yuan restaurant in Changsha’s Great Wal Hotel. But the restaurant hadn’t lasted.
Why had it closed down? I inquired.
“It didn’t keep up with the market.” He paused. “He didn’t innovate enough.”
Was Chef Peng even stil alive?
Four men had helped redefine American cuisine in the early 1970s. Three of them were Chinese culinary greats who worked out of New York City; the fourth was Richard Nixon, whose historic state visit to China in 1972, the first since the Communists had taken over the mainland, sparked an instant frenzy for al things Chinese. Suddenly, Americans learned that there was much more to Chinese food than chop suey and chow mein. A Chinese restaurateur who has owned more than twenty restaurants in Louisiana told me, “Lines formed overnight.”
The three China chefs had much in common.
As youngsters, they were classical y trained in kitchens in mainland China. When the Communists took over the mainland, they fled to Taiwan. After a few decades in Taiwan, they ventured to the United States. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, they began opening restaurants in New York City. Chef Peng opened Peng Yuan on the East Side. Chef T. T.
Wang opened Hunam and the different Shun Lees.
Wen Dah Tai, also known as Uncle Tai, joined forces with David Keh and opened Uncle Tai’s Hunan Yuan on Third Avenue and Sixty-second Street. As they innovated and introduced new dishes, the American media fawned over them. But even though Henry Kissinger loved Peng Yuan, Chef Peng closed it down
Despite the opulent images of the country’s emperors, much of China was traditional y poor, so everything on an animal was eaten: ears, feet, tongue, intestines, liver. Since refrigeration did not exist for much of Chinese culinary history, food had to be dried or pickled to make it through the winter. With cooking fuel scarce, stir-frying was a popular technique because it used little oil and consumed energy efficiently. Many of General Tso’s family stil burn dried branches for their woks, a device that, with its rounded bottom, evenly distributes high heat along its surface. In contrast, the Chinese historical y had little use for baking, one of the least energy-efficient ways of cooking. American Chinese food developed under few such constraints. Refrigeration aided a fundamental shift in the American diet. Oil, necessary for deep-frying, was readily available. Refined sugar was easily accessible. Meat, much demanded and made plentiful by our agricultural-industrial complex, has become incredibly cheap by historical standards.
Americans like chicken, sweetness, and deep-frying.
These three desires converged in General Tso’s chicken.
I final y found a promising lead in my hunt for the general’s chicken in Changsha: Tang Keyuan, the general manager of the Xinchangfu Restaurant, who had been in the hospitality business for over two decades.
I first showed him a picture of corpulent pieces of General Tso’s chicken laid on a bed of broccoli. He squinted. “Is that oxtail?”
No, it’s chicken, I said. It’s a dish in America cal ed General Tso’s chicken— Zuo Zong ji —which is exceptional y famous.
His eyes lit up. “Ah! Zuo Zongtang tuji! ” he said, using the long form of the translation of “General Tso’s chicken.” My heart skipped a beat. Final y, I’d found someone in Hunan who knew of the dish!
“But that is not how you make it,” he sniffed.
“It’s total y different. The pieces are too big. You have to cut the pieces of chicken smal er.
“My brother knows how to make this dish,”
he added.
Where had he learned of it?
He thought. The dish had been introduced in Changsha by a Chef Peng in the 1990s. (The 1990s?
I thought. That’s more than a decade after the dish had already made the greatest-hits list in America.) Chef Peng had featured the dish when he opened up the Peng Yuan restaurant in Changsha’s Great Wal Hotel. But the restaurant hadn’t lasted.
Why had it closed down? I inquired.
“It didn’t keep up with the market.” He paused. “He didn’t innovate enough.”
Was Chef Peng even stil alive?
Four men had helped redefine American cuisine in the early 1970s. Three of them were Chinese culinary greats who worked out of New York City; the fourth was Richard Nixon, whose historic state visit to China in 1972, the first since the Communists had taken over the mainland, sparked an instant frenzy for al things Chinese. Suddenly, Americans learned that there was much more to Chinese food than chop suey and chow mein. A Chinese restaurateur who has owned more than twenty restaurants in Louisiana told me, “Lines formed overnight.”
The three China chefs had much in common.
As youngsters, they were classical y trained in kitchens in mainland China. When the Communists took over the mainland, they fled to Taiwan. After a few decades in Taiwan, they ventured to the United States. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, they began opening restaurants in New York City. Chef Peng opened Peng Yuan on the East Side. Chef T. T.
Wang opened Hunam and the different Shun Lees.
Wen Dah Tai, also known as Uncle Tai, joined forces with David Keh and opened Uncle Tai’s Hunan Yuan on Third Avenue and Sixty-second Street. As they innovated and introduced new dishes, the American media fawned over them. But even though Henry Kissinger loved Peng Yuan, Chef Peng closed it down
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