(How Zeng, also spel ed Tseng, became Ching is another one of those mysteries of Chinese-English transliterations.)
Which means that today, according to Michael Tong, the dish we are eating is actual y closer to General Ching’s chicken.
So what happened to General Ching? Why was he vanquished by his former protégé and his chicken recipe stolen?
General Ching’s chicken did conquer some territory beyond Hunam in the late 1970s, with a few scattered appearances on other restaurant menus, but he never seemed to establish a beachhead.
Today his name is rarely mentioned. In contrast, General Tso’s ubiquity is likely due to his embrace of modern technology: television. Al great military men know that in the modern age, war is fought in the media as wel on the battlefields.
In 1974, the local ABC news station in New York did a segment on Chef Peng’s restaurant.
Reporter Bob Lape, the Eyewitness Gourmet, visited Chef Peng in his kitchen and taped the making of General Tso’s chicken. After the segment ran, about fifteen hundred people wrote in and asked for the recipe, Mr. Lape remembered. “It was a serenade to the mouth. It’s that kind of dish. It’s a one-time instant love affair.”
Television is perhaps how General Tso’s name achieved recognition, but somewhere along the way General Ching’s recipe became more popular.
The name of one dish got merged with the recipe of another. Had the pupil conquered the master?
I final y met Chef Peng during an afternoon mah-jongg game in his apartment building in central Taipei. He was a tal , patrician man with white hair careful y combed in neat paral el lines. At eighty-eight, he was hard of hearing, so the conversation mostly consisted of me yel ing into his ear in Mandarin. He spoke slowly and methodical y, the way some elderly people do, as though operating in slow motion.
He recounted that he had created the original dish in perhaps 1955 or 1956, on the island of Taiwan, after the Nationalists had been ousted by the Communists. He had named it after the general because he had wanted to use a symbol of Hunan; the other great Hunan figure, Mao Zedong, was obviously persona non grata.
In careful y enunciated Mandarin, I told him that the dish known as General Tso’s chicken was now perhaps the most popular Chinese dish in al of America. In fact, I had also seen his version in Korea, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic.
His curiosity piqued, Chef Peng asked me if I had tried General Tso’s chicken at his restaurant and if the versions in America were similar.
Unsure of how he would react, I hesitated before answering. “The American versions are sweet,” I final y said.
“Sweet?” he asked, his eyes growing wide.
He waved his hand. “The dish can’t be sweet. This isn’t the taste of Hunan cuisine. The taste of Hunan cuisine is not sweet,” he said emphatical y.
I had brought numerous pictures of General Tso’s chicken on my laptop, accumulated over months of travels across the States and beyond. I began to scrol through them, showing the rich range into which General Tso’s chicken had evolved.
Al of a sudden he pointed his finger at my screen accusingly. I looked. He was indicating the lush bed of green broccoli under the chicken. “This isn’t right,” he said. He was perplexed and asked,
“What is that doing there?” His son and I explained that the single most popular vegetable in American Chinese cuisine is broccoli. He shook his head and said General Tso’s chicken should just be served as is. It doesn’t need to rest on a bed of broccoli.
He criticized the next picture because the chilies were red instead of black. But that was a minor crime compared to the travesties in some of the other versions he saw. One was clearly made of tasteless cubes of chicken breast, instead of the succulent dark leg meat. He shook his head when he saw the baby corn and carrots in a version from Dover, New Hampshire. He would never use baby
Which means that today, according to Michael Tong, the dish we are eating is actual y closer to General Ching’s chicken.
So what happened to General Ching? Why was he vanquished by his former protégé and his chicken recipe stolen?
General Ching’s chicken did conquer some territory beyond Hunam in the late 1970s, with a few scattered appearances on other restaurant menus, but he never seemed to establish a beachhead.
Today his name is rarely mentioned. In contrast, General Tso’s ubiquity is likely due to his embrace of modern technology: television. Al great military men know that in the modern age, war is fought in the media as wel on the battlefields.
In 1974, the local ABC news station in New York did a segment on Chef Peng’s restaurant.
Reporter Bob Lape, the Eyewitness Gourmet, visited Chef Peng in his kitchen and taped the making of General Tso’s chicken. After the segment ran, about fifteen hundred people wrote in and asked for the recipe, Mr. Lape remembered. “It was a serenade to the mouth. It’s that kind of dish. It’s a one-time instant love affair.”
Television is perhaps how General Tso’s name achieved recognition, but somewhere along the way General Ching’s recipe became more popular.
The name of one dish got merged with the recipe of another. Had the pupil conquered the master?
I final y met Chef Peng during an afternoon mah-jongg game in his apartment building in central Taipei. He was a tal , patrician man with white hair careful y combed in neat paral el lines. At eighty-eight, he was hard of hearing, so the conversation mostly consisted of me yel ing into his ear in Mandarin. He spoke slowly and methodical y, the way some elderly people do, as though operating in slow motion.
He recounted that he had created the original dish in perhaps 1955 or 1956, on the island of Taiwan, after the Nationalists had been ousted by the Communists. He had named it after the general because he had wanted to use a symbol of Hunan; the other great Hunan figure, Mao Zedong, was obviously persona non grata.
In careful y enunciated Mandarin, I told him that the dish known as General Tso’s chicken was now perhaps the most popular Chinese dish in al of America. In fact, I had also seen his version in Korea, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic.
His curiosity piqued, Chef Peng asked me if I had tried General Tso’s chicken at his restaurant and if the versions in America were similar.
Unsure of how he would react, I hesitated before answering. “The American versions are sweet,” I final y said.
“Sweet?” he asked, his eyes growing wide.
He waved his hand. “The dish can’t be sweet. This isn’t the taste of Hunan cuisine. The taste of Hunan cuisine is not sweet,” he said emphatical y.
I had brought numerous pictures of General Tso’s chicken on my laptop, accumulated over months of travels across the States and beyond. I began to scrol through them, showing the rich range into which General Tso’s chicken had evolved.
Al of a sudden he pointed his finger at my screen accusingly. I looked. He was indicating the lush bed of green broccoli under the chicken. “This isn’t right,” he said. He was perplexed and asked,
“What is that doing there?” His son and I explained that the single most popular vegetable in American Chinese cuisine is broccoli. He shook his head and said General Tso’s chicken should just be served as is. It doesn’t need to rest on a bed of broccoli.
He criticized the next picture because the chilies were red instead of black. But that was a minor crime compared to the travesties in some of the other versions he saw. One was clearly made of tasteless cubes of chicken breast, instead of the succulent dark leg meat. He shook his head when he saw the baby corn and carrots in a version from Dover, New Hampshire. He would never use baby
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