Venture beyond lamb kebabs on a journey to a delectable western Chinese dish

谁说美食必须精致？新疆大盘鸡的灵魂就是粗放!

You have driven 300 miles over the endless Gobi Desert with scarcely a sign of life in any direction. The sun sets as the heat of the day cools into night. Then you see, in the middle of nowhere, a small restaurant by the highway.

The "big plate chicken" is a classic dish in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Photos provided to China Daily

You enter with a gust of wind and sand whirling around your boots like a Wild West movie, and say to the bosomy waitress with her hair wrapped in a colorful scarf: "A big plate chicken, madame!"

In Chinese culture, delicacy is firmly associated with Confucius' pursuit of good food: "Food can never be too delicate, and meat can never be too meticulously cut." Such values are best represented in southern Chinese cuisines - where you better dress to the nines and be ready to use silver chopsticks.

However, if you find such fussy cuisine boring and need an outlet via a bit of delicious frontier food on your palette, it is best to take yourself to a Xinjiang restaurant. Xinjiang cuisine is not just lamb kebabs, and if you are there with friends, the "big plate chicken" (大盘鸡) is a classic.

The big plate chicken is a stew of chicken, potato and peppers, finished off with a bowl of wide noodles. What makes this dish so special is that there is no secret recipe or rare ingredient, just a big, macho platter of delicious, hearty grub. You can leave the fancy ingredients by the wayside and concentrate on the true spirit of the nomad. Hack up everything as you like it and swing it on a high fire. The look of the dish should be the last thing on your mind. Above all, remember this: Be generous - if you cannot find a plate big enough, put it in a large bowl.

The origin of the dish is difficult to discern. Some cheesy stories claim it was invented by a court chef in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) just like every delicious dish in China. This chef, of course, served Emperor Qianlong.

But such stories are almost an insult to the dish. The most reliable origin, according to the memories of Uygur locals, is that they grew up eating a kind of stewed, chili chicken similar to the big plate chicken. But the dish didn't gain fame until the early 1990s and is commonly believed to have first started in its current incarnation in Shawan county, not far from Shihezi in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Writer Fang Ruguo from Shawan says: "At that time a restaurant in Shawan was well-known for its stewed chicken. The dish was usually contained in a large enamel plate about a foot in diameter. Gradually the customers started to call it 'the big plate chicken', and that was how it got its name."

In most cases, in Xinjiang at least, it is a favorite dish for long-haul truck drivers. After hours of lonely driving with nothing but vast deserts and prairie in sight, a generous plate of fleshy chicken with wide noodles submerged in a savory sauce really hits the spot. Even in the big cities, no matter how fancy the Xinjiang restaurant, there is just no way to hide the western soul of the dish, especially when you find yourself grabbing the chicken with your fingers in the true spirit of this wonderful, wild West China chow.

Ingredients (recipe serves four)

A whole chicken 整鸡

2 tomatoes 西红柿

3 potatoes 土豆

2 green peppers 青椒

4-6 garlic cloves 大蒜

10 cm scallion or one-fourth of an onion 大葱/洋葱

A large cube of ginger (about 20 grams) 姜

A pinch of Sichuan peppercorn 花椒

3 laurel leaves 香叶

2 whole pieces of star anise 八角

A small piece of cinnamon 桂皮

A handful of red chili peppers

红辣椒

Sugar

Salt

Vinegar

Soy sauce (light and dark)

1. Chop chicken, tomatoes, potatoes and green peppers into bite-sized chunks. Cut up garlic, scallions and ginger.

2. Put 2 tablespoons oil into pot and add 1 teaspoon sugar. Put chicken in after sugar melts and cook on high heat until chicken dehydrates and turns golden. Add Sichuan peppercorns, laurel leaves, star anise, cinnamon and red chili peppers. Stir fry until you can smell pleasing aroma, add garlic, scallions and ginger. Add tomatoes.

3. Stir fry until tomatoes turn soft, put in potatoes. Add 1 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 tablespoons cooking wine, 2 tablespoons light soy sauce, 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce, 1 teaspoon white pepper (optional). Stir well, add water to cover half of contents.

4. Cook on medium until water nearly evaporated. Put in green peppers, stir fry briefly, serve.

Special thanks to Sophia Du, culinary instructor and nutritionist at the Hutong School, who provided recipe for home cooking.

Courtesy of The World of Chinese, www.theworldofchinese.com

The World of Chinese

(China Daily European Weekly 04/24/2015 page27)