The famous "Kung Pao Chicken Cube" is a Sichuan dish in the impression of many people. In fact, this is only because Ding Baozhen, a Qing Dynasty official and Guizhou gold weaver, made this traditional Qiancai dish "Gongbao Chicken Ding" interpreted into Guizhou, Shandong, Sichuan and other flavors. By the 1930s, two Guiyang chefs were not willing to be lonely, and they immersed themselves in the study of a Guizhou-style Gongbao chicken, which removed the word "Ding" and also highlighted the biggest difference in cooking ingredients: Gongbao chicken with skin, regardless of part; Gongbao chicken is mainly chicken breast, not necessarily with skin.
Today, a thousand chefs have a thousand ways to fry Kung Pao chicken, and the Original Gong Bao Chicken created by those two Guiyang chefs has been handed down to this day, which not only has achieved three generations of famous chefs, but also composed a history of changes in Guiyang's food culture.
Guo Enyuan, born in 1960, is the third generation of Guizhou Qianpai Gongbao Chicken
A hundred years ago, the origin of the "Ancestor of Qiancai"
Guo Enyuan's father's name was Wu Zuowen (1937-2006), and many people wondered why Guo Enyuan did not take his father's surname. Guo Enyuan said that this is because his father Wu Zuowen was surnamed Wu with his grandmother, and he himself returned to the ancestral grandfather Guo for three generations, so his surname was Guo.
Speaking of the relationship with Gong Bao chicken, we must start from Wu Zuowen's master. "My father was the apprentice of Xiong Yunxuan, the 'first generation of Qiancai master', and it was Xiong Yunxuan (1896-1966) and Xiong Yunchen (1898-1982) who pioneered the practice of Protecting Chickens in the Qianpai Palace."
Guo Enyuan said that when Xiong Yunxuan and Xiong Yunchen were young, they worshipped Luo Jirong, who was known as the "Ancestor of Qiancai", as a teacher and worked as an apprentice in the "Jirong Lou" restaurant. In 1935, the Xiong brothers opened a restaurant in Guiyang called "Yun Rongchun", when Xiong Yunchen was skilled in making dim sum and Xiong Yunxuan was good at red case craftsmanship.
During this period, the two continued to ponder, replacing the barrel pepper with Guizhou authentic rice dumpling peppers, and discarding peanuts, with Guizhou secret sauce, to make a red color Qianpai Gongbao chicken. "The ingredients for this kung pao chicken are the chicken meat removed from the skin of the whole chicken, cut into thumb-width strips, and then cut into rounded abacus beads. It tastes warm, salty and spicy, slightly sweet and sour, and has the taste of 'little lychee'. "
The Xiong brothers also jointly wrote the first book of Qiancai, "Qianwei Recipe", which was published by The Zunyi Road Hotel in Guiyang in 1981, and collected more than 130 Qiancai recipes such as "Gongbao Chicken", "Eight Treasures Specialty Fish" and "Broken Cake Buns", which made a very important contribution to the rise of Qiancai.
Fifty years ago, the long line in front of the Riverside Hotel
In Guo Enyuan's childhood, his father Wu Zuowen often scooped rice chili peppers at home, and when he was called to cook, his father took out a lunch box and packed a box of rice chili peppers, put it on the back shelf of the bicycle, and went out to fry the palace chicken for others. "In the impression, my father's life is two points and one line, in addition to work, it is to go home with us and cook for the family." Guo Enyuan said that the aroma of the bad spicy meat slices and braised meat made by his father is still remembered, and it is these delicious temptations that make Guo Enyuan have a strong interest in learning to cook.
After graduating from junior high school, Guo Enyuan also embarked on the road of learning to cook, working as a chef at the Riverside Hotel, when his master was Lai Bingrong (1905-1986), a well-known chef in the culinary world, and in 1964, Lai Bingrong was named a national culinary technician, when there were only a few chefs in Guiyang who won this name.
Guo Enyuan said he will never forget the scene in the late 1970s when Guiyang people lined up in a long line to play cauldron dishes at the Riverside Hotel. "At that time, there was a shortage of materials, limited supplies of meat, oil, and the like, as well as sugar, tofu and the like, which were very tight, and at that time, every family would issue meat tickets and oil tickets, and everyone would have oligo oil (dialect, the meaning of lack of water) and was full of desire for fat-rich meat."
As the two most well-known hotels in Guiyang at that time, the Riverside Hotel and the Guiyang Hotel were full of customers every day, and there was no business at all, Guo Enyuan recalled, at that time, the first floor of the Riverside Park was supplying cauldron dishes, and the second floor could sit down to eat small stir-fry, before the meal every day, hundreds of people lined up in a long line on the first floor to play vegetables, very lively. At that time, there were only four dishes in the cauldron, which were Kung Pao Diced Meat (Chicken Cube, or Diced Meat?). ), braised pork, pot meat and home-cooked tofu, 1 yuan or 2 yuan a piece, can not use food stamps.
"At that time, those who could come to eat cauldron dishes were also relatively well-conditioned families, and they would take the dishes home and eat them with their families, like cooking hot pot with braised pork, which should have become popular at that time."
To this day: inheriting Qiancai and promoting classics.
Guo Enyuan said that in that era, there were not many entertainment projects like now, and everyone watched open-air movies after work. It may be that there are not many entertainment projects, and people will put more attention to their work. So when you rest, you buy the ingredients home, and then try it tirelessly and repeatedly to study how to stir-fry a dish.
After the death of his father Wu Zuowen, Guo Enyuan carried the banner of the third generation of heirs of Qianpai Gongbao Chicken, and in 2014, Guo Enyuan registered the "Wu Gongbao" catering brand in his father's name, continuing the legend of Gongbao Chicken.
Wu Composed's Gongbao Chicken Recipe published in guiyang evening news in 1988