As we all know, China is a big country with catering culture. Due to the different geographical environment, customs and customs of each place, many cuisines with local flavors have been formed. Among them, Sichuan cuisine, Lu cuisine, Cantonese cuisine, Fujian cuisine, Su cuisine, Zhejiang cuisine, Hunan cuisine and Hui cuisine are the most famous. In these eight major cuisines, almost every representative dish has its own story behind it. Today, Xiaobian will introduce to you the origin of "Kung Pao Chicken Cube", one of the representative dishes of Sichuan cuisine.
The inventor of "Gongbao Chicken Ding" was Ding Baozhen, the governor of Sichuan in the late Qing Dynasty. Ding Baozhen (丁宝桢), courtesy name Zhi Huang ,, a native of Pingyuan Niuchang Town, Guizhou, was a jinshi in the third year of Xianfeng and was initially appointed as a Shujishi of Hanlin Yuan. Later, Ding Baozhen's mother died, and he returned to his hometown to Ding Worry. Just when Zunyi Yang Longxi rebelled, Ding Baozhen went bankrupt and recruited eight hundred warriors to guard his hometown. In the sixth year of Xianfeng, when the Miao people rebelled, Ding Baozhen recruited 4,000 people from the people and successively recovered Pingyue, Dushan and other places.
After Ten Years of Xianfeng, after Ding Baozhen served as the prefect of Yue Prefecture, he dismissed the soldiers he had recruited earlier. Because of the shortage of food, he gave everyone all the last 500 taels of silver. However, the soldiers were touched by Ding Baozhen's great righteousness, and they did not take anything and left one after another. In the first year of tongzhi, Ding Baozhen served as the prefect of Changsha again. Later, when Ding Baozhen was serving as a political envoy in Shandong, the king of Horqin County, Gelinqin, died in battle in Caozhou, and he was impeached for failing to cooperate in the battle, and Ensheng Sipin Ding dai stayed in office.
In the fifth year of Tongzhi, some court officials who had a grudge against Ding Baozhen impeached him again, and when the song reached the hands of Zeng Guofan, Zeng Guofan tried to ensure that Ding Baozhen was innocent to the emperor. At the same time, Yan Jingming, the governor of Shandong, also expressed his appreciation for Ding Baozhen and expressed to the imperial court that he was willing to retire and let Ding Baozhen take over his position. As a result, Ding Baozhen became the new inspector of Shandong.
During his tenure as governor of Shandong, Ding Baozhen not only cured the Flood of the Yellow River twice and founded the Shandong Machine Manufacturing Bureau, the first government-run industrial enterprise in Shandong, but also did a very gratifying thing, that is, to kill the eunuch An Dehai. During his tenure as governor of Sichuan, Ding Baozhen reformed the salt administration, straightened out the administration of officials, and repaired the Dujiangyan water conservancy project. He was honest and honest all his life, patriotic and patriotic, and benefited the people, so after his death, he was posthumously awarded the title of "Prince Taibao" by the imperial court, with the nickname "Wencheng", and entered the Ancestral Hall of The Virtuous. And he invented Gongbao Chicken Ding during his tenure as governor of Sichuan.
Legend has it that Ding Baozhen loved cooking, especially chicken and peanut rice. During his tenure as governor of Sichuan, he fell in love with spicy food, so he developed a dish of chicken cubes, red peppers, and peanuts and rice under the pot of stir-fry. Originally, this dish was Ding Baozhen's private dish, but it was later passed on by the chef, and it became more and more widely known to everyone. At that time, people asked the chef the name of the dish, and the chef thought for half a day and said, "Let's call it Kung Pao Chicken!" Because Ding Baozhen was posthumously awarded the title of "Prince Taibao", and the Prince Taibao was one of the "Palace Security", the chef named the dish "Gongbao Chicken" in order to commemorate him. Later, Kung Pao chicken not only became a Beijing court dish, but also spread overseas, becoming a famous traditional dish at home and abroad.