Gong cooks chicken with sour shoots

Gong Jinsheng is the founder of Gong’s restaurant named after its special dish -- chicken with sour bamboo shoots. With the dish attracting lots of consumers, Gong has perfectly integrated into the spicy soup sour bamboo shoots and fresh chicken.

Located in central Yunnan’s Anning city, Gong’s well known restaurant is near the Tanglangchuan river. Usually, visitors would come to the restaurant for the chicken after enjoying the hot spring bath and beautiful scenery.

Having been laid off, Gong started his own business by opening the restaurant with all of his savings in 2003. Although the catering business was full of difficulties, Gong finally stirred the taste bud of quite a few consumers and gained fame with his outstanding cooking skills.

Ingredient selection is key to cooking the chicken. For instance, the bamboo shoots from the Ailao mountain would be a best choice in all shoots, and the native chicken in Yunnan is stronger and tastes more mellow.

The chicken dish starts with a condiment, with pepper and vinegar prepared in advance. Pour edible oil into a fry pan, add homemade sauce and stir them through. Then, garlic, oyster sauce, seafood powder, Sichuan pepper oil, soya sauce as well as other seasonings are added and boiled with sour bamboo shoots when they are mixed well. Pour the boiled sauce base into soup wok, and the tantalizing aroma of pepper and vinegar will spread around. The excellence in color will be appealing.

The next step is chicken stir-frying. Put the chicken into prepared hot oil and stir it through. Turn the heat down and stir briefly until the liquids are absorbed after a two-minute braising with high heat. Sprinkle chili and peanut powder on it, so that flavors will go deeper into chicken via remaining heat. Lastly, mix chicken with the prepared soup, and a tasty dish will come out.

Pickled bamboo shoots, spicy soup and fresh chicken were cooked to perfection, arousing people’s stomach. Coupled with fried potato and sticky Erkuai rice cake, the chicken dish would be even more impressive to diners.

Food features diverse tastes, like experiences in life. For the past decades, Gong Jinsheng has gone through satisfaction and confusion, as well as ups and downs, but he still devotes himself to running the canteen with optimism. “I hope my children could inherit the cooking skills, making each dish with care and allowing more to taste the authentic flavor,” said Gong.

Source: Xinhua Net; Trans-editing by Wang Shixue and Wang Qing