emporers chicken

emporers chicken, originally uploaded by china.sixty4.

A young market vendor sits by his slow "clay baked chicken's", sometimes called Beggar's Chicken, at a small 'open air' market in the north of the city. The chicken is wrapped in huge lotus leaves, packed in cool, wet claylike mud or ceramic clay and then baked for hours in a low oven. When the dish is ready and the hard clay cracked open, the chicken, so tender it falls away from the bone, releases a steamy fragrance that is truly memorable.

It is doubly appealing because it is steeped in the kind of folklore and legend that the Chinese love.

One story tells of the beggar who became the first Emperor of the Han dynasty (202 B.C. to A.D. 220). It holds that this clay-baked chicken dish, a favorite of the beggar, became an imperial specialty when he became Emperor.
photo: mhobbs