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Danwei Canteen: Chestnut Chicken Stew

Our new series, Danwei Canteen is a quick guide to traditional Chinese food as it's prepared where the cuisine was born: in Chinese rural areas and villages. We'll accompany the food with originally recorded music from parks and villages, and new interpretations of Chinese folk songs and the traditional repertoire. The video is also on Tudou for faster loading in China, and on Youtube.

In the first episode, Li Zhongqing from Anhui prepares Chestnut Chicken Stew. The music is:
- Performance by an anonymous lap steel guitar player in Ritan Park
- Anhui Opera song 'The Emperor's Female Son-Law' sung by Wu Fei
- Anhui Opera song 'Tianxianpei' performed on guzheng, or Chinese zither, by Wu Fei

Recipe:

  • Rinse the chicken. Cut off its nails and butt. Slice open the chicken belly lengthwise using a scissor. Pull all the innards out. Keep the stomach, heart and liver for later use and dump the rest. Extra attention should be paid not to break the inside layer of the chicken's stomach when you slice it open.
  • Cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks. Cut the green onion, ginger and garlic.
  • Pour oil into dry wok and let it heat for 1 minute, add garlic and ginger and stir them until it gives off a strong smell. Collect the fried spices into a bowl.
  • Pour more oil into the wok. Add a spoonful of soybean paste, add water and stir until it's fully melted. Add the chicken pieces together with fried spices and stir until the water evaporates. Add salt to your liking while stirring the chicken. Add more water until the chicken is fully immersed. Cover the wok with lid and heat. Lower heat and simmer it for 15 minutes.
  • Meanwhile, put the peeled chestnuts into another pot with water and heat for 15 minutes too.
  • Take out the boiled chestnuts and put them in the wok where chicken is. Stir more to mix them together until the meat is tender.
  • Sprinkle the chopped green onion. Turn off the heat and place the chicken on a dish.

- Lily Fu wrote up and translated the recipe

There are currently 13 Comments for Danwei Canteen: Chestnut Chicken Stew.

Comments on Danwei Canteen: Chestnut Chicken Stew

Could a recipe be put up since it's not entirely clear what the amounts and time needed are to make this at home.

Also, maybe the info music part could be put at the end of the video rather than over what looked like another fascinating recipe for eels? It was frustrating to watch that part of the video and try to figure out what the recipe might be with the words flashing over it.

Thanks, that was really interesting. Tell the editor to deinterlace the video next time ;)

Looking forward to the next one!

Great start. Looking forward to more in the series.

you got me salivating alright....

Question: did you de-interlace the video before uploading? the horizontal lines were quite noticeable...

美食加音乐,赞,加油!期待着单位新系列更多的视频。

Really grateful for this lesson in how to slaughter a chicken (I'm serious, this is not meant cynically!) and also glad to finally have a use for all the chestnuts around here. Thanks a lot, looking forward to the next episode...

Nice work! I really enjoyed watching it. Good music too!

This is so cool. Keep it up and look forward to more delicious homemade Chinese food. How about 凉拌酸辣云南米线?

This is a great way to save traditional cooking for next generations who do not know how to cut up a chicken and possibly what is a chicken. Can you also put up the Chinese of the ingredients? I couldn't see what kind of soybean paste it was. Thanks!

Several things about this video were extremely annoying. First, running text over the video images got in the way of trying to see what was happening. Second, wasting video footage showing the music segment was unneeded. Third, showing clipped footage of the cooking of other dishes was confusing and wasted more time. Fourth, no written summary of the ingredients and procedure (preferably in Chinese and English) was shown. Fifth, the chicken just magically appeared in the kitchen. No discussion or video was provided of where and how the chicken was bought, nor what elements were considered when buying the chicken. Sixth, when you use ingredients, be sure use the Chinese name as well, so that viewers can know what it is called. This was not done for all ingredients. And Seventh, the videography was very poor, with very little consideration of lighting or framing made.

C'mon guys, you can do better than this!!

Thanks for all the comments. A full list of ingredients and instructions for cooking in English and Chinese will be posted here soon.

Great new avenue for you Jeremy, love it! Perhaps in future features hearing how and where these wonderful dishes evolved (i.e. old family recipes etc.) would be great! Thanks for the appetite, maybe some of us "gui laos" in Silicon Valley can learn how to cook real Chinese food! Cheers!

I enjoyed this video. There is a good combination of music, food, culture, and history. Since this is the first in a series, it is understandable that there is a learning curve in how to produce these videos. I'm sure the upcoming videos will be even better.

If I could make one request, I'm always interested in hearing local dialects. If there is anyway you can squeeze these into the upcoming videos that would be greatly appreciated.

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