Enough with the turkey, already. My palate belongs to Szechuan food, and this weekend, after the leftovers were gone, I returned to a quest I have sporadically pursued for years now. I have been seeking to duplicate, in my home, the experience of the perfect Kung Pao Chicken -- a dish I have occasionally, but less and less frequently, enjoyed in restaurants.
The dish I seek is a simple-looking but complex-tasting stir fry of small cubes of dark-meat chicken lightly dressed in a thick but scant dark-brown sauce that clings to it -- without forming a soupy, goopy pool on the plate, as so often emerges from inferior Chinese restaurant kitchens. Mixed in with the chicken are some quarter-inch scallion rounds from the thicker (white) end of the plant, and, of course, crunchy peanuts. The sauce has flecks of ginger, a touch of sweetness, a hint of sesame richness and a slight vinegar pucker. A half-dozen or so blackened whole red chilis complete the picture, or rather, set it aflame. This, to me, is Kung Pao Chicken -- gongbao ji ding, also sometimes called Szechuan Chicken with Peanuts.
A recent article in the New York Times by Howard French provided some interesting background to the dish from a restaurant in the city of Guiyang. In Guiyang, unlike in the neighboring province of Szechuan, it seems they do not believe in adding peanuts to the dish at all, nor do they use dried peppers. I certainly have no idea which regional variation deserves the "most authentic" label, and I don't doubt that the restaurant French profiled might be worth the visit. But I can tell you that the recipe the Times provided -- gooped up with way too much arrowroot starch, and relying on chili paste rather than whole peppers for the bite -- offered nothing like the experience I seek.
I have made the recipe from my favorite source of Chinese cuisine knowhow, Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook, and it is tastier, for sure; it provides the essential tip that you should buy raw peanuts and fry them in the wok (so many restaurants simply toss in a handful of cold dry-roasted Planters nuts at the very end of cooking -- feh!). But even Mrs. Chiang's offering ends up a bit gloppy, not quite right.
I recognize that my run-of-the-mill home range simply doesn't provide the level of heat that a high-powered restaurant-kitchen wok can use to flash-fry ingredients, seal in flavors and produce the right consistency in a sauce. But I'm still convinced there is a good recipe out there for what I'm seeking, and I'm going to continue hunting for it, and experimenting with adapting the recipes I have, until I achieve kung pao perfection. At such a time I will share my findings.
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