Rock-Ear Lichen Stewed Chicken

The dish comes from the mountain cookery of Huizhou (Huangshan) in southern Anhui, where wild rock-ear is a celebrated local 山珍 (mountain delicacy). 石耳 is a foliose lichen, Umbilicaria esculenta — a symbiosis of fungus and alga, not a plant and not the frog called 石鸡 — that grows on bare cliff faces above about 1,000 metres, where it must be picked by hand from the rock and grows back only over many years, which makes it scarce and valued. Eating it in China is old and documented: the Ming pharmacologist Li Shizhen's 《本草纲目》 notes that it grows plentifully on Mount Lu, that 'mountain monks gather and sun-dry it to send afar,' and that 'washed of grit and cooked as a vegetable it surpasses wood-ear, a fine thing.' Pairing this prized lichen with a whole stewing hen is the standard way the Huizhou kitchen presents it; the exact origin of the stew itself is not recorded.

The chicken comes off the bone in soft, juicy shreds, the long stew having loosened it without making it stringy. The broth is clear amber and tastes clean and deeply savory, with the ham bone behind it; over it lies the rock-ear's particular note — earthy, faintly mineral, a little like a cross between wood-ear and a dark forest mushroom. The lichen itself is thin and pleasantly slippery-chewy, with a fine crispness at the edge, never gritty if it was washed properly. A good bowl is fragrant and limpid, the fat skimmed; a bad one is greasy and cloudy, the chicken dry from too hard a boil, or the lichen still carrying sand and a bitter, muddy taste because it was not soaked and scrubbed enough.

Two things make the dish: gentle stewing and thorough cleaning of the lichen. Rock-ear grows flat against rock and traps grit and fine sand in its folds and on its underside, so it must be soaked in warm then cold water and rubbed repeatedly until the dark wash runs clear — skipping this leaves a gritty, bitter pot. The chicken is first blanched to remove blood and scum for a clear broth, then stewed in a clay pot: the pot's even, gentle heat slowly converts the collagen in the bird's connective tissue to gelatin, so the meat turns fall-apart tender and the broth gains body, while a fire kept low (never a hard rolling boil) stops the soup from emulsifying the rendered fat and turning cloudy. A ham bone is added for depth — its glutamates layering with the chicken's own savor — and is removed once it has given its flavor. The lichen, which is tougher, goes in toward the end so it softens to slippery-tender without disintegrating.