Li Hongzhang's Braised Medley

Named for Li Hongzhang (1823–1901), the late-Qing statesman who served more than two decades as Viceroy of Zhili and Minister of Beiyang, seated at the viceroy's yamen (直隶总督署) in Baoding. As the story is told in Baoding, after Li returned from his 1896 tour of Europe and America — months of unfamiliar Western food — he complained to his household steward Dong Maoshan that he missed home cooking; Dong and his junior Wang Xirui worked up a refined banquet braise on the local tradition of stew-braising, selecting sea cucumber, shark's fin, deer tendon and the like, with Ansu tribute cabbage, tofu and broad noodles, all seasoned with Baoding's Huaimao sweet wheat-paste. It was served at the East Flower Hall (东花厅) of the viceroy's yamen, Li praised it, and the official kitchen settled on the name 'Li Hongzhang's braised medley.' It is a canonical dish of the Zhili viceroy's banquet cuisine, whose cooking craft was listed as a provincial intangible-heritage in 2006 and a national one in 2011. The specific attribution to Dong and Wang rests on the Baoding banquet-house lineage rather than a dated record, so it is best read as tradition; what is firmly documented is the dish's place within the 直隶官府菜 school and its share of the za-hui braise family with the better-known Anhui hodgepodge.

A glossy domed mound, inverted from the steaming bowl onto a wide plate: sea cucumber and fish maw on top, then layered scallop, ham, chicken and bamboo shoot, all sheathed in a clear amber glaze. Every spoonful is a different texture — the sea cucumber slippery and yielding, the fish maw soft and spongy with soaked-up broth, the ham firm and salt-savory, the bamboo crisp. The sweet wheat-paste lends a deep, faintly sweet sauce-fragrance over the long-stocked savor. The luxury is in the harmony: no single ingredient shouts, but each has drunk in the same rich broth.

The braise rests on three things: rehydrating the dried seafood, the stock, and the final glaze. Dried sea cucumber and fish maw are sponges with almost no flavor of their own — they are slowly rehydrated in repeated changes of clean water (the sea cucumber over days, kept scrupulously free of oil and salt so the collagen swells fully and stays clean-tasting), then poached to purge any off-smell. The flavor work is done by a long-simmered chicken-and-ham stock, into which the soaked ingredients drink as they braise; substitute plain water and the costly ingredients taste of nothing. Baoding's Huaimao sweet wheat-paste, fermented for months, folds in a malty sauce-fragrance and a touch of sweetness that rounds the salt. Because the ingredients differ in firmness, they are par-cooked and sliced separately, then arrayed in a bowl and steamed so the flavors fuse to one. A thin starch glaze finishes it: too much and it turns gluey, too little and the ingredients sit loose in the broth — the right film binds sauce to ingredient so the whole reads as one composed dish.