It is known at home and abroad. It was said that in the late Ming Dynasty, Qian Muzhai was a hermit living together with his wife Liu Rushi in Yushan Mountain. One day, he was wandering on the mountain pass, suddenly he smelled something fragrant, and it turned out to be a beggar baking a chick with pine branches. The chick’s surface was filled with mud. After some time, the mud, together with the chick’s feather, was stripped away by the beggar, and then the chick’s fragrance was amazingly strong. As the beggar did not have any cookers nor any ingredients, he have no choice but to bake the chick like that, however, the food was incredibly tasty. Then Qian Muzhai went back home and order his hired cooks to cook such a dish as the beggar did. However, the cook put some ingredients in the chick’s belly when cooking. Liu Rushi tasted it and highly praised: I would rather eat this kind of chicken in YuanShan mountain throughout my lifetime rather taste the cooked fish in Songjiang area for one time. Later, Wangsi Restaurant in Changshu city finally developed this famous dish through efforts. However, many country-gentlemen then was not quite satisfied with its name for its lack of elegance, so they decide to name it Simmered Chicken. But common people was still used to calling it Beggar’s Chicken. This dish’s material is Luyuan chicken ( also called four-yellow chicken: yellow feather, beak, feet, skin). After you butcher it, you need to remove its feather and scrub it in the water, exscind its oxters, remove its internal organs and wash it again. Then you put dried scallops, mushrooms, dried shrimps, sliced hams, sliced onions, gingers, wine and sugar in its belly, parcel the chick with lotus leaves, then fill the surface of lotus leaves with mud and bake it on the oven. Then you need to break the dried mud on it, put the chick on the plate and pour some sesame oil on the chick. You can eat it together with sweet sesame paste and onions. The Simmered Chicken have a bright color and the amazing fragrance. With its original flavor preserved, it is so tender that the chick’s meat will split from its bones when people are taking the meat with chopsticks. The fillings inside are also of unique flavor. Beggar’s Chicken doesn’t only enjoy fame in Changshu city, but also has been rated as one of the famous local specialties by the government of Jiangsu province.
