Jingde Chicken Stewed with Lingzhi Mushroom 旌德灵芝炖鸡

Jingde Chicken Stewed with Lingzhi Mushroom (旌德灵芝炖鸡) pairs a free-range local chicken with lingzhi (灵芝), the medicinal fungus also called reishi, cooked slowly in a clay pot. It comes from Jingde County (旌德县) in Xuancheng (宣城), Anhui. The Xuancheng culture and tourism bureau lists it under the name Jingde Lingzhi Ruyi Chicken (旌德灵芝如意鸡); the Jingde county site gives a version called Zishan Lingzhi Ruyi Chicken (梓山灵芝如意鸡).

Ingredients

The county recipe needs only four things: lingzhi, a farmyard chicken (草鸡), fresh ginger and salt. The city description insists that both the chicken and the lingzhi are local, with only a little seasoning added.

How it is made

The chicken is killed and cleaned, the ginger is sliced, and chicken, lingzhi and ginger go into a clay pot with salt. In the county version the pot then sits in a steamer for about two hours, until the meat is very tender.

Where it comes from

Jingde calls itself the 'home of Chinese lingzhi' (中国灵芝之乡), and the Xuancheng bureau calls the county China's most important lingzhi-producing area. In Yunle (云乐镇), a hill township in the county's north-east, lingzhi is the main industry and the local lingzhi processing technique is on the city-level intangible heritage list. The city bureau names the dish as the best liked of a series of newly developed lingzhi dishes, and sets them against a gradual shift in Hui cuisine (徽菜) away from heavy oil, heavy colour and long cooking towards a health-oriented style.