Huili Shredded Chicken and Ham 会理鸡火丝

Huili Shredded Chicken and Ham (会理鸡火丝) is a bowl of shredded rice cake in stock from Huili (会理) in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture (凉山彝族自治州), Sichuan. Its full local name is chicken-and-ham-shred erkuai (鸡火丝饵块): strips of erkuai (饵块), a rice cake, topped with fine shreds of chicken and ham. A Huili business association describes it as a traditional snack from the Sichuan–Yunnan border country.

How it is made

The stock is simmered slowly from chicken and ham, and the Chengdu Huili Chamber of Commerce (成都会理商会) names free-ranging Liangshan hill chickens and local ham for it. For each bowl, water is brought to the boil in a copper pot and the cut strips of erkuai go in with shredded tender Chinese cabbage. When they are about eight-tenths cooked they are lifted out with a slotted ladle into a large bowl and covered thickly with fine shreds of chicken, lean ham and fresh lean pork. Two ladles of the stock go over the top, then a little red-oil chilli bean paste and a scatter of chopped spring onion.

Ingredients

The noodle part is Huili erkuai. A Huili writer in West China Metropolis Daily (华西都市报) describes the local rice cake as springy, with good 'jinsi' (筋丝, a Huili word for chewy bite), and says it does not cloud the soup. Of the many ways it is cooked in Huili, the writer ranks cutting it into strips for the chicken-and-ham bowl as the best. The writer also rates Huili erkuai above the Yunnan kind.

Where it comes from

People's Daily Overseas Edition (人民日报海外版) calls the dish a favourite of Huili people. Many people wrongly assume Huili is in Yunnan, so the dish is often filed as Yunnan food, a point the secretary-general of the Chengdu Huili Chamber of Commerce made when he brought it to the Western China International Fair (西博会); he also said the chamber was working on a ready-made (pre-prepared) version.