Zhuanglang Charcoal Clay Hot Pot 庄浪暖锅

How it is made

The pot matters as much as the food. The Pingliang culture and tourism bureau says it should be an earthenware pot fired at the Ankou kiln (安口窑) in Huating (华亭), not a metal one. Potters wash, settle and knead the clay, then leave it to dry in the shade for more than ten days, and the fired pot is full of tiny pores. Charcoal burns in a hollow copper tube standing in the middle of the pot, and its heat soaks slowly into the pot walls instead of cooking the food over a fierce flame. The bureau prefers hardwood charcoal, which gives off no smoke.

The filling goes in a fixed order: sliced white radish and potato at the bottom, then potato-starch noodles, firm tofu, wood ear and daylily, with pork belly on top, so that meat and vegetables flavour each other. The bureau lists three ways of packing the pot: everything mixed together; each vegetable, the noodles and the tofu in separate compartments; or a mixed pot "faced" (盖面子) with pork belly and ribs across the top. Much of the work is done beforehand. The radish is boiled until it is 70 to 80 per cent cooked, the noodles are soaked and the meat slices are passed through hot oil, so the pot only has to heat through slowly.

Flavour and texture

The stock is bone or chicken broth seasoned with pepper, Sichuan pepper, spring onion, ginger, garlic and local chilli. The bureau sums up the result in four words, numbing, hot, warming and fragrant (麻、辣、暖、香): the numbing and chilli heat come first, and the warmth and fragrance follow.

Where it comes from

Local tradition ties the dish to the Northern Song dynasty, when the general Liu Hu (刘沪) built the walled town of Shuiluo (水洛城) inside present-day Zhuanglang. In the bureau's telling, local people packed meat and vegetables in layers in clay pots, stewed them over a low charcoal fire and presented them to the general and his troops, and the dish became known as the "general's pot" (将军锅). The Zhuanglang county gazetteer (庄浪县志) records the pot at winter banquets, layered with meat and vegetables, warmed over charcoal and eaten by the whole table seated around it.

How it is eaten

In Zhuanglang the pot belongs to festivals, weddings and funerals, and to entertaining guests. The bureau writes that it is the first meal for someone returning home from far away, and that at Spring Festival villages lay out a "hundred-family banquet" (百家宴), where each household brings its best dish and the simmering clay pot is the one that draws the eye.