Pounded Chicken Feet 舂鸡脚

Pounded Chicken Feet (舂鸡脚) is a Dai (傣族) cold dish from Xishuangbanna (西双版纳), Yunnan, in which cooked chicken feet are pounded with lemon, tomato and chilli until soft and sour-hot. People's Daily calls it a well-known local snack, sold at Dai salad stalls in the Gaozhuang Xishuangjing (告庄西双景) night market in Jinghong (景洪), beside the Lancang River (澜沧江).

How it is made

At a stall the cook puts lemon, tomato and the other seasonings into a wooden tub and works them with a wooden pestle until they give up their juice, asking each customer how many chillies to add. The chicken feet, already boiled and blanched, then go into the tub and are pounded together with the rest. In Xishuangbanna this pounding (舂) is described as the heart of local cold dishes: papaya and lotus root are pounded the same way, and a stall may offer a mixed plate of several pounded dishes.

Flavour and texture

The dish is meant to be sour and hot. The sourness comes mainly from lemon juice and the heat from bird's-eye chillies (小米辣). After pounding, the feet are soft but still chewy, and a visitor quoted by People's Daily found them tender and refreshing, cutting through richer food.