Plucky chefs win fickle official over to fiery food

Loved from Chengdu to Chicago, Kung Pao chicken is one of the best known Chinese dishes, yet there is little consensus on how the dish should be made, let alone where the name comes from.

Kung Pao was a name derived from the title 'Tai Zi Shao Bao' given to Ding Baozhen - a Qing dynasty (1644-1911) soldier and official - for his success in protecting the nation's borders. One story about the origin of the dish says that when Ding moved from his home province of Guizhou to Sichuan to become governor, he wasn't taken by Sichuan cuisine, and his new chefs had a hard time cooking things he liked. Knowing he liked chicken, the chefs tried many combinations until they came up with a dish of lightly battered, flash-fried diced chicken, vegetables and peanuts, all stir-fried in chilli oil. The governor loved it, and asked for the dish to be served at all the dinners he hosted in his residence. It also became a favourite of his guests, and as he became known as Kung Pao ('palace protector', his previous job), they named the dish after him.

During the Cultural Revolution, it is said the name of the dish had to be changed to 'diced chicken fried in chilli oil', as the feudal connotations of the name Kung Pao were at odds with communist ideology. Even so, it seems that whenever chilli oil and deep-fried meat are involved, the words Kung Pao inevitably crop up.

It is also said that some American-Chinese renditions of Kung Pao came to have a sweet sauce rather than one with Sichuan's signature numbing spice, as the import of Sichuan peppercorns, which give this flavour, was banned in America from 1968 to 2005. At Peking Garden in Hong Kong, it appears that this sweet version is fused with the Sichuan style to create two popular Kung Pao-inspired dishes, deep-fried prawns in chilli sauce (pictured) and deep-fried chicken in chilli sauce.