Three-layer Stacked Chicken

Three-layer Stacked Chicken

　　A traditional Hunan dish, one of the famous dishes mastered by Liu Sanhe, a renowned chef from Changsha. In the late 1920s, when Lu Diping was in charge of Hunan province, his concubine, Madam Sha, suffered from headaches. A doctor recommended a remedy involving steaming a sparrow, a turtle dove, and a black-bone chicken together with gastrodia elata to make a healing soup. Liu Sanhe adapted the recipe by placing a pigeon inside a chicken, a sparrow inside the pigeon, and gastrodia elata, goji berries, and the like inside the sparrow. The three ingredients were stacked and steamed together to create the "Three-layer Stacked Chicken," which became widely popular at the time and was highly praised by the upper class. When He Jian was in charge of Hunan, he frequently hosted banquets for guests at the Sanhe Restaurant. (Changsha)