Daiwei Guiji

The Dai 'ghost chicken' of Xishuangbanna: boiled chicken torn by hand and dressed with lime, millet chillies, and garlic under a heap of culantro

Origin: Xishuangbanna & the Dai Country

From the journey of Culantro.

The Dai of Xishuangbanna, in the far south of Yunnan where China meets Laos and Myanmar, are a Tai people, close kin in language and cooking to the Lao, the Shan, and the Thai of the north. Their food is sour, hot, fresh, and full of raw herbs, and three things season almost all of it: the juice of small green limes, xiaomila, the fierce little millet chilli of Yunnan, and da yuansui, big coriander, which is culantro. Chinese has a whole shelf of names for the plant, and between them they tell its story. It is ci yuansui, thorny coriander, and da yuansui or da xiangcai, big coriander, for its long tough leaf; jia yuansui, false coriander, in Guangxi and Guangdong, where it also grows; and mian yuansui, Burmese coriander, which is exactly what the Meitei of Manipur call it on the other side of Burma. How it reached the Dai country is not recorded. Daiwei guiji, Dai-style ghost chicken, is the plainest showcase for it. A chicken is boiled, cooled, and torn into shreds by hand, then dressed with pounded chilli and garlic and a great deal of lime, and finished with culantro, often with ordinary coriander beside it. The usual explanation of the name is that the dish was made for the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, when offerings are made to spirits and ancestors, though the explanation is given more often than it is demonstrated. The same big coriander goes into sapie, the bitter beef and rice-noodle dish of the Dai, and into fish grilled in banana leaves.

Ingredients

Chicken

  • 1 kg chicken legs, or a small whole chicken
  • 3 slices of ginger
  • 2 spring onions, knotted
  • 1 tbsp Shaoxing or rice wine

Dressing

  • 8 xiaomila (small red millet chillies) or bird's eye chillies
  • 6 garlic cloves
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 4 small green limes, juiced (about 5 tbsp)
  • 1 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 1 tsp caster sugar

Herbs

  • 20 g da yuansui (culantro) leaves, chopped
  • 1 small handful coriander leaves, chopped
  • 1 shallot or small red onion, thinly sliced

Method

  1. Put the chicken in a pan with the ginger, spring onions, wine, and water to cover. Bring to a simmer and poach for 20 to 25 minutes, until just cooked through.
  2. Lift the chicken into iced water for 10 minutes, then drain.
  3. Strip the meat from the bones and tear it by hand into thin shreds, keeping some of the skin.
  4. Pound the chillies, garlic, and salt to a rough paste in a mortar, then stir in the lime juice, soy sauce, and sugar.
  5. Toss the chicken with the dressing, then with the culantro, coriander, and shallot.
  6. Rest for 10 minutes so the chicken drinks the dressing, and serve at room temperature with sticky rice.

Notes

Culantro is sold as culantro, sawtooth coriander, or ngò gai. Without it the dish is a good lime chicken, but not a Dai one. Xiaomila are small, thin, and very hot; bird's eye chillies are the nearest match.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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