the fresh-turmeric braised chicken of the Dai peoples of southern Yunnan
Origin: Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, China
From the journey of Turmeric.
The Dai people of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, in Yunnan province's extreme south on the borders of Myanmar and Laos, belong to the Tai-Kadai language family: linguistic and cultural cousins of the Thai, Lao, and Shan peoples, sharing with them a culinary tradition built on fresh aromatics, abundant herbs, and the stone mortar. In Dai cooking, fresh turmeric root (known as pahng man in Dai, cognate with the Thai khamin) is used as a culinary spice rather than a pharmacological substance: pounded with lemongrass, galangal, garlic, and dried chilli into a wet paste that is fried in oil before the protein is added, in a technique identical to the curry-paste traditions of Thailand and Laos. The Tang Dynasty pharmacopoeia documented turmeric entering Chang'an as a medicinal herb (jianghuang, meaning ginger-yellow) from the southern trade routes, and it remained primarily pharmaceutical in the mainstream Han Chinese kitchen. But in Yunnan's borderland, where China meets Southeast Asia, the spice found a culinary role in the cooking of the Dai, Yi, and other minority peoples whose traditions have always oriented south rather than north. This braised chicken, a dish of the Xishuangbanna daily table, is a direct expression of that borderland culinary geography: it belongs simultaneously to the Chinese province of Yunnan and to the broader Tai cooking world of mainland Southeast Asia.
Mapping Culinary History
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