Buddha Jumps Over the Wall

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall is Fuzhou's signature Min-cuisine showpiece: more than a dozen prized ingredients such as abalone, sea cucumber, fish lips, mushrooms, tendon and dried scallop are sealed into a clay urn with stock and aged wine, then slow-simmered for hours into a deep, harmonious broth.

It is traditionally credited to Zheng Chunfa, a Qing-era chef at Juchunyuan. Legend says scholars who tasted it composed a verse—'The urn opens, fragrance drifts to every neighbor; even the Buddha leaps the wall, abandoning meditation'—from which the dish takes its name.

Traditionally the sealed urn is brought to the table and opened there, releasing its aroma first. It headlines a Fuzhou banquet as the climactic main course, with broth and ingredients shared out together.

Its magic lies in the long sealed simmer, during which the components lend flavor to one another, achieving a mellow depth where, as the saying goes, you taste the chicken without seeing it and the fish without finding it.