Xinjiang Big-Plate Chicken

Big-plate chicken is a celebrated Xinjiang dish of chicken pieces and potatoes stir-fried and braised with dried chilli, Sichuan pepper, green pepper and onion until glossy red, the chicken slick and spicy, the potatoes soft and deeply flavoured, served in a large enamel tray.

Big-plate chicken was born in the 1980s at Shawan in Xinjiang's Taron region (today the city of Shawan). Around 1987, the cook Li Shilin at a roadside eatery served passing truck drivers a large enamel tray of chilli chicken with potatoes; the customers dubbed it "big-plate chicken," and the dish was carried across China by the long-haul drivers on these highways. Shawan later registered the first big-plate-chicken trademark.

Its spirit lies in sharing one big plate among many; towards the end, boiled wide flat noodles are mixed into the thick sauce to soak it up, the strands cloaked in gravy with a spicy-sweet finish, the hearty centrepiece of a Xinjiang gathering.

The oversized tray, the glossy red-and-spicy look and the ritual of stirring flat noodles into the sauce at the end set Xinjiang big-plate chicken apart from chilli-chicken dishes elsewhere.