CRISP AND TO THE POINT
Jinyangfanzhuang serves a blend of Shanxi, Huaiyang and Shandong cuisines, and its unique take on a crispy duck dish. Li Yingxue reports.
AChinese wisteria vine sprawls along the north side of the road, while in the yard behind it — which once belonged to the man who planted it more than 200 years ago — a cherry-apple tree of the same age still thrives. While they used to share the space with the man who planted them, the trees now only have each other for company.
The yard is still divided into two main areas. While one half remains the former residence of the planter, Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) scholar Ji Xiaolan, the other is home to Jinyangfanzhuang, a well-known Beijing eatery that opened there in 1959.
Lao She (1899-1966), one of China’s most influential modern authors, was a regular diner there. He even wrote a poem about the restaurant, describing how he loved to sit and eat in the yard there, gazing at the backdrop of wisteria.
Vice-general manager Ma Jizhen has worked there since he graduated from culinary school in 1988, and has grown up with the time-honored restaurant.
“When the restaurant first opened around 60 years ago, three groups of chefs from Shanxi, Shandong and Jiangsu provinces gathered together,” says Ma. “So our dishes are based on Shanxi cooking, with a hint of Huaiyang and Shandong cuisines.”
Crispy duck is the signature dish. It requires just as much skill to make as the ever-popular Peking duck. All the duck dishes on the menu come from the Jinxing duck outlet, the same trusted supplier that provides their Peking roast duck.
“We use ducks that weigh around 2.5 kilograms after they are cleaned, which is larger than the standard roast duck,” says Ma.
According to Ma, their crispy duck is made in a completely different way. They cut the duck’s spine from neck to tail, clean it and marinate it in traditional Chinese herbs to add flavor for between four and eight hours.
“Then we steam the stuffed duck to get all the fat out from under the skin, before we empty the insides and fry the duck to make the skin and bones crispy,” says Ma.
“Frying is the key process to making the dish. The duck has to be fried in oil at three different temperatures, for an exact amount of time.
“First of all, the duck is fried in hot oil. The temperature of the oil is then lowered and the duck is fried again to ensure that the bones and the meat are completely cooked,” says Ma. “Lastly, the temperature of the oil is raised again and the duck is fried a third time to make the skin crispy.”
It takes chefs an average of three years of practice to perfect.
“Our regular customers are now such aficionados of the dish that they can tell whether a new or more experienced chef cooked the duck, just by looking at how crispy it is,” says the 48-year-old.
After it’s marinated and steamed, the duck is sliced down the spine and placed back-down on a plate. After it has been fried, the duck is turned over to show its perfectly crispy belly, and served to guests together with sauce, shredded scallions and thin pancake.
Ma says that when he first learned how to make the dish, around 12 different traditional Chinese herbs were used to stuff the duck. The ongoing process of upgrading the flavor now sees around 20 different ingredients being used in the recipe, all supplied by Tongrentang, the country’s largest producer of traditional Chinese herbal medicines.
The duck impressed former United States’ president George H.W. Bush when he stayed in China in the 1970s, who then recommend it to former US secretary of state Colin Powell.
Jinyang-style fried-and-boiled pork is another of the restaurant’s signature dishes that originates from Shanxi province. “It’s not a dish that you can replicate at home,” says Ma.
To make the dish, four eggs are added to half a kilogram of sliced pork and mixed together before they are quickly slid into a frying pan of semi-heated oil. The oil is then filtered off before cucumber and agaric are added.
“The key is to pour a little vinegar into the pot before the pork is plated, so that you can just smell a hint of sourness in the dish — but not taste it,” says Ma.
Shanxi cuisine is famous for its different types of noodles, and all of Jinyangfanzhuang’s pastry dishes are based on Shanxi recipes.
Wenxi shortcake is said to have been given its name by empress Dowager Cixi after she tried the snack while she received good news about her enemies being defeated.
The cake is crispy and made up of countless paper-thin layers. “The secret is that the dough has to be marinated in oil for 24 hours,” says Ma. “That’s also the trick to making the one strip of noodles that’s dozens of meters long.”
Tapping into the enduring popularity of noodles in Japan, Jinyangfanzhuang opened a subbranch in Tokyo in 1983, followed by two other branches in the city over the next few years.
In 2001, Ma was sent to work in the main Tokyo outlet for two years.
“The customers loved our noodles, especially our sliced noodle dishes,” says Ma. “There was one time during a conference when people lined up around the block for them. After the event, the pastry chef said he couldn’t summon up the energy to slice up another bowl of noodles.”
The Tokyo branches closed in 2005 after their partner in Japan closed its restaurant businesses, but according to Ma, they are looking
The duck has to be fried in oil at three different temperatures, for an exact amount of time.”
Ma Jizhen , vice-general manager of Jinyangfanzhuang
for new partners to spread their brand around the world.
The customer base at Jinyangfanzhuang is mostly middle aged, as they like to enjoy the flavors they had when they were kids and often bring their families with them. However, the old-fashioned restaurant seems less attractive to younger diners.
“It’s a common problem among many of China’s time-honored brands, but we are working on it. We’re trying to adjust our menus and service to attract more customers born in the 1980s and ’90s. They are the main driving force in the market now,” says Ma.