Grant Cornett for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Theo Vamvounakis.
The chicken is tender and velvety, a little crisp at its edges, surrounded by coins of ginger and cloves of garlic. The sauce is dark and pungent — soy sauce cut through with aged rice wine and studded with bits of scallion, perfect for ladling onto rice. There is a sweetness in there as well, sugar and sesame against the salt of the soy, with a faint hit of peppery fire. A handful or two of Thai basil added at the end imparts a floral punch.
The dish is called three-cup chicken, and it makes for a simple and excellent dinner that you can prepare in well under an hour.
這道菜名為三杯雞，可以成為一頓簡單又出色的晚餐，絕不到一個小時就能完成。
It is Taiwanese in origin, which is to say it is cooked across the island and wherever Taiwanese have landed after they've left. But like much Taiwanese cooking, the dish has roots in China. The history of three-cup chicken is often traced back to the 13th century, to the execution of the Song dynasty hero Wen Tianxiang. A guard is said to have made the dish for Wen out of the prison's limited resources on his final night of life, some scant bits of chicken slowly braised in oil , soy sauce, rice wine. One cup of each.
“It's a seminal dish,” Eddie Huang, the jocular restaurateur whose Taiwanese-American childhood in Orlando, Fla., is the subject of the ABC television comedy “Fresh Off the Boat,” told me when I called him. “You'll be judged on it.” But its origin story, Huang cautioned, is a dangerous one. Cooking three-cup chicken with an equal ratio of oil and soy and rice wine leads to a greasy, unappetizing mess. “If you actually cook it that way, you'll be in trouble,” he said. “The point is to draw the sugar out of all the ingredients using a little sesame oil, but not a lot.”
“這道菜影響深遠，”愛開玩笑的餐廳老闆黃頤銘(Eddie Huang)在我給他打電話時說道。這位台裔美國人在佛羅里達州奧蘭多市度過童年，美國廣播公司的情景喜劇《初來乍到》(Fresh Off the Boat)曾把這段經歷作為故事藍本。“人們會用這道菜來評判你。”但原始的做法，黃頤銘提醒說，有點“危險”。用等比例的油、醬油和米酒烹製三杯雞，會導致油膩，讓人難以下嚥。“如果你實際上真的這麼製作三杯雞，會陷入麻煩，”他說。“關鍵在於，用一點香油將糖的味道從所有食材中提出來，不過不要太多。”
Ed Schoenfeld, who owns the RedFarm restaurants in New York and served three-cup chicken at his Auntie Yuan restaurant in the early 1980s, agreed. “Here's my hit on that,” he said. “I'm old enough that I learned to cook from chefs who learned to cook before the communist revolution in China. And I know that in those days, there was no one cooking food with an inch of oil on top of the dish. It might make you seem hip and groovy. But it's lazy. It's not right.”
Ask 30 people how to make three-cup chicken, and you'll receive 30 different recipes. Some cooks fry the chicken before braising it; some use more oil, less wine, different blends of soy sauce. (Schoenfeld likes Healthy Boy soy sauce , particularly the mushroom-infused variety.) Others increase the spiciness or lose it entirely, use rock sugar or granulated, light brown or none at all. Debates rage over how thick the sauce should be, over what parts of the chicken to use.
Huang insisted that a clay pot is essential. “You don't want to overheat the sesame oil in a wok and have it go bitter,” he said. But careful experimentation with woks and Dutch ovens suggests that a clay pot is not strictly necessary . Indeed, Angel Wong, a Taiwanese-American cook in Seattle whose YouTube channel, Angel Wong's Kitchen, is devoted to explorations of her grandmother's Taiwanese recipes, said she has never used one. “Honestly, who has a clay pot these days?” she said. “I feel that you get a better sear from the wok. It's just a presentation thing.”
For others, using bone-in chicken is a must — and always dark meat. Cathy Erway, author of the recent cookbook “The Food of Taiwan,” told me she has been eating three-cup chicken on the bone since discovering the dish as a college student at a Taiwanese restaurant in Boston. But American butchers, she said, don't often offer bite-size chunks of bone-in chicken. “If you can find wings and separate them, that'll work,” she said . “You could use whole legs.”
有些人一定要用帶骨頭的雞肉，而且是深色肉（主要為雞腿肉——譯註）。最近出版了美食圖書《台灣美食》(The Food of Taiwan) 的韋凱琳(Cathy Erway)對我說，她上大學時在波士頓一家台灣餐館發現了三杯雞，自那以後，吃的三杯雞都是帶骨頭的。不過她說，美國的肉商不見得每次都會提供小塊的帶骨雞肉。“如果你能找到雞翅，把它們切塊，那就可以，”她說。“也可以用整根雞腿。”
Other families use whole thighs. Mine has done well with those and, in keeping with the traditions of takeout Chinese food for decades in America, with chunks of boneless, skinless thighs as well.
As for the Thai basil, more deeply anise-flavored than the sort found most commonly at markets — it, too, is not compulsory. “Use what you can find,” Erway said. “It's basil!”
Over the course of the few weeks I spent talking to people about three-cup chicken, I cooked it again and again, making tweaks along the way. What follows is a recipe that is a result of that process, a starting point for all those who wish to make the dish their own.
A few tablespoons of sesame oil are used to slowly sauté the garlic, ginger and scallions in a wok or clay pot, and then to lightly brown the chicken. A tablespoon of unrefined sugar joins the aromatics, along with a spray of chili flakes, and then a mixture of rice wine and soy. The braise bubbles away for 20 minutes or so, infusing the chicken with an incredible depth of flavor, reducing into something that is more than a glaze, less than a sauce.
Cooking is jazz, some say. Flavors are worked like chords, ideas are built out of them, making melodies that can be returned to again and again. Three-cup chicken is an ideal basis for that sort of kitchen composition. Just keep the sesame oil in a minor key.
倫敦蘇活區（Soho）的 Quo Vadis 餐廳 (圖片來源：Oli Scarff/Getty Images）
據英式早餐協會（The English Breakfast Society）（一家倫敦非營利組織，「致力於維護全英式早餐的歷史和傳承」）稱，煎炸食物還要追溯到19世紀初，當時，英國鄉村貴族在狩獵前或者休閒和閱讀之前，往往喜歡享用一頓豐盛的早餐。此後，隨著19世紀中產階級的出現，越來越多的英國人開始模仿富人的生活方式，全套英式早餐就是其中一個方面。在認識到一頓豐盛的早餐是一天繁重生活的良好開端之後，工人階級很快也加入其中。到1950年代，煎炸食物已經成為英國的國民早餐。
Does England make the world’s most delicious breakfast?
This cholesterol-laden calorie bomb wards off the worst hangover and fills you up until dinner.
By David Farley9 July 2015
British playwright Somerset Maugham once said that “to eat well in England you should eat breakfast three times a day”.
Was this a witty way of saying that, save for breakfast, the food in England was inedible – or that the English breakfast is so superior that it’s worth eating not once but thrice daily?
The English breakfast is a cholesterol-laden calorie bomb usually consisting of two eggs, sausage, bacon, baked beans, fried tomato and toast. It’s a symphony of deliciousness on a plate, enough to ward off the worst hangover and fill you up until dinnertime. Indulge in it as often as Maugham suggested and it could take years off your life. But devotees insist you can’t find a better breakfast anywhere.
On a recent trip to London, I wanted to indulge in a few of these fry ups (as the meal is colloquially referred) to decide for myself whether this was the world’s best breakfast – and, by extension, how to interpret Maugham’s dining admonition.
Regency Café, in the Pimlico neighborhood, has been slinging up the full English breakfast since 1946. I recruited local food writer Lizzie Mabbott for the artery-hardening task of helping me decipher the dish.
As we walked in, a guy with a fresh black eye strode out, newspaper under his arm, making me wonder if I, too, was going to have to do battle to eat the entire meal. Mabbott and I got in line and studied the chalkboard behind the counter: the set breakfast consisted of egg, bacon, sausage, beans or tomatoes, bread or toast, coffee or tea. All for £5.50. For a small additional fee you could also order hash browns, black pudding (blood sausage stuffed with small chunks of lard) and bubble and squeak (a sort of potato cake with cabbage).
The café’s interior was simple: Formica tables, plastic chairs and walls plastered with boxing memorabilia. A dainty woman behind the counter barked orders in a booming voice: “Set tomato! Set beans with chips!” We ordered, and I got the set with black pudding and bubble and squeak.
As we waited, Mabbott let me in on her own personal fry-up rules. “Hotly contested is the brown-sauce-versus-tomato-sauce debate. I put brown sauce on the sausage and tomato sauce on anything that’s fried.” That wasn’t all, though. “I don’t like my egg yolk touching my tomato,” she said, adding, “and that’s not an uncommon complaint.”
Mabbott is right: she’s not the only one with fry-up rules.
According to I’m Alan Partridge, the long-running BBC TV show featuring actor Steve Coogan, the eggs and beans should be separate when served. “I may want to mix them, but I want that to by my decision,” Coogan said on an episode in which his Russian girlfriend makes him a traditional English breakfast. “And use the sausage,” he added, “as a breakwater.”
It’s funny because it’s true. Not every lover of the full English has such strict rules, but it’s not uncommon to be sitting across the table from someone, as I was this time, who is very finicky about the details. Mabbott urged me to study the sausage, which she said indicates the overall quality of the breakfast. “If the sausage is good,” she said, “then everything else on the plate should be good, too.” The sausage at the Regency Café was surprisingly good – juicy and fresh tasting for a no-frills neighborhood restaurant that serves up not-so-health-conscious fare. Overall, the breakfast was better than I expected. The black pudding was a tad dry. The tomato’s acidity helped cut the bacon grease. And the bubble and squeak – a brick of semi-soft potatoes with the occasional piece of cabbage thrown in – was dull but soaked up the runny egg yolk.
According to the The English Breakfast Society, a London-based non-profit group “dedicated to the history, tradition and heritage of the full English breakfast”, the fry up dates back to the early 19th Century, when the landed gentry would partake in a large breakfast before going hunting, or while relaxing and reading. Later that century, as a middle class emerged, more English citizens began to emulate the wealthy – and one way was to partake in the full English. The working class soon got in on it, too, realising that a hearty breakfast was a good way to start a day of energy-sapping labour. By the 1950s, the fry up had become the national breakfast.
Given the breakfast’s blue-blooded origins, I wanted to try an upmarket version. London-based food writer Jenny Linford, author of Food Lovers London, suggested Quo Vadis in Soho, an upscale restaurant that focuses on modern British cuisine. The quiet interior felt like a stuffy club or hotel lobby. The full breakfast here cost a whopping £12, and except for the absence of baked beans, there was nothing that looked too different from my previous English breakfast. “With a posh version like this,” Linford said, “the main difference is that the quality of the ingredients is going to be better.”
And they were: unlike the dry black pudding at the Regency Café, Quo Vadis’ version was crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside. The bacon was tender and juicy. The eggs had a bright orange-yellow hue.
“I suggested this place because it represents several trends in British dining that we can see right on the plate,” Linford said. “High quality food with little fuss in a casual environment and ingredients that are in season and local.” In the past,” she added, “you would have probably had to go to a hotel to get a really high-quality full English. Not anymore.”
On my last day in London, I wandered down to the breakfast area of the Milestone Hotel in South Kensington, where I was staying, and saw the full English on the menu. I was a tad reluctant to order it: this would be my third morning in a row spent eating the artery-hardening dish. Would a hotel version be worth it? I decided to try it.
Thank goodness I did. It came with two kinds of bacon (both back and streaky bacon), baked beans, a flavourful bubble and squeak, gooey black pudding, a sausage that had a taut outer casing and a juicy interior, and perfectly runny eggs. In fact, of the three breakfasts I tried, this was my favourite. It wasn’t cheap at £25, but it tasted as though it was prepared with the highest quality ingredients. It was worth every calorie.
After eating so many English breakfasts, I wondered if I was going to make it back to New York without having cardiac arrest over the Atlantic. But I had more insight into Maugham’s colourful quip. Certainly he’d be pleased with the current state of English food, which, by all accounts, is leaps and bounds better than it was when he left us in 1965. But also, I decided, Maugham had to be speaking in praise of the English breakfast, not against British cuisine. If calories and cholesterol weren’t a concern, the English breakfast really would be worth eating three times per day.
看著5年1班同學那豪爽的進食，令我也產生了強烈的空腹感。結束採訪後來到校長室，那裏已為我們每個採訪人員準備好了營養午餐。本來想像食物的調味是面向孩子的，卻發現大人也能吃得滿意。蔬菜清脆爽口，清湯也湯汁鮮美，吃得心滿意足。要說有什麼遺憾，那就是採訪一天就結束了，無緣吃到第二天食譜中的「夏令蔬菜咖哩飯」。