Posted on 12/02/2016 5:23:03 PM PST by iowamark
The chef behind one of America's most popular Chinese food dishes has died.
Chef Peng Chang-kuei was 98 when he died on Nov. 30 from pneumonia, according to the Epoch Times.
Peng first made General Tso's chicken in the 1950s, when he was working as a chef for the Taiwanese government, according to Taiwan Business Topics. When U.S. Navy Admiral Arthur W. Radford visited Taiwan in 1954 to lead a summit of high-ranking government officials, Peng decided to expand on the usual banquet menu. One of his innovations, a breaded and stir-fried chicken dish in a sweet and spicy sauce, was so popular that the chef was asked what it was called. On the spot, Peng coined "General Tso's Chicken," according to Taiwan Business Topics, after a celebrated war hero from Hunan, his home province...
"Dishes like General Tso's and orange chicken are the reasons why Chinese immigrant families in the U.S. were able to provide for their families," Panda Restaurant Group chief marketing officer Andrea Cherng told NBC News at the time. "The beauty of it now is that this American Chinese cuisine, instead of it being a means of survival for one family, can be celebrated as incredible entrepreneurship."
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Which came first, General Tso’s chicken or General Tso’s egg?
General Tso Tsung-t’ang was a prominent general in the mid-to late-nineteenth century during the Ch’ing Dynasty (not to be confused with the Ch’in Dynasty. Tso, who commanded forces loyal to the government, played a major role in quelling the T’ai P’ing Rebellion of 1851-1864, arguably the third bloodiest war in history (after WWII and the An Lu-shan Rebellion of AD 755-763) and remained a prominent figure in China’s defense establishment for years afterwards.
He apparently has no connection to the dish other than it being named for him.
98 years old? Hmmmmm? from now on, Gen. Tso’s chicken at the take out. 98, sounds like he had a happy ending too.
...I thought it was personally made for a famous Chinese general back in the Ch’in Dynasty or something?...
I thought so too.
Now I’m thinking that The Art Of War was ptrlbably written by a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco in 1939.
I’m very partial to crab Rangoon myself.
Interestingly, Arthur Radford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Eisenhower administration, was a strong advocate of Eisenhower’s policy of increasing our reliance on nuclear weapons at the expense of conventional forces. The Kennedy-Johnson administration reversed this approach.
I heard the inventor of the Urban Sombrero was all stove up.
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