Fuqi feipian

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Fuqi feipian

Fuqi feipian (夫妻肺片; pinyin: fūqī fèipiàn; literally "Married Couple's Slices of Lung") is a popular Sichuan dish - often served cold - which is made of thinly sliced beef, beef lung/stomach/tongue (the latter two are more common in the United States), and a generous amount of spices, including Szechuan peppercorns. True to its roots, the desired taste should be both spicy and mouth-numbing.

[edit] History

As early as the late Qing Dynasty, there are already many vendors selling beef lung slices served cold in the streets of Chengdu. Cow organs, lungs especially, were used because they were relatively inexpensive. Because of their low cost, the dish was popular among rickshaw pullers and poor students.

In the 1930s, there was a married couple in Chengdu famous for making beef lung slices. The husband, Guo Zhaohua (郭朝華), and wife, Zhang Tianzheng (張田政), were dainty about the lung slices they made, and often experimented with new ingredients. As a result, their lung slices had a distinct taste from the other lung slice vendors, and their business boomed. Often, mischievous children would pull a prank on the couples and stuck paper notes that read "Fuqi feipian" (Married Couple's Lung Slices) on their backs, and sometimes people would yell the words out. Once, a merchant tried some of the married couple's lung slices and was so satisfied he gave them a gold-lettered plaque that read "Fuqi feipian," and the name stuck ever since.

To suit their customers' tastes, the couples made many improvements on the dish, and eventually, lung slices were replaced by various beef and lamb slices. Although there are no more lung slices in the dish, many people still preferred to call the dish fuqi feipian, thus the name is still used today.