Chef Cecilia Chiang And Betelnut Chef Alex Ong Explain Beggar's Chicken

Beggar's Chicken. You see, in China, in the old days we have a lot of poor people everybody knows that so they cannot afford that...to buy a chicken. So they steal the chicken from somebody's backyard and they don't have a stove they don't have any anything to cook with so they just kill the chicken and then get some mud and clay, put it on and they start the wild fire outdoors and they bake it. So this is called, Beggar's Chicken. This is the original...the name of this. So now we're modernized, right? So we wrap it with the lotus leaf and also the chicken inside is stuffed with chinese mushroom and [??] Anyway... Now this chicken is nice and tender and juicy. So whom you'll ask to crack it?... You crack it Ruth! Ruth Reichl: You crack the first one, I'll crack the next one. Oh you have two? Yuan Yuan, come here! Yuan Yuan, come on! Ruth: It is her favorite dish! You are the youngest one you know! [Chinese] Because you're the youngest one...the youngest kid here. Any which way. One in each corner. Harder! Harder! OK! OH! [Cheering] Chef Ong: You know this dish came about when Cecilia did her book, The Seventh Daughter. We were tasked with doing the research for it. We went through many...we probably did about sixty chickens before we finally decided to use this particular clay. We worked with this store in Berkeley called.... I think right now, probably... If I say something wrong, you correct me... I think right now probably it's the only place...you know Betelnut serves this, right? Yes, We are the only restaurant. We do about six of these on a weeknight... and two every hour. See when you open it, see the heat come off? Crowd: So is this recipe in Seventh Daughter? Chefs: Yes, Right. Beggar's Chicken.