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 slices served cold in the streets of Chengdu. Cow organs 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 slices. The husband, Guo Zhaohua (郭朝華), and wife, Zhang Tianzheng (張田政), were particular about the beef slices they made, and often experimented with new ingredients. As a result, their beef slices had a distinct taste from the other beef 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 Offal Slices) on their backs, and sometimes people would yell the words out. Once, a merchant tried some of the married couple's beef 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, offal slices were replaced by various beef and lamb slices. Many people still preferred to call the dish fuqi feipian, thus the name is still used today.

The meaning of Fei is waste parts or offal. The lung could be a part of this offal but fei is not lung by itself in this dish's meaning.