The Search For General Tso documentary would have made a great food film for the food and culture anthropology class I teach at the hospitality school IFT Macao.
Chef Peng, the guy who invented the dish passed away earlier this month, and the documentary digs deep with historians and food writers like Fuchsia Dunlop and Jennifer Lee (who wrote another great book “The Fortune Cookies Chronicles”) chiming in on research, history and facts.
For a long time, I thought General Tso was a fictitious character, so it was nice to see how the man was revered in Hunan province and how Chinese food and General Tso’s chicken (tasting nothing like Hunan cuisine) evolved as an identity and signature dish in Chinese restaurants abroad.
Would highly recommend the film, it’s on netflix. :)
If you’re looking for recipes, Pinterest has a ton of really good ones.