China Wine Unlike other red rice wine chicken, Plum Village’s rendition is a broth containing chicken chunks in a claypot as opposed to chicken chunks in sauce. The broth is basically just rice wine boiled with some herbs, and it’s a strangely sweet & mildly herbal concoction.⠀
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As we all know, chicken is bland by default, so it assuming the sweet flavour of the broth is rather odd. As expected, the poached breast meat was dry, but you’re supposed to eat it with the broth so it isn’t really an issue.⠀
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What really gets my goat here is just how incomplete this dish seems to be. They need to add something else to accompany the chicken, like carrots or radishes, and to give the sweet broth some weightiness. Right now, it feels like you’re eating sweet chicken that’s submerged in sweet and vaguely alcoholic water. Yes, Hakka food tends to be simple, but this one was far, far too simple.