Southern Barbarian Chicken: Foreignness and Familiarity

When I first heard of “Southern Barbarian Chicken”, it sounded more like a pejorative than an artifact of Japanese cuisine. Behind the veneer of this interesting-sounding dish, however, is a culinary question that intrigued me: How did a 17th-century Japanese dish that combined foreign spices with meat become a delicacy of the elite ceremonial banquet? My curiosity about the name of the dish led to an exploration of how food can represent a reflection of a cultural bridge. Also, the term “barbarian” might be misleading, as it makes the dish’s name have a connotation of being backwards, when in reality, it is a materialization of complex negotiations of taste, power, and identity. I reconstructed Southern Barbarian Chicken from a recipe in the Barbarians’ Cookbook, an early Edo-period cookbook that recorded foreign-influenced dishes that were introduced to Japanese cuisine as a result of the Nanban trade period. During the reconstruction process I encountered practical questions, such as considering appropriate substitutions for gardenia food coloring, as well as theoretical ones, such as what it means for a dish to be authentically Japanese, or any country for that matter. Southern Barbarian Chicken is more than a mere snapshot of trade history, but is a manifestation of how early modern Japan adapted and reinterpreted foreign food to fit their culinary demands, turning something alien into something elite. 

Figure 1. The original Japanese text from the Barbarians’ Cookbook.

The Nanban trade period was marked by the encounters of Japanese and Portuguese traders beginning in the mid-16th century. The term nanban (南蛮) means “Southern Barbarian”, and refers to the Portuguese traders who came to Japan by sea and introduced Christianity, weaponry, and in this case, new cuisine. The Portuguese either popularized or introduced sugar, bread, tempura, castella cake, vinegar-based marinade, as well as many other food components into the Japanese cuisine. The use of these ingredients made a new food culinary category: nanban ryōri, or Southern Barbarian cuisine. Southern Barbarian Chicken in particular appears in the Barbarians’ Cookbook, a 17th-century manuscript that scholar Eric Rath identifies as a part of a broader trend from Japan’s early Edo period of recording the recipes used in foreign-influenced dishes. Anne Ewbank notes that while Edo Japan was suppressing the spread of certain elements of foreign influence, such as Christianity, “sweet and meaty treats” such as Southern Barbarian Chicken quickly gained popularity [1]. A unique component of the dish is the chicken itself, as chicken was rarely eaten by the Japanese elite due to religious and health-related reasons. What tells an even more interesting story, however, are the spices, such as clove, black pepper, garlic, and ginger, all of which seeped their way into Japanese cuisine through Portuguese trading routes. According to Makiko Katayose, Professor emeritus at Kobe Women’s Junior College, these ingredients originated from Portuguese colonies such as Goa, Malacca and Macau. When the Japanese adopted them from the Portuguese, the use of them was adapted to suit Japanese culinary demands [2]. This is also how the sweet-savory balance of many nanban ryōri dishes, not just Southern Barbarian Chicken, came to fruition. Southern Barbarian Chicken is a product of Japan’s engagement with foreign entities, and represents a moment when foreignness was not rejected, but transformed into something ceremonial, and more importantly, Japanese.

The Southern Barbarian Chicken recipe I used comes from a translated copy of the Barbarians’ Cookbook manuscript in Eric Rath’s book Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan. In his book, Rath argues that the unknown author of the Barbarians’ Cookbook had deep familiarity with Portuguese cooking, possibly through encounters with Portuguese traders [3]. As a primary source, the cookbook offers a lens through which we can examine how Japanese cooks adapted foreign ingredients into Japanese cuisine. There are, however, several interpretive challenges of the endeavor to bring this dish to life. Firstly, the recipe itself is minimalist, as there is little to no detail on the cooking procedure and how much of each ingredient should be used. The recipe for Southern Barbarian Chicken states to “make a stock by boiling a chicken,” color it with gardenia, and add pepper, clove, ginger, garlic, and green onion to well-polished rice before cooking it in the stock and topping with chicken. Measurements, cooking times, and suggested serving sizes are nowhere to be found in the recipe from the manuscript. One challenge I encountered early on was deciding how to go about food coloring, as the recipe instructs the cook to use gardenia to color the broth. Gardenia coloring, however, is a natural dye used in East Asian cooking, but is difficult to acquire in modern times, and especially in the West. Instead, I used turmeric, because it not only offered a similar yellow color to gardenia, but also appeared in other “Southern Barbarian” dishes that were introduced by Portuguese traders, including dishes that can be traced to Goa and Malacca [2]. Also, I used boneless chicken breast as well as microwaveable rice for the purposes of scale, time, and convenience, which is important to note since these were not privileges that were accessible to Japanese cooks in early Edo Japan. These changes made me reflect on what exactly makes a dish “authentic”, and exactly how much modification I could make in order to keep my reconstruction within the confines of acceptable modern adaptation.

Figure 2. The original recipe from the Barbarians’ Cookbook, as translated by Eric Rath in his book Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan.

The reconstruction of Southern Barbarian Chicken meant I had to transform sparse directions of only a few sentences into a viable, scalable, and most importantly, tasty dish for a classroom setting. The recipe as it reads in the Barbarians’ Cookbook is perhaps so simple that it makes assumptions about how practical it is to actually bring those few sentences to life. I had to bridge this gap through research and improvisation. Since I wanted to yield enough chicken for all of my classmates, I decided to use about 1.5 pounds of boneless chicken breast. Also, the gardenia-for-turmeric substitution when making the broth mix proved to be a great decision in terms of not only color but taste, and it made me wonder why the original recipe did not use turmeric since it was a spice used in other Portuguese-influenced dishes in Japanese cuisine. The rice was pre-cooked microwavable rice, which definitely was not able to be made in early Edo Japan, but I used it mostly for the purposes of scalability and timing. I seasoned the chicken with turmeric, brought it to a boil then simmered it for about an hour, then shredded it.  For each 1.5-pound portion of chicken, I mixed one tablespoon of black pepper, one bunch of green onions, one teaspoon of ground clove, three garlic cloves, and three tablespoons of minced ginger into a bowl to make the stock mix. The smell of the mix was pleasant, and felt like the freshest breath of air I had in a long time. Once the stock was infused with these ingredients, I put in the rice and simmered the rice in the stock for about five minutes so it absorbed the flavor and color. I topped the rice with the chicken. The result was a warm, golden, and fresh-tasting dish with a flavor profile that was familiar, yet far from what many conceive to be Japanese cuisine as we imagine it today. The recipe, while simple, required a process of considering a preservation of historical authenticity while accounting for what is accessible in modern cooking. The substitution of the gardenia for turmeric, the timing of boiling, and the amount of each spice I used in the stock mix was all up to interpretation. I felt as if I was holding a conversation with cooks from the past, debating as to whether three tablespoons of ginger was too much (some classmates referred to the rice as “ginger rice”).

For a dish called “Southern Barbarian Chicken”, I was surprised at how non-barbarian it turned out to be. I definitely expected something more bold, more spicy, and more explicitly foreign. Perhaps, this is what the dish is meant to be— food that draws people in because of its name, but is, in practice, ceremonial. For Japanese cuisine, there is the familiar element of the rice. As for the spices, while they are there, they are quite subtle. This made me reconsider what foreignness means in food, and how the adaptation of outside ingredients, no matter how subtle, can be a materialization of cultural storytelling. Reconstructing Southern Barbarian Chicken also taught me that Japanese cooks during the Nanban trading period were not copying and pasting recipes onto cookbooks, but were translating them to fit into Japanese cuisine. Makiko Katayose emphasizes the role of modification, and that despite Japanese political isolation under the Tokugawa regime, Japanese society still found ways to interact with the outside world [2]. Foreign food elements were not rejected, but were reworked to appeal to the palate of the Japanese elite. Anne Ewbank discusses that many dishes introduced by the Portuguese to Japan, such as castella cake and tempura, eventually lost their status as categorically foreign dishes and became fully absorbed into Japanese cuisine [1]. The same, I believe, can be said for Southern Barbarian Chicken. The foreignness of the dish was preserved, but at the same time, were transformed to fit Japanese sensibilities through texture and presentation. I had to make adaptations in my reconstruction as well. I used turmeric instead of gardenia, used boneless chicken bought from the supermarket instead of a whole chicken, and used microwaveable rice. I argue that these adaptations were not shortcuts, but were modern acts of translation, in the same spirit of the author of the Barbarians’ Cookbook. If I were to re-rework Southern Barbarian Chicken I might even add nutmeg, chili peppers, or cilantro to make the dish even more “barbarian”, as these were all spices that were used in other Portuguese-inspired dishes. Even when following the original recipe as closely as possible, however, the reconstruction process taught me that sticking to the exact recipe is not what it is all about, and that engaging, modifying, and negotiating with food is more in the spirit of reworking. This was a hands-on exploration of what happens when different cultures encounter and transform each other. While Southern Barbarian Chicken might be a centuries-old dish, it lives through the modern translations, and can continue to live through adapting it to make it even more “barbarian”.

Figures 3, 4, 5, and 6. Pictures from the cooking process.

Works Cited

Ewbank, Anne. 2018. “Inside a 17th-Century ‘Barbarian’ Cookbook from Japan.” Atlas Obscura, September 12, 2018. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/portuguese-japanese-cookbook.

Katayose, Makiko. 2013. “Tracing the Roots of Nanban Cuisine: Fascinating Fusion Cuisines in Various Parts of Asia.” Kikkoman Institute for International Food Culture. https://www.kikkoman.com/jp/kiifc/foodculture/pdf_23/e_011_014.pdf.

Rath, Eric. 2010. Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Page 106.