It is made with the Mandarin fish (also called Gui yu or Stone Gui yu). To cook this dish, you need to strip away its spine after butchering it, cut the fish into rhombus patterns, then filled its surface with dried starch, deep-fry it with cooked oil for twice until its surface turns golden. When the fish is put on the plate, its meat puffs like squirrel’s hair, and its head and tail are upward due to the deep-frying, which makes it resemble a squirrel. Now it’s time to pour some marinate onto it while it is still hot. In this process, it may sound like a squirrel squawking in joy: zhi-zhi. It is undeniable that it plays a significant role in Soochow cuisine due to its excellence in appearance, aroma, and flavor.
It was said that the original material of this dish was the carp rather than the Mandarin fish. During Qing Dynasty, Emperor Qianlong had once arrived at Songhelou Restaurant by accident during one of his visits to the lower riches of the Yangtze River. To meet the need of Emperor Qianlong to eat fish, the chef suddenly came up with an idea: deep-frying the carp originally as the sacrifice on the divine table for the God of Wealth Zhao Gongming. Later, people replaced the carp with the Mandarin fish due to its less bones and tender meat, and this dish soon became very popular and famous. In addition, some eminent chefs in Soochow are persistent in the pursuit of the excellence of this dish, for example, they add about another 16 kinds of ingredients to this dish such as shrimp meat, cooked bamboo shoots, diced mushroom, green pea, pork soup, wine, vinegar, refined salt, sugar, oil, sesame oil, sliced onions, garlic, dried starch, wet starch, etc.
This dish was also ranked Jiangsu cuisines to be cooked impromptu in the National Campaign for Appraising the Cooking Skills of All Eminent Chefs in China held in November, 1983. In a poem of the Tang Dynasty, there was a verse written like this: Over peach-mirrored stream, where perches are full grown. Therefore, the best time for us to taste Squirrel-shaped Mandarin Fish is May and April every year.
Source: Suzhou Municipal People's Government