During the reign of yongzheng, when the literary inquest was booming, the famous anti-qing scholar huang zongxian passed through a small village in hunan province on his way to escape and stayed in a poor peasant family. It just so happened that the farmer's son caught a river fish from a pond in the field and solved his wife's worries. So he cooked with the river fish. After the fish is washed, the fish is cooked in salt soup, chopped with home-made chili and steamed with the fish head. When he returned home, he asked the chef at home to improve the dish, which led to today's "chopped pepper fish head".
For authentic Hunan cuisine, the fish heads used are grass carp, silver carp and silver carp, mainly because the fish heads of these varieties are big and tender. Sometimes not just a fish head, mostly with a small half of the body - - a huge plate served, let a person feel that the chef do this dish must not be enough.
