Here’s a dish that originated in south China’s Jiangxi Province and one that has become incredibly popular in Malaysia. It’s served as ‘confinement food’, fed to women in the weeks before and after they have given birth, to build up their strength and help them properly recuperate. In Malaysia, as in China, there’s an entire repertoire of these confinement dishes and even today, serving them to expectant and new mothers is taken very seriously. This dish is called ‘three cup chicken’ because, originally, cooks used a cup each of soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil in the dish. Traditionally it is cooked in a clay pot and this definitely adds another flavour dimension to the chicken. Even though the clay pots look rather fragile, you can actually put them over a naked flame; the trick is, you need to give them a long, overnight soaking in cold water before you first use a new one, otherwise it will most likely crack. Once soaked though, your clay pot will last for years.