CNY 2017: How hand-pulled Lanzhou noodles are made

One of the best things I saw in Lanzhou was a “Now Hiring” sign posted outside a beef noodle restaurant. The positions advertised nonchalantly hinted at how minutely they regiment the tasks that go into producing bowl after bowl of beef noodles. Specifically this sign was asking for (my very direct translation):

• Soup-tending master
• Noodle-pulling master
• Dough-kneading master
• Server

Oh, to live in a city where the first three roles are so well-defined and common that a restaurant can assume eligible candidates will see them on a Help Wanted sign and know to inquire within!

A few days later I managed to capture a 30-second video that shows the whole noodle assembly line in motion. Thankfully the Jinqiang Beef Noodles chain (and many others) has a kitchen open to full view of the dining area. Almost as if they know the process is fun to watch:

 

 

 

CNY 2017: Mutton, Lanzhou’s other red meat

Lanzhou may be a byword for beef, but it’s also one of the best places in China to get mutton.

(It might have something to do with the fact that food preparation there is dominated by the Hui minority, most of whom are Muslims and don’t eat pork).

One of my dreams has long been to order a roast whole goat (kao quan yang) in a place like Lanzhou, but that’s a banquet dish for the most special occasions. I was traveling solo, so that would have left me taking most of the animal back to the hotel in doggie bags. Instead I settled with two excellent smaller portions of roast mutton and hand-pulled mutton.

Here’s the roast mutton, in all it’s fatty, crispy, cumin-y glory:

And here’s the hand-pulled mutton (shou zhua yang rou). It’s stewed for a long time and then pulled (or cut) from the bone.

The hand-pulled mutton was served with a delicious dipping mix of seasoned salt and cumin powder.

I’m throwing in some pictures of the sides from both meals, including a chopped noodle soup, stir-fried potato slices (this is a real meat and potatoes culture), and roseheart radish salad.

 

 

CNY 2017: Lanzhou Beef Noodles

A noodle bowl from the grand old Ma Zi Lv Noodles

The star attraction of my Chinese New Year travels this year was the city of Lanzhou and its dazzling, underappreciated food scene.

Lanzhou’s signature is beef noodles, and its synonymous with that dish in a way that rivals Philadelphia’s association with cheese steaks. I could tell how serious the city was the moment I stepped off the bus and was struck by a whiff of savory broth wafting from one of the city’s thousand-plus noodle joints. The only other Chinese city I’ve experienced whose streets literally smelled like its signature food was Chengdu – surely it’s a good sign that Lanzhou keeps such rarefied company as the capital of Sichuan cuisine!

Thick noodles from Jinqiang Beef Noodles – noodles done fast food style

Lanzhou beef noodles are simple in their fundamentals and complicated in execution. Nearly every place I visited served steaming bowls with the same basic elements: fresh broth, hand-pulled wheat noodles, crunchy slices of white Chinese radish, green leaves of coriander and sliced scallions, diced stewed beef, and a hit of crimson pepper oil.

From these basics has spiraled a dizzying culture of refinement and experimentation, and there are multiple old standby restaurants serving classic noodles that compete with fast food noodle chains working economies of scale. And for every bustling noodle joint with a sign touting its origin story and decades of filling Lanzhou people’s bellies (see image below), there seems to be a newer modern noodle bars that let Lanzhou’s yuppie class enjoy beef noodles surrounded by fashion-forward decor.

Breakfast time at Ma Zi Lv Beef Noodles

I was only in Lanzhou for five days. I had beef noodles for breakfast every day and more than once for dessert or a midnight snack, and still didn’t even scratch the surface. The city takes beef noodles so seriously, it reminds me of how Chinese folks themselves can be dumbfounded by the amount of passion and variety Americans can find in the humble hamburger. And aren’t beef noodles and burgers pretty much the same, when you get right down to it? They’re just vessels for conveying flour, beef, and some seasonings into our stomachs. Whoa. I think I just made myself like beef noodles even more.

So far as I can tell, beef noodle customers have just a couple of customization options.

• One is whether they want to add a few extra slices of stewed beef.
• Another is how much spicy oil they want, which they can tell directly to the server as he loads up their bowl with all the fixings.
• Most important is the preferred thickness of the noodles, terms for which are common knowledge in Lanzhou and usually aren’t printed anywhere. There are two or three ‘levels’ of thin noodles, followed by a super thin variety called “hair thin”. Then there are thick noodles, which range from basic “thick” to as flat and thin as a “belt”.  There may be more.

“Thick” noodles

At the end I decided I preferred “thin level two”, which others assured me was the most popular – as well as the option most servers default to when dealing with clueless foreigners.

CNY 2017: So that’s how they make steamed noodles

One of the primary hazards of traveling in small town China during Chinese New Year is that almost all restaurants close for several days after the holiday. Everyone is on vacation and where they should be: with their families and eating one home-cooked feast after the other. This can be bad news for a traveler caught unawares (pro tip: the KFCs are still open), but I’ve done this for long enough that I know to pack accordingly.

That said, a days-long diet of almonds, Pop-tarts, and protein bars does eventually give one hankering for some real food. This year I had the pleasure of ending my Chinese New Year’s fast in an alley in Ankang in Shaanxi Province, where I was found a bunch of little restaurants with identical electric signs flashing “steamed noodles”.

I had never heard of steamed noodles, before, but one of the cooks let me watch as she made a load of them in a stack of steamer baskets.

After pouring the liquid starch onto the watertight cloth, she prepared a few more baskets the same way and put a lid on the whole stack. After a few minutes steaming, she transferred the starch as a single gelatinous sheet to a cutting board. There was some quick slicing and garnishing with tofu and chili peppers, and then she plopped the noodles on my table.

Beat the hell out of eating Pop-tarts again.

CNY 2017: The most pathetic holiday feast

 

Late on January 27th, my WeChat feed began filling up with pictures of my Chinese friends sitting down to nian ye fan, AKA Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner.

Nian ye fan is no ordinary meal, marking one of the few occasions when extended families all gather in one place to make merry. For Chinese home cooks, it’s also best chance they’ll have all year to show their stuff – some will even attend dedicated cooking classes in the weeks before to brush up on their curry crab and mouth-watering chicken (I know, I attended one!). The full meal usually consists of a dozen (or two, or three) dishes covering an entire dining table. At one point this may have mainly been intended to impress distant relatives and in-laws. Today, however, the meal has been engulfed by social media, and based on the dozens of pictures filling my WeChat feed over that couple of hours, it seems like a few folks were doing a little showing off.

While everyone else was tucking into the biggest meal of the year, I was traveling solo in the middle of Hubei Province. Most restaurants already had closed for the holiday, leaving me to make a simple meal of the various snacks I’d brought along for the trip. (Unfortunately I did not score an invite to someone else’s dinner, as happened two years ago).

Not to miss the spirit of the holiday peacocking, though, I busted out some plates and made my own photos to share. Behold: 2017’s most pathetic Chinese New Year’s dinner.

Because nothing says “Happy Year of the Rooster” like beef jerky, granola, protein bars, clementines, homemade pumpkin scones, cinnamon Pop-tarts, wasabi almonds, and shortbread cookies and Lifesavers for dessert.

(Note I didn’t actually eat all this stuff in one go. I made it last for almost a whole week on the road).