A new residence is fascinated by the whole lot of noodles in Xián city. He decides to taste a new type of noodle every day and see how many days it will last. One year later, he finds, he is having a new noodle every day.
If YRPM (mutton broth with flatbread) and hamburger are the face of Xi’an food, the countless types of noodles are the body. Writing through Xián noodles is going to be a wild ride. Alright, fasten your belt, let’s get on the first one, the sour soup noodle.
Fifty miles east to Xi’an is a city called “Qishan”. Its recipe for noodle-specialized vinegar dates back to 2500 years ago. Today it still has many family-based vinegar farms; they are the backbone of the striking number of soup noodle restaurants at every corner of the city. The sour soup noodle, therefore, has a more popular name — Qishan Noodle.
There is an uncanny bond between noodle, soup, and vinegar. “Soup is the soul of noodle; vinegar is the soul of soup.” Xián’s noodle lovers claim. Arguably there are more dry noodles than the soup ones in the world. But they believe a dry noodle has no soul in a double way. Across the sea to the east, Japan and S. Korea resonate with this concept with more enthusiasm in soup noodles — -Ramen and Ice noodle. But they are fond of the thick bone soup –long of boiling time and short of stimulus. For the hustling middle class in Xi’an, they crave for nothing more than a soup noodle at lunch. The first gulp sends a mouthful of sourness that rouses both mood and body for the rest of the day.
Noodle vinegar is less sour and dark than the dumpling type. The reason is simple. The meat is stuffed in the dumpling, so the vinegar is the king in the dumpling soup. In a noodle soup, the minced meat, and other materials, stay on top of the noodle. The vinegar is not supposed to dominate, but rather elevate the flavor. The minced meat is fat pork with skin, simmered with soy sauce to drain out the grease. A list of scent ingredients is added to diminish the pungent smell — “Fat but not greasy, scented but not aggressive.” Then it’s mixed with other chopped materials, e.g., carrot, dried tofu, wood-ear mushrooms, lily buds, and fresh parsley. Finally, the vinegar and chili oil.
Making noodle strings is truly craftwork. Watching the chef work on the huge dough is tiresome –endless kneading, rolling, slapping before the dough rods are pulled out one by one. If you can stay until this part. What’s next is a visual feast. Folded in half, the rod is pulled by the chef’s hands holding both ends. The motion is slow, careful, and swinging up and down, so that the string is not broken. Getting the string to the full open-arm length, the chef half folds it again and repeats the pulling until it gets the proper thickness.
A noodle chef must have artist’s hands, athlete’s strength and a pursuing heart for extremity — the strings can be as thin as hair and as thick as waist belt –both unbroken in bowl and chewy in mouth. The number of chefs mastering the stretching skill has been fast declining over the past decades, driving it to a rare and high pay job. Many family events, like weddings, funerals, are hiring noodle chefs and serve Qishan noodle at the banquet — a conventional yet fancy showcase. In some rural areas, there is still the tradition where the newly married wife — after moving into the husband’s family, is expected to make the first meal as Qishan noodle for the big family. They want to check whether or not she is strong, nimble and has a good cooking taste.
