Delicious Xinjiang Crystal Noodle Soup
6 min readXinjiang crystal noodle soup is a kind of home cooking used for serving relatives and friends among the Hui people. During Corban Festival and Nowruz Festival, every family will cook Xinjiang crystal noodle soup to serve relatives and friends. Like dumplings of Han ethnic group, crystal noodle soup of Hui is the necessary food during festivals. If you visit Hui families on festivals, the hospitable hostess would serve you a bowl of delicious, moderate sour and hot, and not greasy Xinjiang crystal noodle soup. If Xin jiang crystal noodle soup matches a plate of bright Youtazi, it is absolutely great.
The history of Xin jiang crystal noodle soup also dates back to a long time ago, appropriately the turning of Yuan(1206 A.D. to 1368 A.D.) and Ming(1368 A.D. to 1644A.D.)dynasties. In chapter 38 of All Men Are Brothers,”Dai Zong sent the wrong message”, it writes that Dai Zong goes into a restaurant, and the bartender says,”We sell the liquor and food, and we prepare the steamed bun and crystal noodle soup”. At this time Dai Zong mustbe abstained from meat and liquor for “Shenxing”, thus he replied,”I don’t want meat and liquor. Is there any vegetable soup for food?”The bartender said,”Charged spicy bean curd, is that OK?”Dai Zong said,”Perfect.”Seen from this, the ancient crystal noodle soup represents the meat soup, the same as modern crystal noodle soup, but Dai Zong only wants”vegetable soup”. Journey to the West mentioned crystal noodle soup for several times, but it represents a kind of the vegetarian food.”First, the vegetarian food such as fruit and vegetables, then the rice and noodles, snacks and crystal noodle soup, all arranged clearly.”(Chapter 47) It is for monks, so no doubt crystal noodle soup belongs to the vegetarian food. How about the taste of the ancient crystal noodle soup?”Different crystal noodle soup tastes delicious and hot.”(Chapter 69) Thus it has no difference with the modern one, which is primarily hot and spicy.”Different crystal noodle soup”, whichrepresents that, in that time, crystal noodle soup had already developed many different kinds and it was popular. Especially, Journey to the West described the method of making crystal noodle soup.”Get some agarics, Fujian bamboo shoots, bean curd, gluten plus some vegetables from garden to cook crystal noodle soup.”(Chapter 84) Seen from the two ancient materials, crystal noodle soup can be classified into meat crystal noodle soup and vegetable crystal noodle soup.
Almost every Hui woman can cook Xin jiang crystal noodle soup. They not only like their self-made soup, but also present as a gift to the next door neighbors. In the folk, there is an unwritten competence: the family should be honored due to the delicious Xin jiang crystal noodle soup made by women in the family. It is said that before getting married, the Hui girls will accept the strict training by their mothers about cooking Xin jiang crystal noodle soup. If the girl cooks well, she will become the hottest girl for boy to make a proposal to; if the girl cannot cook a good Xin jiang crystal noodle soup, then no one will make a proposal to marry the girl. Due to the reason, Hui girls are all masters of cooking Xinjiang crystal noodle soup.
Although Xin jiang crystal noodle soup is only a kind of home-cooking food, which is not very complex, it is very hard to make it good. If making it delicious, appropriate sourand spicy, oil but not greasy, tasty and refreshing, burdening and seasoning dosing shall be known well, and duration and degree of heating shall be paid attention to, which needs a long time of practice to be skillful. First of all, take some pure bean-made starch(which is sold in large supermarkets), mix it with water to make an agglomerate, after cooling, cut it into agglomerates with 2 centimeters sides. This kind of agglomerates is tasty and refreshing with tenacity. After that, cut the mutton or finger meat into fragments with suitable fineness, put salt and prepared ginger powder, paprika powder, onion, pimiento and water-swollen agarics to make soup. Put the powder agglomerates and soup together and fire, then the Xinjiang crystal noodle soup is done. Put some sesame oil, red chili oil and caraway, etc. into the crystal noodle soup bowl, the hot and sour crystal noodle soup is OK.
If put some dumplings into the crystal noodle soup, the Xinjiang crystal noodle soup dumplings are ready. Chopped Xinjiang crystal noodle soup is made by cooked chopped entrails of sheep or of cow, adding with original soup, agglomerates and all kinds of seasoning. In the coldest days of the year, take a bowl of Xin jiang crystal noodle soup, and the whole body will be heated and sweat; it’s both beneficial and flavorful. Some people even treat colds with Xin jiang crystal noodle soup by sweating, which is very ingenious.
Crystal noodle soup can be made in every season all year round, but the vegetables to be put in crystal noodle soup depend on the time. Whenever, Xin jiang crystal noodle soup has wonderful odor and dazzling colors, which makes people enjoy themselves so much.
People in Kumul learning to make Xinjiang crystal noodle soup together One of the most attractive foods with Xinjiang crystal noodle soup is the tasty Youtazi.
As the name implies, the Youtazi is shaped like a tower with white and shiny color. Itslayers are as thin as paper, oil but not greasy, sweet and soft but not sticky, which is suitable for people of all ages and is the cooked wheaten food invented by the Hui peopleThe Youtazi enjoys a long history and it was called “Oil Collapse”as early as in the Tang Dynasty (618A.D. to 907 A.D). According to the records of Qingyilu, during the emperor Muzong of Tang, one old maidservant called “Ancestor of Meals”of the Prime Minister Duan Wenchang was highly skillful at making Youtazi. In more than 40 years, she had taught more than 100 female servants this skill. It was said that, only 9 female servants had obtained her true mass, which showed that it was not easy to master this skill.
It is not very simple to make Youtazi; some certain skills are needed. Firstly, prepare the flour with warm water, and then rub it with a little leavened flour to be soft dough; after appropriately one hour heat treatment, add some alkaline water to rub; according to the making demands, make them into several small mass and wipe edible vegetable oil on the surface to stand by. When the making begins, first take one piece to tile on the panel and roll the dough out. Making use of the good extensibility and tenacity of the dough, pullit thin, the thinner the better. And then wipe some sheep tail oil on the paper-thin surface There is particularity here: on hot days, appropriate sheep tripe oil shall be added in thesheep tail oil because the sheep tripe oil has strong coagulability and will not melt and outflow from the pastry surface; on cold days,a little edible vegetable oil with little coagulability shall be added in the sheep tail oil. The Youtazi made through this kind of method shall be full of oil, with no oil spilling and tasty flavor. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper powder on the dough sheet, pull and roll, make it a thin strip after rolling, cut it into several pieces and shape them like tower; put them into the steamer to braise for 25
On the Corban Festival of a past year, we paid a New Year call to a Hui colleague. The hostess treated us with Xinjiang crystal noodle soup. She brought out a plate of white andshiny Youtazi that looked like a ball of yarn. I gently grasped the top to the upward, and then the fist-like Youtazi just turned into a silky cord. Eating this, you could feel soft and tasty. Everybody just ate them with haste for fear that there were not enough to eat. There was a big sister eating what in the bowl and watching what in the pot. Moreover, she couldn’t help saying “Good drink! So delicious!”Someone just made a joke to her and said that good things should be in pairs and drinking two bowls of Xin jiang crystal noodle soup and eating two Youtazi were enough. She smiled and said without hesitation,”Drinking three bowls of Xinjiang crystal noodle soup and eating three Youtazi are enough for a New Year!”The perfect matching of white and shiny Youtazi and the Xinjiang crystal noodle soup is just too tempting to resist, even for the god!
