Silver-like Hand-Pulled Noodle

6 min read

There is a legend in Xinjiang folk:a hungry man came to a noodle restaurant on the way. He was excited and wolf downed two big dishes of noodles. Then, he patted his belly, wiped his mouth, en joyed a cigarette and stalked off. After walking out for 20 kilometers, he thought that there was something he didn’t finish, and the further he went, the stronger the feeling was. His legs were as heavy as lead and he couldn’t walk any more. Suddenly, he woke up and shouted “How foolish I was!”and then he began to walk back to the restaurant. After he arrived sweating and panting, he found the boss of the restaurant waiting for him with a bowl of steaming noodle soup.”I’ ve expected that you would come back, so I kept the soup hot on the fire. The original food would be digested after you drink the noodle soup”, the boss told the man. The “original food”in the legend is the most homely delicious food in Xinjiang-hand-pulled noodle. Xinjiang is a converging place for different cultures. As one of the traditional foods, hand-pulled noodle is very popular among different peoples. Now, there are a lot of restaurants along the avenues in Xin jiang.

The restaurants are various, but the hand-pulled noodle restaurants are the ma jority. Even in a luxury hotel, many diners will ask,”Do you have hand-pulled noodle?”

Hand-pulled noodle, known as Latiaozi, is called Langerman in Uygur. It is not only one of the favorite foods of all xinjiang people, bus also a business card of Xinjiang tourism.

Now, eating hand-pulled noodle when traveling in Xinjiang has become many travelers’unforgettable memory. There are many types of pasta throughout the country: Shanxi sliced noodle, Shanghai plain noodle, Shaanxi Qishan noodle, Lanzhou beef noodle and Sichuan dandan noodle… Various types of pasta have their own particularities and charms.

Latiaozi seems simple to cook, but actually it is difficult to make a delicious Latiaozi.

As we know，Xinjiang has a continental climate；the sunshine duration is long and the temperature between day and night has large difference.Frost-free season in Xinjiang is short and the growth cycle of wheat is long，so Xinjiang flour has good gluten and taste.The high quality wheat which is grown in special geographical condition，soil texture and climate conditions make Xin jiang Latiaozi successful.It is said that the noodle needs to be rubbed，and dough making demands great proficiency.Dough making requires”hard，pure and soft”：Put a little refined salt in the water to make it a bit salty.Add some salty water into the flour，and rub the paste until it becomes very smooth，and then lay it on the table for a while.This process is called”Xing”.The rubbing paste has to”Xing”for a while to make it have better extensibility and suppleness.The next stage is pulling.Making Latiaozi at home，you should rub the paste again and again，and then use the oil to pull the paste smooth，make the paste into small pieces and put them layer upon layer like a pagoda.It ian artistic enjoyment to watch a master make noodle.If you don’t know what the master is doing，you will think that he is performing magic！You can only see pieces of pastes flying in the sky，and then drop on the board with the sound of flapping.Just a moment later，the pastes turn very thin，and then twine together，finally become hand-pulled noodles like the silver.Put the noodles into the boiler，and they will float on the water surface immediately with attractive flavor.

“Add noodles，please！”This is the most common sentence that you will hear in any noodle restaurant in Xinjiang.At the same time，a charming Xinjiang man will put the noodles into the bowl，looking like a small mountain.Each string of noodles is chewy，pure and smooth. Even it is taller than a person, you can suck it up flatly.I think there is rarely any food in the world that can meet all the requirements of guests, but clever Xinjiang people created such kind of food. Turn the bowl of dish bottom up over the noodles, and that’s all you need.

Natives of the older generation in Xinjiang even use the amount of noodles you can eat as a standard of a mother-in-law choosing a son-in-law. One of my classmates ate two big dishes of noodles in order to be admitted by his mother-in-law. In old people’s mind,a good appetite means a healthy body. It is said that you can eat a lot, and then you can work a lot! Think about it, if a young man can’t eat much, his body won’t be strong enough. How dare the girl’s parents trust him?

Now, hand-pulled noodle has already become a favorite food of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang. Someone will ask: Where the best hand-pulled noodle is? Qitai peoplewill say, ours is the tastiest; and Toksun people will say, ours is the most authentic. No matter in Qitai or Toksun, there is a boutique kind of noodle-fried meat noodle. It is recorded that fried meat noodle already have a hundred years’ history in Xinjiang. It is an essential dish in family dinners, revealing the unremitting effort of several generations of cooks. Fried meat is the panacea of all kinds of mix pasta food. Whatever it is mixed with the dish will be delicious and expensive.A dish of successful fried meat should have bright red meat, not loosing oil and soup. When taking a piece of meat into the mouth, you taste smoothness with aromatic flavor. Such a dish with the glossy noodle will be very delicious.

Once someone asked when friends got together,”Why the pulled noodle is popular unabatedly among people in Xinjiang?”I think there may be three reasons: Firstly, it is due to the peculiar geographical environment that the noodles are not only chewy but flexible. Secondly, the sheep in Xin jiang are all freely herded in the grassland, eating a variety of grass, walking a long journey and climbing mountains and cliffs, and are, therefore, extraordinarily strong. So their meat is always delicious. Thirdly, in the vast land of Xinjiang with a small population, the pulled noodles are economic and are popular among ordinary people, so it is very famous and people may eat for a hundred times. Therefore, people in the past often said with humor that people of Xin jiang coming back froma business trip will definitely do two things. The first thing is that they will bring back with them household items with large bags from outside because of shortage of supplies in these years. The second thing is that once getting off the train or the plane, they will rush to the restaurant to have pulled noodles before going home, by doing which, they may feel really back to Xinjiang. In spite of all the delicacies from land and sea, people in Xinjiang still think about the pulled noodles in their hometown.

Xin jiang is a wonderful place. The rich materials, resources, ntelligence and wisdom of people of a variety of ethnic groups create particular cooking cultures in this place. On the vast land of Xinjiang, once you have had the pulled noodles, you have a taste on the flavor of Xin jiang; after eating the noodles, you have completely memorized the feeling of Xin jiang. If the naan (a kind of crusty pancake of the Uygur and Kazakh ethnic groups)which is favored by the old and the young are mild and simple, the pulled noodles are a kind of food rich with strong characters of the northwest men, not only because of its roughness but because of its generousness.