Eating in China, Part II - Xi’an
So, since we were in China about a month ago, I figured now was as good a time as any to write more about the food we ate there. For two people who love food (and cuisine of all kinds) as much as Sean and I do, we thought this trip would be one giant culinary bliss out. As we’ve both alluded to a few times, we had to reset our expectations on that one. While we ate many, many delicious things on our travels so far, finding and ordering food has also been stressful, not only in China, but in Vietnam as well. Not speaking the language, not being able to read or even slightly translate menus that aren’t in a Latin alphabet, questionable cleanliness levels, and the use of ingredients/parts of animals we don’t normally eat at home all threw us for a loop at times. We hadn’t realized how much we take for granted being able to easily get clean, fresh food of almost any variety we want at any time, in the U.S.
At the same time, food has been one of the most interesting and culturally eye-opening parts of the trip...a way to better understand the places we’re in and the people who live there. Each city/region we’ve gone to has it’s own distinct cuisine, influenced by what grows in the land around it or the people who have called that place home throughout history. One place where we felt the historical influence keenly was Xi’an, China. Xi’an is a relatively small city (for China) but an important one as the former eastern departure point of the Silk Road trade route. People from across central/western Asia and the Middle East all came to Xi’an, which gives it more of a multicultural feel than the other cities we visited in China. That plays out in the food, especially in the city’s Muslim quarter, where we ate dinner both nights we were in town. And by “ate dinner,” I mean we walked up and down the streets ordering food mostly from street vendors. Cumin was used heavily in many dishes, especially the kebabs, beef/mutton dumplings (fillings unique to Xi’an - most of the rest of China uses pork and seafood as dumpling fillers), and griddled tofu we ate the Muslim quarter one night. The latter also relied heavily on smoked paprika. Heat was used more sparingly - we didn’t taste anything too fiery with the exception of the tofu in deep red broth I had for breakfast one day. I had to run down the street and buy a cup of fresh soy milk to help combat the chiles, but it was the softest and tastiest tofu I’d ever had...and I think the spice was preparing me for what was to come in Chengdu.
While lamb and beef were prevalent in the dishes in Xi’an, we also managed to stay on a fairly veggie-friendly street - in the morning most of the breakfast vendors were offering vegetarian dishes, like the steamed veggie dumplings we had one morning, my spicy tofu, and a delicious wrap I had stuffed with julienned cucumber and potato, pickled peppers, radishes, and sprouts. Also popular for breakfast were tea eggs - hard boiled eggs cooked in black tea, which gave them a slightly herbal flavor when eating. Finally, noodles and fried things were available at multiple meals...one night in the Muslim quarter we had noodles freshly pulled and boiled in front of us, topped with a vinegary sauce, egg, pork, and veggies. And for a couple of meals Sean enjoyed different variations of a stuffed fried pancake/pastry - sometimes filled with spinach and garlic, sometimes with some beef added in.
As a lover of Middle Eastern food, the Muslim quarter was awesome for me. Not pictured here, but also delicious, were some grilled quail eggs (on a stick of course) and my favorite liangpi noodles, otherwise known as cold sesame noodles. These cold slippery noodles are slicked with a sauce of tahini, vinegar and soy sauce and served with cucumbers and chilis. I used to order a crappy knockoff of this dish at Noodles 28 in NY when I lived in Murray Hill, and even that version was good. The ones at Xi’an Famous Foods are even better. I think the next step is to try recreating at home.
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