National Day Golden Week is coming soon, are you ready to go? Traveling apart from playing, that is eating. Chinese has been serious about eating for thousands of years, and has also created a broad and profound Chinese food culture. I walk around all year round, and the food can be suitable everywhere, but as a southerner, I still think that rice is a better staple food for me. However, this trip to Xi'an has given me a new understanding of noodles, perhaps at this moment I really like to eat pasta, this noodle is the unique Shaanxi flavor of Yangling "dipped in water", it also has a very grounded name "trouser belt noodles".
Photographed in September 2020 in Yangling, Shaanxi Province.
Sauerkraut cold powder.
Shaanxi Province, located in the hinterland of China's interior, is an important birthplace of the Chinese nation and Chinese civilization, and the fourteen dynasties of Western Zhou, Qin, Han and Tang have built their capitals here and have become the center of the world several times. In the long course of history, this magical land, from the imperial palace to the field farmhouse, has bred many delicacies on earth. Meat sandwich buns, lamb steamed buns, cheek noodles, rolled dough skins, pot helmets, Shaanxi cold skins, shortbread... Each one is famous and mouth-watering.
On this trip, I came to the Yangling Agricultural High-tech Industry Demonstration Zone in Shaanxi Province, because the mausoleum of Yang Jian, the founding emperor of the Sui Dynasty, was here, "Tailing", so it was named "Yangling". However, for whether it is called "Yangling" or "Yangling", this is a more complicated problem, anyway, it is now called Yangling Demonstration Zone, which belongs to Shaanxi Province, located in the middle of the Guanzhong Plain, 85 kilometers away from Xi'an. In Yangling cuisine, the most representative is Yangling dipping in water. Led by local friends, we came to this dipped noodle restaurant in Yangling District, where it is said that the locals also come to eat.
Of course, in Yangling, in addition to dipping in the water noodles, there are many special foods. After ordering, some other delicacies came first, perhaps because dipping the water surface and making it was time-consuming. This three-dish dish is a specialty of the restaurant, called "Auspicious Three Treasures", which consists of boiled crispy meat, stewed tofu and stewed shiitake mushrooms. Three plates of meat and vegetarian collocation, there are meat, soy products, mushrooms, different tastes, different tastes, as a side dish is quite good, very recommended.
Rolling dough, another traditional snack in the Guanzhong region of Shaanxi Province, is especially tasted in Xifu. Our common rice dough skin is to mix the noodles into a paste and then put them on a basket to steam, while the rolling dough skin in Xifu is first rolled into noodles and then on the steaming rack. In this way, the dough tastes firmer, tougher and more bony. Baoji generation especially like to eat, has now become one of the most representative snacks in Shaanxi.
Vinegar powder is also a traditional snack in the Sai Fu area. The most special thing about vinegar powder is the raw material it chooses. Generally, vinegar will be made of fermented noodles from grains such as barley, wheat and sorghum. The People of Xifu have treated the residue of these finished vinegars to create this unique delicacy. The vinegar powder method is similar to the cold skin, the taste is unique, the nutritional value is high, but the raw materials are rare, and it is more difficult to eat in other places.
Finally today's protagonist dipped in the water surface, when a few waiters carry bowls as large as a washbasin, it is still very shocking. This noodle table is divided into two bowls, and in this large bowl, the soup is used, which contains green vegetables, long cowpeas, and the protagonist dipping in the water, which is called "innocence". A bowl of noodles, 6-7 cm wide, about 2 mm thick, more than 50 cm in length, and it is said that the longest one is more than 2 meters.
The other bowl is a dipping sauce bowl, also one bowl per person. The dipping sauce is made with garlic sprouts, eggs, tomatoes, Chinese cabbage, chili peppers, chili oil, fresh soup, etc., and the color is bright red and quite attractive. When eating, the whole noodles are fished from the large bowl into the dipping bowl, which instantly makes people's appetites explode. In Yangling, there is a poem about the dipping sauce bowl: "The noodles are white and thin, the soup is spicy and fragrant, the soup noodles are divided into pots, and the more you chew, the more fragrant you feel." "Precisely summarizes the characteristics of dipping water surface.
Since ancient times, Guanzhong is located in the country of Tianfu, fertile and wild, wheat in the rich Guanzhong Plain of many crops, can be described as a unique branch, Guanzhong father and elder noodles are also fond of food, dipped in water surface in many pasta is also unique. Dipping water surface because of its shape like a trouser belt, also known as "trouser belt noodles", as for how it originated, there are many local legends, it is said that Tang Taizong Li Shimin tasted after tasting the praise, gave the book "dipped water pants with noodles".
Dipping water noodles is Yang Ling's housekeeper pasta, gluten is chewy, tendon but not hard; sour and spicy, oily but not greasy, fragrant but not strong. Of course, if you feel that the taste is not heavy enough, you can add chili oil, chili peppers, etc. As a southerner, I didn't like pasta so much, but I tasted dipped in water, which made me feel as if I had opened the door to pasta, and it turned out that pasta could be so delicious.
Almost all people who come to Yangling will eat dipped water surface, and almost all people will like it after eating the first bite, which is the charm of dipping water surface. Yang Lingren said: "Outsiders are afraid of not being able to eat the noodles of Liu Liang, and finally eating one pound is not enough." This sentence has been the best verification in me, at first I only needed one, that is, a bowl, that is the amount of one person, and finally I actually ate three, the amount of three people I ate, it can be said that this is the most I ate noodles, and now I still want to come to Yangling, I still have to eat three sticks. Ha ha.