▲ Milk and egg mash, one of the most famous delicacies in Lanzhou. Photography/Seriousness
-Fengwujun Language-
The water of the Yellow River flows endlessly
The taste of the northwest that can't be eaten
Lanzhou, Gansu, is the hub of the central plains and the western region, and is also one of the most important transit cities on the Silk Road.
The Yellow River is its ribbon, the East has the Longdong Dayuan that nurtures Chinese civilization, and the Hexi Corridor connecting the world in the west. The Loess Plateau, the Inner Mongolia Plateau, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau meet in the surrounding areas, where farming and nomadic food customs converge. The migration of Tiannanhaibei and the local terroir has been integrated to create a unique "Jinglan Cavity", and also made the four-square wind objects such as white lan melon, Yellow River honey, lily, and peach become the authentic specialties of Lanzhou.
▲ The Yellow River flows from Lanzhou to the far side. Photography by Yang Wenjie (No Man's Studio in sight)
The inclusive and gathered Lanzhou flavor, just like the name of Lanzhou "Golden City", is a unique Jinge iron horse, the vast atmosphere, Lanzhou people are also quite interesting in hospitality. Here, the highest treatment tourists receive is: "You don't care! (Accommodation and board travel, accompanied by Lanzhou all inclusive)".
How good do Lanzhou people eat meat?
In Lanzhou, every sheep is arranged clearly.
Lanzhou people entertain visitors, often from The zhongchuan airport landing, they go straight to Althea located between the airport and Chengguan city, a plate of hand-grabbed lamb, a plate of yellow braised lamb, a cup of three bubbles, almost become Lanzhou's city business card.
▲ Hand-grabbed lamb boiled in white water, eating the original flavor of lamb. Graph/Network
The white sailors who grab the lamb according to the pound are the heroism of the northwestern people who eat sheep. Sheep, preferably lambs from Jingyuan, Gansu. It can be eaten hot (sliced and basketed, steamed and dipped in oil), cold (cooked and cut into strips, directly dipped in salt), and fried (heated immediately, eaten while frying). Cold food returns to the basics, and the meat is the most tender. Yellow braised lamb, is the Plus version of hand-grabbed lamb, cooked by hand, plus fierce onion ginger garlic, hot hot sauce, and then slow simmering, with self-made potato noodles, full of soup full of yellow stew, the most suitable for rice.
▲ Yellow braised lamb. Photography/Drama Peppercorns, Pictures/Figures, Creativity
In Lanzhou, the most direct side dish of lamb is two things: wine and garlic. According to an old lanzhou saying: "Eat meat without eating garlic, and the nutrition is halved." "Eating a pound of hand grasping, often need to dry out a head of garlic, fiery and fierce, but set off the fresh flavor of meat." Good sheep, but also with spicy wine (white wine). In Lanzhou, as long as the lamb is strong enough, people can "drink one brand a year".
If you don't drink alcohol, you can also come to a bowl of tea "three bubbles": fine spring tip tea, bitter water roses in Yongdeng County, Ningxia goji berries, Xinjiang dates... The three bubble platforms contain the essence of the northwest wind objects. But this is not enough, there must also be dried guiyuan from the far south, plus a few pieces of rock sugar, boiling water, colorful, raw and greasy.
▲ Original sheep's head meat and stir-fried lamb head meat. Photo / MZ0912, Photo / MarketMap, Figureworm Creative
Eat the lamb, and the extravagant boiled sheep's head, a vicious sheep's head, torn into a plate of meat, quite the arrogance of the northwestern people. Sheep's head meat - preferably the "sheep face" on both sides of the cheek, the sheep have been eating grass and chewing all their lives to gather this most essential "living meat".
Sheep's head can be the final dish of the lamb restaurant, and can also be brine into a snack with the hooves of the lamb; large pieces of lamb are braised by hand; small pieces of lamb are roasted hot; sheep sanhong (heart, liver and lungs) and three white (belly and intestines) are boiled into a soup pot, chopped and seasoned, cold mixed or soup can be brought; even sheep skin can be used to the fullest, become a raft, and wander on the yellow river.
▲ Cold mixed haggis. Photography/Seriousness
Eating lamb and drinking big wine is the daily taste of Lanzhou people, and the more formal meat dishes are in the "eight bowls" of the New Year. Such as ribs with fish, etc., more common, more characteristic, is the sand and rotten meat.
Lanzhou's sand meat, the process is complicated, the use of a variety of materials, to use the best pork fat meat or beef and lamb leg meat, and then with bean paste and rose sugar. Then put a layer of tofu skin or egg cake crust, a layer of egg paste, spread the meat filling evenly, and then spread another layer of egg paste and crust, the crust needs to be close to the meat filling, it is qualified.
Cut the strips in the sand and fry them in a frying pan. Fried sand, you can make sweet and sour sand or warm pot, but the best thing to eat is just fried out of the pan of sand, golden shiny, really should be "outside the caramel tender, crisp and delicious" eight words.
▲ Above, pouring juice and sand; bottom picture, Lanzhou rotten meat. Photo above/Call me Head Chef, Below Photo/sxz2468, Photo/MarketMap
"Chinese New Year's Eve dish it tastes fresh, and the meat in the tofu milk is rotten." Lanzhou people's Chinese New Year's Eve rice, not to mention a crimson and lovely bad meat.
This bad meat is also one of the earliest immigrant flavors in Lanzhou, and it is said that it was the Jiangnan flavor that followed King Ming Su to Lanzhou. The pork belly is cut into thin slices, evenly coated with red tofu milk that is crushed into a puree, and steamed in a basket, the key is to use sake to add flavor. Steamed rotten meat, the color is very festive, a piece of meat, with a glass of wine, or sandwiched in the lotus leaf bun, is the old Lanzhou mouth of the New Year's taste.
What was the night of the great northwest's fiercest food?
"Lanzhou Lanzhou" sings: Lanzhou, always running away in the early morning, drunk at night. In addition to the literary atmosphere, Lanzhou people walk and walk, often walking to the night market.
Lanzhou's night market, the first recommended is the Zhengning Road Night Market. The most important thing here is the grilled meat. In addition to counting the sticks of the barbecue, the more atmospheric thing is to calculate the money. Generally it is two thin clips and one fat, the grease makes the lamb bloom, and the red spicy seeds are dotted on it, and one bite goes down, full of blessings! (Satisfied)
▲ Grilled skewers, you have to grill them one by one. Photography/Seriousness
Connoisseurs order skewers, often lamb tripe, lamb liver lamb loin, plate tendon grilled skin, first come to half a handful, all-round, eat kebabs, do not drink spicy wine, more supporting is a large cup of Yellow River beer. You can also come to a brine lamb head or peppery lamb's trotters, eat staple food, and there are also refreshing cold noodles, which are the best match for various meats.
▲ Peppery lamb's hooves and horse three-artichoke slices. Photography/Seriousness
Another hometown snack that Lanzhou people never forget is Ma Sanyang potato slices. Potato slices, cold soaked hot boiling, seasoning key is a large spoonful of oil poured spicy seeds, in the winter to light a fire. In addition to potato chips, you can also order some specialties such as bean skin, tripe and fried rice cakes, and then sip a bottle of matching drink - carotene, just to relieve the spicy taste.
There are as many snacks as there are sweet
In the winter season, the warmest in Lanzhou is the hot winter fruit.
A large cauldron was set up on the coal stove, and the pot was full of yellow, orange, orange, and steaming winter fruits. The so-called winter fruit, is the frozen winter fruit pear, steamed and slowly simmered, scoop a bowl, the pear meat melts in the mouth, as if the body is also warm enough to melt in the soup bowl.
▲ Hot winter pear. Photography/Seriousness
Another dessert that can be used in winter and summer is gray beans. Gray beans are a dessert made of peas and plum ash, in addition to peas, dates and sugar are added. This kind of bean porridge should be slightly cooled before drinking, not hot, full of sweet and pleasant taste.
▲ Gray beans. Photography/nhacw, Photo/MarketMap
However, the most well-known dessert in Lanzhou is milk and egg mash.
Since its brilliant debut in "China on the Tip of the Tongue", the stall that makes "Ma Ye Egg Mash" has set up half of Zhengning Road, and a white-hated and white-bearded Ma Uncle (the real Ma Ye does not have a beard) stands in front of his home, under his hands are mash rolling, milk is fragrant, and eggs bloom yellow and white flowers in the pot. This dessert is also indispensable to many dried fruit ingredients in the northwest: raisins, peach kernels, peanuts, dried fruits, sesame seeds... It tastes soft, tender and refreshing, sweet and slightly sour.
▲ Milk and egg mash being made. Photography/Seriousness
Others, such as the apricot skin water made of Dunhuang "Li Guangxing", and the sweet pickles fermented from barley or barley, are all local flavors that are widely popular in the northwest. However, Lanzhou people drink sweet sauce, there is a set, that is, the "put Ha" sweet pickle milk tea that opens all over the streets and alleys, although the name is Fang Ha (Northwest dialect: put down, look open), but the bucket of milk tea sold at a pound, sweet with refreshing, good to drink at all "can not put Ha lai" well!
▲ Fermented sweet pickles. Graph/Network
Gourmet jianghu, or back to a bowl of noodles
All over Gansu eat noodles, and Lanzhou is backed by the grain-rich Hexi Corridor, which is naturally "all-encompassing". For example, in Lanzhou, that bowl can sell two million bowls of beef noodles a day.
In the early spring of 1915, Ma Baozi, a Hui people, was forced to carry a flat burden to Lanzhou Nanguan Shizi to sell "hot pot noodles". He continued to improve his craftsmanship, and he also created Lanzhou Clear Soup Beef Noodles by mixing soup of boiled beef and lamb liver into the noodles to add flavor to the noodles. He did not expect that this bowl of noodles later became a necessity of life equivalent to water, electricity and gas in Lanzhou, and once the price of a bowl of noodles rose by fifty cents, which could be in the headlines of the newspaper.
▲ Beef noodles, add meat to eat satisfied. Graph/Network
It is not the right time and place, nor can it be born this bowl of China's first beef noodles:
Lanzhou has always been an important commercial and trade town in the northwest, with a prosperous flow of people, which is suitable for convenient beef noodles; as a multi-ethnic settlement, the special dietary customs of Han, Hui, Dongxiang, Tibetan and other ethnic groups can also use a bowl of beef noodles to "Duanping"; beef noodles have wheat from the Longdong and Hexi corridors, peppers from Tianshui Gangu, pengcao from the wilderness around Lanzhou, and beef from the Gannan Plateau... It's a northwestern wind geography in a bowl.
▲ One clear and two white, three red and four green, all alive. Photography / small tour ah, photo / market map network
This bowl of noodles pays attention to one clear, two white, three red, four green, five yellow. That is, the broth is clear and fragrant, the radish is white and sweet, the pepper oil is red, the coriander garlic seedlings are bright green, and the noodles are yellow and bright.
According to the thickness and width, beef noodles are also arranged in a good seat, narrow as slender and long leek leaves, wide enough to be as high as the trouser belt surface of the "big wide", thin enough to be able to pass through the needle "a nest of silk", and more cross-sectional three-sided pyramid, unique taste of buckwheat lens. Lanzhou people's early morning, always from the "stacked bowl of cattle big", fashionable, with a "meat and egg double fly", this day, just take off.
▲ For Lanzhou people, the timing of eating noodles is more important than the environment, and they must not wait until the noodles are soaked before chopsticks. Most Lanzhou people will eat bowl noodles and wipe their mouths and leave, Ma Li crisply, to make room for others. Photo/Serious
However, this bowl of noodles is out of Gansu, and it is not easy to find. In the field you see the concurrent operation of grilled skewers and large plates of chicken "beef ramen", basically from Longhua County, Qinghai, and Shijiazhuang specialties of Anhui beef plate noodles have the same magic, in Lanzhou, beef noodle restaurants are generally noodles, side dishes, meat and eggs, at most in the summer to sell cold noodles.
▲ The cold noodles on the Night Market on Zhengning Road are nostalgic. Photography/Seriousness
Cold noodles are also one of the favorite noodles of Lanzhou people. It deserves the hot summer and can also accompany the night. Refreshing cold noodles, preferably from the City God Temple's Maga Yousu cold noodles. Cold noodles are poured with carrots, cauliflower and other ingredients to stir-fry vegetarian brine, mix two spoons of oil spicy seeds, garlic juice, balsamic vinegar, tendons and refreshing, can't stop. And that's not all, with the marinated beef and eggs, a few strings of roast meat that nourishes the oil, and you can eat a belly round.
In the north-northwest, in the eyes of Lanzhou people who are often drunk, there is also a secret of liquor relief - pulp water surface. Pulp water is popular throughout the northwest, but the pulp water surface pavilion in Lanzhou often hides mysteries.
▲ Lanzhou pulp water surface and side dishes. Photo/Visual China
Entering the pulp water noodle restaurant, first a bowl of pulp water to quench thirst, and then look at the side dishes of the pulp water surface, which is harder than one: tiger skin spicy seeds, Longxi bacon, big pig trotters, fragrant brine ribs. Fragrant syrup water and meat, eating and eating, often also hooked up the wine worms in the stomach, began a new round of happiness "tons and tons".
Lanzhou people who love to drink syrup water often have to fill a large bottle in the refrigerator and put it in the refrigerator, sprinkle sugar as a drink to drink. In recent years, milk tea shops have also sold pulp water lime and pulp water honey, which can be called a northwest mudslide in the milk tea industry.
▲ It is not enough to eat noodles, but also to make the pulp water into lemon mint pulp water, is it cool? Photo / Weibo @ Put Ha Coffee blog
Lanzhou people's noodles, there can be more, such as pulled noodles, fat sausage noodles, fried noodles with red oil tendon meat, hot city's Jianwei fried sauce noodles, are very delicious, very authentic. Other carb delicacies, such as the yellow and jade-like high-volume stuffed skin, the hot stir-fried cold powder, and the sweet and silky oil cake dumplings, return to the night market stalls to compete with those wine and meat desserts.
▲ At the night market stalls, the day has just begun. Photography/Seriousness
After drinking and eating, when the eyes are confused, watch the stranger order a Black Lanzhou, flashing in the neon lights and the night, trance, the heart is full of the magnificent atmosphere of the northwest rivers and lakes, do not feel that the night is cool as water, only feel that life is boiling.
Which delicacies of Lanzhou would you like to eat?
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