Xianing new light on China What passes for Chinese food in India is mostly Cantonese. Apoorva Dutt gets a taste of food from another region of China, and that is Xian, which gave her a few surprises, some pleasant and others dubious.

Xianing new light on China

What passes for Chinese food in India is mostly Cantonese. Apoorva Dutt gets a taste of food from another region of China, and that is Xian, which gave her a few surprises, some pleasant and others dubious.

When most people reach beyond the usual ‘Indianised’ version of Chinese food (served with lashings of soya sauce and scraggly bits of egg), for authentic Chinese, what they are usually enjoying is Cantonese food. Largely credited, both in and out of China, as being the best of the regional Chinese cuisines, Cantonese food tends to overshadow other, smaller variations: such as that of Xi’an, the capital of the Shaanxi province in the northwest. “There are three aspects which really differentiate Xi’an cuisine from other regions,” explains Hui Wei, a chef originally from the Xi’an region, who now works in Beijing. “It has adapted the best of the north and south styles of cooking of the country. It also uses a variation of different cooking styles — for example, Qiang, which is to fry quickly in hot oil, then cook the meat with sauce and water; and Zheng, which is to cook a dish by prolonged steaming. It also uses vinegar, salt, capsicum and garlic in different and exciting permutations.” Xi’an cuisine is also known for its wide variety of dumplings, which are served as pan-fried, steamed, boiled, roasted or deep-fried. Indian audiences have rarely experienced this cuisine — not many restaurants are brave enough to serve up a dumpling with a straw sticking out of it to Indian diners, as we were at the Golden Dragon restaurant at the Taj Mahal hotel last week, at their Xi’an food festival. Called the Jiaozi, this bulbous dumpling is served with a straw so that diners can slurp up its clear soup filling, right before they dive into the remains — soggy carrots, peas and corn, along with the shell of the dumpling — with a spoon. We failed abjectly at getting any soup through the straw, trying valiantly to suppress the feeling of almost certainly looking foolish, and ultimately resorted to annihilating the dumpling with a spoon and scooping the soup into our mouths. The other dumpling, a steamed chicken dumpling, was pan-seared and tasted vaguely of roti. These dumplings are Xi’an’s speciality; traditional banquets with only dumplings on the menu serve more than 20 variations of dumplings, stuffed with vegetables, meat and seafood. Once the starting point of the Silk Route, the Xi’an province boasts of food which is a mesh of Middle Eastern and Chinese foods, and has been influenced by both ‘traditional’ — that is the Tang Dynasty cuisine — and the ‘modern’, which is food from Shaanxi. Xi’an is also known for its rich variety of seafood, so our hopes were raised when the seafood chowder soup was placed in front of us. A beautifully clear, thick soup, with crunchy prawn slices and soft crab slivers, the hearty soup was filling and delicious. The next dish, the Baozi, is the “Chinese version of the burger”, as the chef informed us — two hard buns sandwiched fried lamb and chopped capsicum. The bun was too hard and coarse, and the lamb was fried with an excess of generosity when it came to the oil. The addition of capsicum also seemed haphazard, a last-minute attempt to make the Baozi interesting. The Baozi, however, is a dish with an interesting history — it is one of the many snacks served up in Xi’an’s staggeringly prominent street food culture. Mostly based in the Muslim Quarter, the street food features dishes such as the Feng Mi Liang Gao, or Honey Cold Glutinous Rice, which is a slab of glutinous rice with a dark, sweet sauce made of dates and black sesame seeds spread over it. This dish is folded in half, after which ground nuts and white sesame seeds are pressed into the surface. Cut into dainty diamond shapes, this is then served with toothpicks. At this point, we were wondering whether we were being served less-than-perfect food, or that Xi’an food itself wasn’t that good. Our doubts were assuaged somewhat with the delicious Biang Biang noodles flat, wide noodles served with minced lamb and chicken. The subtly-seasoned noodles were an example of what Chinese cuisine can get very right. The meal ended with a scoop of rich vanilla ice cream, served in a sesame-encrusted wheat shell, a surprisingly good combination. Xi’an cuisine might not be everyone’s favourite Chinese province: though the meal had more misses than hits, the dumplings are an adventure for the momo-crazy, and the Biang Biang noodles definitely worth a second helping. Maybe a visit to the Xi’an province — and to the great dumpling banquet — would turn out to be more gastronomically fulfilling, if not so easy on the wallet. d_apoorva@dnaindia.net