One of the most enjoyable aspects of our trip to Xinjiang was
the local cuisine, so different from the food we've become accustomed to down
here in Yunnan. Of particular note were the large variety of breads (savoury,
NOT sweet...), noodles with thick sauce (not soup), and the tastefully decorated
restaurants (no grease-stained white tiles in sight!). It was good to get away
from pork for a few weeks...
The Uighurs make good use of large tandoori-style, brick-lined ovens, fired by
coals at the bottom and ventilated at the bottom with a hair dryer! Bagels (girde
nan) are popular (above left and centre), as are samsas, a sort of
baked dumpling stuffed with fatty mutton and onion (above right). The ovens are
also sometimes employed to bake long spears of yoghurt-marinated lamb kebabs (tonor
kevabs).
This chap is preparing the ubiquitous nan bread. The dough has already
been kneaded and formed - it's placed on a clump of damp cloth (left) and
slapped (centre) onto the sidewall of the oven (a dangerous job...) where it's
left to cook for only a few minutes. The nans are then wheeched out deftly
(right) with a couple of hooked wires. They're delicious fresh from the oven,
but beware the multi-day old version - it's rock hard. Maybe that's why there
are so many dentists in Kashgar?!
Here's another Xinjiang favourite, available on every street corner, and in
between. Polo is steamed rice (like pilau or pilaf rice) with vegetables
(usually carrot or pepper) and a few hunks of fatty mutton, coloured with
saffron.
This is a splendid example of a typical Xinjiang restaurant interior. Why can't
the Chinese do the same thing? Surely they must realise that dirty white tiles
lit by a single light bulb and decorated with a Mao Zedong poster doesn't quite
provide a civilised atmosphere. And while we're on the subject...Uighur
restaurants have very clean floors - no discarded bones, fat and other detritus
getting under your feet. And no gawking too! Oh, how we wish we were back there,
nibbling a nan, drinking endless bowls of thirst-quenching kokchai
(tea with rosepetals) and waiting for our food to arrive...
Here are some classic Xinjiang dishes, L to R: Edie (of course!) devouring one
of many lamb kebabs (kevabs); braised chicken with rice (toha gangpen); the old standby
- laghman - hand pulled wheat noodles topped with a thick spicy sauce of
tomato, green veg and lamb. Another dish which was a hit with the girls was suoman
(not pictured) - chopped noodles fried with tomato and veg, with our without
meat and/or chillie. By the end of the trip Lesley was ordering in fluent Uighur...
One meal for a hungry family of four (clockwise from top left): manta
(steamed dumplings of pumpkin and lamb); pepper & onion salad; lamb kebabs
(for Edie...); nan breads; laghman (again...and again...and
again...)
Here are some more miscellaneous street snacks. On the left, chickpea salad,
sold by the poke to an endless stream of hungry Kashgar schoolboys. On the
right, Lesley's favourite breakfast in Urumqi: pickled chilli peppers with
"chapati" and a big bowl of salty, milky naicha tea.
More drinks, L to R: iced tea; iced juice; market ingredients for tea (tea
bricks below)
Xinjiang is rightly famed for its fruit. We were too early for the pomegranates,
but there were plenty of bright yellow figs being sold on the streets of Kashgar.
Turpan is famous for its grapes, supposedly the sweetest in all China. The
harvest had just begun so we were picking them up for 3 yuan (20p) a kilo.
Finally, a few miscellaneous pictures to finish. L to R: Unlike in China, the
people of Central Asia love milk. Up in Altay we enjoyed cups of delicious
unsweetened yoghurt (it's in the enamel bucket) and nibbled on those hard brown
lumps of sour cheese in the foreground; Hami is famous for melons, but we never
went there...however there was no shortage of this particular fruit in Xinjiang!;
back in "China" on the train to Urumqi - the usual tray of stir fry
and rice...
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