The Northwest Table — Xi'an, Lanzhou and Xinjiang

The Northwest table lies along the old overland routes that ran west from Chang'an, the modern Xi'an, through the Gansu corridor to Central Asia. It is a country of wheat, millet, mutton and dry air, where the plough and the pastoralist's flock meet, and where the cooking of the Han towns has long taken in the habits of Muslim and Turkic neighbours. Xi'an, Lanzhou and the oasis towns of Xinjiang each give it a different centre, and the three are best understood as neighbours on one road rather than as a single cuisine.

The staple of the Northwest is wheat, not rice, and the region's reputation rests on what the cook can do with flour and water. In Shaanxi the noodle takes many forms: broad ribbons pulled by hand, narrow cut noodles, and flat noodles dressed with chilli oil, vinegar and garlic, the sharp and sour seasoning that the province favours. Bread is as important as noodles. Flatbreads are baked, and wheat dough is also steamed, so that the same flour serves as a bowl, a spoon and a meal. Hand-torn pieces of bread in mutton soup, in the Xi'an style, show how closely the table is tied to the pastoral economy to the north and west. Xi'an carries the weight of history, since Chang'an was the capital of several great dynasties and the eastern end of the routes to the west. Its food today is shaped by that inheritance and by the Muslim community of the city, whose cooking of mutton, beef and wheat is a long-settled part of the local table. Skewered and roasted meats, spiced with cumin and chilli, belong to the same tradition as the soups and breads, and their seasoning speaks of the road to Central Asia. Dunlop, writing in Invitation to a Banquet of the way Chinese cooking has absorbed outside influences, gives the proper frame: the foods of the frontier were made Chinese by the cooks who adopted them, not set apart from the national cuisine. Lanzhou, on the Yellow River in Gansu, is known for its beef noodle soup, in which hand-pulled noodles are served in a clear, carefully clarified broth with slices of beef, white radish, chilli oil, coriander and green garlic shoots. The pulling of the dough is the cook's craft, and the noodle is judged by its elasticity and by the clarity of the soup beside it. The dish belongs to the Hui Muslim tradition of the city, and its colours and its discipline of broth make it a model of how much a plain bowl can hold. Xinjiang lies furthest west and is the home of the Uyghur and other Turkic peoples, whose table differs in kind from that of the Han towns. Lamb is roasted or grilled on skewers, rice is cooked with meat, carrots and onions in the style of pilaf, and thick hand-cut noodles are served with a stew of meat and vegetables. Dried fruits, nuts, melons and grapes from the oases enter both the savoury and the sweet repertoire. Chinese cooks and eaters in other provinces have made much of this food, but its home is the oasis and the bazaar, and its logic is that of Central Asia. The Northwest is a reminder that Chinese cooking is not one style spread evenly across the land. The modern frame of eight great cuisines passes over the wheat, mutton and Muslim cooking of the region, yet it shapes the country's daily eating as much as any of the rice cuisines of the south. A reader who wishes to understand the whole must come to the Northwest as to a table of its own, with its own staples, its own seasonings and its own history on the road.

The flavours of the Northwest are those of wheat, mutton and the dry spice cupboard: cumin, chilli, black and Sichuan pepper, garlic, and the strong sour note of vinegar. A meal is built around bread or noodles, with lamb, beef and cold vegetable dishes beside them, and tea is drunk throughout. In Xinjiang the table adds dried fruit, nuts and sweet melon, and meat is eaten roasted from the skewer or in pilaf.