The Xinjiang oases

Xinjiang lies in the far north-west of China, where the Taklamakan desert and the Tarim basin are ringed by the Tianshan, the Kunlun and the Altai mountains. Settlement here has always followed water: snowmelt from the high ranges runs down to the basin edge and feeds a string of oases, among them Turpan, Hami, Kashgar, Hotan and Kuqa, which the overland routes between China and Central Asia once linked. The cooking of these oases belongs chiefly to the Uyghur people and to the wider Turkic and Central Asian table, and it sits apart from the cooking of the Han heartland.

The oases are a land of irrigation. Snowmelt is carried to the fields by channels, and in Turpan the underground channels known as karez bring it beneath the desert surface, so that orchards and vineyards stand in a country that otherwise receives almost no rain. The yield is grapes, which are dried into raisins in ventilated drying houses, together with apricots, melons, pomegranates, figs and walnuts. Wheat is the staple grain, and it is grown in the oases and on the margins of the basin rather than in the rice-growing manner of the south. The pastoral side of the economy lies in the mountains and steppe, where sheep are the animal of the table. Mutton and lamb are roasted on skewers over charcoal, cooked in the pit of a tandoor-like oven, or simmered with onion and carrot into the rice dish known as polo, called zhuafan in Chinese. Dunlop, writing in Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper of her travels through Chinese food, shows how far the table of the north-west differs from that of the east and south, and how little of it is understood by those who think of Chinese cooking as a single thing. Wheat in Xinjiang takes the form of bread and noodles. Flat breads called nang are baked against the wall of a clay oven, and hand-pulled noodles, laghman in Uyghur, are served with a sauce of stir-fried mutton and vegetables. Cumin and dried chilli are the principal seasonings of the roasted meats, and they give the cooking a flavour quite distinct from the fermented sauces and Sichuan pepper of the south-west. The oases were also meeting places. The overland trade carried foods, crops and techniques in both directions, and the cooking of the region still shows its ties with Central Asia and the Middle East. Yet it was drawn into the Chinese table as well, and noodle shops serving the oasis dishes are found across northern China today. To understand the land is to see a cuisine shaped by scarcity of water, by the keeping of flocks and by the long passage of travellers.

The flavour of the oases is cumin, dried chilli, onion and the fat of lamb, set beside the sweetness of dried fruit and melon. A meal commonly brings roasted skewers, a bowl of noodles or polo, flat bread from the oven and black tea, with raisins, apricots and walnuts to close it.