Noodles as Big as Your Bed

If you've been to Sichuan—or watched social media from there—you may be familiar with "blanket noodles," where chefs pinch off palm-sized pieces of dough, swiftly stretch them into big, thin sheets, and toss them straight into a boiling pot. Sichuan native Xueci Cheng helps us bring handmade blanket noodles into our own kitchens with this history and recipe. For serious noodle lovers only! 

"Pugaimian (铺盖面), or blanket noodles, originated in Rongchang (荣昌), a district of Chongqing. These wide, flat noodles—resembling small blankets—are said to have been created by Lan Haiyun (兰海云), who first sold them in an alleyway. According to History and Anecdotes of Chongqing (重庆掌故), Lan opened his first restaurant in the 1930s, and the noodles were originally called Jīpótóu (鸡婆头). The restaurant closed during the mid-1960s but reopened in the 1980s, when Lan further innovated on the noodles and their toppings. Over time, pugaimian gained fame across Chongqing and Sichuan. 

"At every shop serving these noodles, the preparation is done fresh, after they’re ordered. The stretching and tossing of the dough is a performance in itself, captivating potential diners and adding a unique charm to the dish. Compared to many other Sichuan and Chongqing noodle dishes, which focus heavily on seasoning, blanket noodles remind me more of the Northern Chinese noodle tradition, which emphasizes texture. In this way, they’re similar to Shanxi’s hearty knife-scraped noodles (dāoxiāomiàn, 刀削面) or the delicate, thin hand-pulled noodles of Lanzhou (Lánzhōu lāmiàn, 兰州拉面).

"Traditionally, blanket noodles are served in a simple chicken or bone broth, topped with stewed soft yellow peas and a pork zajiang sauce (杂酱). Nowadays, the toppings have evolved to include options like spicy chicken gizzards, stewed ribs, beef chunks and pork strips....

"For this recipe, I’ve paired the blanket noodles with spicy stewed beef—a classic topping in Sichuan noodle shops. The beef is slow-cooked in a rich, spicy broth flavored with doubanjiang, spices and dried chili."
 

Pho With Chinese Characteristics

I bet you see the resemblance of this beef noodle soup from southern Yunnan to Vietnamese pho. In fact, with the rice noodles, the rare beef, and the fresh herbs, you can't miss it. When Georgia Freedman, who brings us this recipe for niurou mixian, 牛肉米线, stumbled on this bowl of noodles, she was at first surprised: 

"While Yunnan, as a whole, has its fair share of beef-based noodle soups, ranging from Tibetan hand-pulled noodles to Hui brisket-laden bowls, none of the others I’d tried had the kind of subtle, aromatic flavors I found in this bowl. The broth was rich but light and subtly redolent of spices. While it didn’t offer exactly the same flavors as the pho broths I’d had in Hanoi and Saigon, it came very close. The rice noodles, though the round kind favored in Yunnan, had the tender chew of a flat rice “stick.” In addition to slices of cooked beef, the soup also featured thin slices of beef that had been added raw and were gently poaching in the still-hot liquid—a method common in pho but uncommon in Yunnan’s noodle soups (with the notable exception of crossing the bridge noodles).

"In fact, it wasn’t until I started adding some of the optional toppings arrayed on the counter—branches of fresh mint, clumps of blanched garlic chives, chili oil, Sichuan pepper powder, fermented pickles and more—that the soup started to feel like it belonged in Yunnan at all....

"Looking at the pot of fragrant broth in the restaurant’s tiny kitchen, I was reminded (as I often am in Yunnan) of how strange borders can feel from a non-governmental perspective. The Miao community that made up much of this town’s population was ethnically the same as the Hmong communities on the other side of the Sino-Viet border (though they likely had divided into different cultural sub-groups). Their natural environments were essentially the same as well (tree, plant and insect species don’t stop at borders), as were the available foodstuffs—though the governments of China and Vietnam had likely supplied the populations with differing food staples in times of hardship (or to foster a shared national identity).

"In fact, the local populations probably have plenty of informal ways to cross the border to visit friends and relatives on the other side. So, it was natural that many of the two areas’ classic dishes would be the same. The real question was not why a soup in Yunnan tasted so much like pho but why I hadn’t expected it to."