Hello from Lanzhou!

This is the big industrial city of the Northwest, once known for its horrific pollution. Now that the pollution is mostly cleaned up, I’m not sure what it’s known for, but my guess would be noodles. Every city has at least one Lanzhou beef noodles shop.

Since I am pretty tired of noodles, and had a good day of writing, I saw fit to reward myself with a trip to the Lanzhou Zhengning night market.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. Every city has a night market of some sort, and they tend to be filled with the same stuff, much of it awful. The Northwest in general is not what I would call sophisticated in its food traditions, lots of meat and bread. Its filling, but it ain’t Chengdu.

I was so very wrong.

The first thing you notice about the market is that it is very orderly. Nobody screaming through on a motorcycle, no blasting techno music forcing you to speed walk through, and a large, but remarkably polite crowd of patrons.

The second thing is that the food is diverse, fresh and good. Since I showed up very hungry, I almost made the rookie mistake of grabbing the first thing I saw. That would not have been terrible, as that was a fried mixture of green chilis and diced lamb (the market is about 80% Muslim) that is served on a dense bread that is sliced in half.

Ok, I lied. I did have one. It was delicious. I regret nothing.

After that, however, I decided to be more discerning, and take a walk up and down the whole street before proceeding. This is what I saw.

Good grief, just look at that lamb! It is sliced and skewered after you order! And that pot with the red on top – that’s a good six cups of dried chilis. The ice cream isn’t ice cream – its mashed potatoes. It didn’t really work, but you have to admire the ingenuity.

Any one of these stalls would warrant a star spot in a recipe blog, but the star of the show was a drink called 脑枣鸡蛋牛奶, which translates roughly to egg milk with dates. I was told about this drink, and in about one stall where people wait in huge lines. Although there were about ten stalls serving the same drink, this particular stall was not hard to find.

So being a follower by nature, I got in line and had about 15 minutes to chat with the people in front and behind, and eventually to watch the man making them. This is a Xinjiang dish that is made by boiling milk in a shallow pan, adding a scrambled egg and stirring vigorously. Since the milk is on a fast boil, the egg immediately cooks into little slivers. From there, add raisins (the green and slightly tart ones that come from Xinjiang are best), crushed peanuts, and black and white sesame seeds. The name seems to suggest that it should have Chinese red dates (though I have never heard them called 脑枣 before), but nobody I saw was adding them.

not him

not him

not him

not her

the man himself

And that’s it. There were plenty of other people making the same drink, but for some reason (nobody seemed to know what it was), everyone waited in line that was extra slow because he only cooked one small pan at a time.

I’d say the wait was worth it. Only very slightly sweet, and nicely balanced with the nuttiness of the raisins and dates. The egg gives it richness. This would be lovely on a winter morning, but even on a scorching hot afternoon, it wasn’t bad.