W is for Wales, X is for….Xi’an??

W is for Wales, X is for….Xi’an??

Holy smokes, it has taken me TOO LONG to get my arse around to writing this post. I would apologise, but frankly I think most folk are beyond caring, so I’ll just carry on regardless. As you may or may not be aware, at the time of writing (i.e. now), my birthday has come and gone in a flurry of steak, red wine and cake. It was an absolute corker, but I’ll spare you the details until the Z post.

So, W and X. Well, as you can imagine, pickings were as slim as could be for these two (hence the combination of the two in one post): X doesn’t even have a single, lousy country to its name and W…hmmm. According to the list I was using to make my selections, Wales – the only country that would potentially qualify for W – isn’t a country at all (BLASPHEMY). It doesn’t even make the list in brackets or anything! Having lived a stone’s throw from the bridge that connects Wales and England for a good chunk of my life to date, I’d strongly argue the case for viewing them as two very distinct countries. As if the labyrinthine Welsh language were not enough to support this statement (YOU try saying a word with about 12 L’s, 25 Y’s and a mere sprinkling of vowels!), I reckon the fact that you’d most likely get a good bop on the nose if you suggested otherwise to either nationality would make you think twice about defining them in any other way. And so it was that I took Wales as my W country, and I shall deal with its culinary gems first.

Not even half the cheese

So, the list of proper Welsh dishes is not exactly what you’d call excessive in length: given its proximity to the rest of the UK, there’s been a lot of culinary a-mixin’ and a-minglin’ over the years, lending it quite a similar general character to English cuisine. Light it ain’t, but then again, you need a good bit of meat on your bones if you’re yomping up and down in the Valleys all day, bellowing out Tom Jones (my apologies to all of Wales for the shameless stereotyping). What Wales does have in abundance, though, is sensational produce. It is rightly well-known for its lamb and beef (protected under European Union legislation…for now), and has a serious player in the cheese aisle in the form of Caerphilly. Over in the vegetable aisle, it’s all about the leek: way back when, Celtic law made a special provision for leeks (and cabbage) that attempted to protect them from any sneaky wandering cattle who might fancy a little snack-ette whilst doing the rounds. Whether it not that actually worked is rather superfluous, as leeks still became the national vegetable of this breezy little nation.

Welsh rarebit...or is it rabbit?

The week that I was due to make a Welsh dish, I was somewhat limited in terms of time. If I’m not mistaken, it was very shortly before my summer trip to the Netherlands and I was absolutely and completely disorganised. This resulted in my selection of a simple yet downright delicious Welsh rarebit. Had I sorted my shambolic self out sooner, I would have been very tempted to whip up a bara brith (literally ‘speckled bread’, a fruit loaf hailing from rural Wales) or a batch of Welsh cakes (or pice ar y maen to any Welshies out there), which are like little drop scones cooked on a griddle. Bara brith, by the way, is also a popular teatime treat in Argentina, of all places. This is all thanks to a little group of Welsh settlers who somehow found themselves over in Patagonia in the late-1800s, following an attempt by the Argentinian government to lure Europeans over to populate the country outside of Buenos Aires. In a glorious example of the gift that is multiculturalism, you may still bump into the odd Welsh speaker in the backwaters of Patagonia today!

Back to the rarebit. The name divulges next to no information about what is in store for the uninitiated, but allow me to assure you that it is good. The true spelling of the dish is actually – apparently – Welsh rabbit, but it seems that nowadays, the word rarebit is much more commonplace. I imagine it may have something to do with the frustration of café staff having to constantly explain that no, the chef hasn’t forgotten the meat…no no, there’s not actually any rabbit in th…well, I didn’t actually name the dish myself, so… Whichever way you want to spell it, this dish is essentially a spin on cheese on toast. The main difference is that the topping isn’t just a plain old bit of cheese, but rather a delightfully silky cheese sauce that remains all gooey and dreamy and oozy after a little sojourn under the grill. As with many simple dishes, plenty of people have their own way of making rarebit/rabbit: some add beer to the sauce, others use a béchamel base, some add a splash of Worcestershire sauce and other clever souls extol the addition of a fiery mustard. One thing is for sure: there’s no going wrong with it.

Yasssssssssssss

As I said, I was a little frazzled when I came to make my own rabbit. Fortunately, it is not a dish that requires enormous skill, patience or awareness – apart from when you stick it under the grill and have to watch the damn thing like a hawk, lest it burn to a crisp (which can happen in a matter of MILLISECONDS). The recipe I used was, for Welsh rabbit purists, perhaps a little on the wacky side: it involved not only Worcestershire sauce, but also mustard AND ale/stout. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much ale lying around my house, so I had to forego that addition, but I don’t think the end product suffered too badly. My sauce was based on a roux of butter, flour and milk, followed by an egg and an unholy amount of cheese – why stick to one product from the dairy aisle when you can use them all?! After all that dairy goodness had melted, leaving a gloopy yet strangely appetizing mass in the pan, it was poured all over a couple of slices of thick, crusty bread and (in my haste) unceremoniously shoved under the grill. What emerged from the oven was, of course, glorious. Few can deny the beauty of melted cheese on bread in some form or another, and I made sure to sit myself down and enjoy it fully, albeit burning off all my tastebuds in the process. Let that be a lesson to you.

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Moving swiftly on to X, that tricksy little letter. Without any further research into other places starting with X, I decided that I would make something Chinese and, after a quick Google of large Chinese cities beginning with X that are known for a specific dish (one of the more specific Google searches in recent memory), I landed upon Xi’an. For anyone whose knowledge of Chinese geography is as dismal as mine, Xi’an is the capital of Shaanxi province, right in the middle of China and home to a mere 37 million people (the province, that is). China, honestly, what the heck?? I can’t really think about China too much because my brain just can’t cope. Just the sheer size, and all the numbers, the single time zone…gahhhh, staaaaahhhhhhhpppp!!!

Making me some noodles

Xi’an is one of the oldest cities in China, fact fans, and the starting point of the Silk Road. It’s also the city that over 8 million people call home (again with the numbers, China!). But what of its food? It’s hard to pin down a dish/style of cooking that is absolutely unique to Xi’an, but if we broaden the search to include the whole of the Shaanxi province, it would seem that they are fans of savoury flavours (hint: think heavy on the garlic, soy sauce, salt and onion). Also, much to my delight, the folk in Shaanxi are generally more partial to a good bowl of noodles than a steaming plate of rice. The noodles tend to be a lot wider, thicker and longer than your bog-standard Beijing noodles, which I believe only serves to make them more lovable, as you get more bang for your buck. One particularly interesting point to note about the food in Shaanxi province is the prevalence of beef and mutton. There are many more Muslims in Shaanxi than a lot of other places in China and naturally, this is reflected in the food culture, to the point that one of the alleged favourite snacks is…yes, the KEBAB! Somewhere that eats a ton of noodles AND loves a kebab? Book me a ticket on the next 

flight out, I am THERE!

The week that I cooked X, I was staying in a blimmin’ lovely Airbnb in Delft, in the Netherlands, and as such did not have my usual battery of kitchen equipment and ingredients to hand. Long story short…actually, that was the whole story, so short story short, I had to cook something with basic ingredients and that required simple prep. As luck would have it, one of Shaanxi’s – and by association, Xi’an’s – most famous noodle dishes ticks all of those boxes. Ladies and gents, get ready for mega noodle cravings – it’s biangbiang mian!

Using a chopstick to split the noodles

Mian in this case means noodles, and the biangbiang bit –language nerds, listen up – is an onomatopoeia, referring to the sound made when the noodles slap against the board during their preparation. Hoooooraaahhhh – who doesn’t love a good ol’ onomatopoeia, especially food-related ones? What’s more, the Chinese symbol for biang is apparently considered the most complicated of all and, with all my knowledge of Chinese (which is precisely zero), I would have to concur. Seriously, look it up – it is headache-inducing. Anyways, the dish itself is quite simple: big, fat, juicy noodles coated in soy sauce, garlic, chili, vinegar and some spring onions. That, my dears, is it.

I have to say, of all the dishes I’ve made, making my own noodles was up there with the most satisfying. Given the somewhat robust nature of these particular mian, you can afford to be a little heavy-handed with them and finesse is not a requirement for the success of the dish. The process of making them requires, as with a lot of dough-based things, a bit of waiting around – dough truly is the most fussy of foodstuffs – but once you crack on with the actual shaping them, it’s a downright treat. As the name says, you gotta get physical with these noodles: rolling them out, pulling them, slapping them around and generally relieving all the stresses of life on them. And the best part is, that’s what makes ‘em so darn tasty! Once the noodles have been made, it’s simply a matter of mercilessly throwing them into a vat of boiling water and, once cooked, tossing them in the sauce. Voila!

Biangbiang beauties!

Biangbiang mian are not, by any stretch of the imagination, elegant to eat: I was slopping and sloshing soy sauce all over the shop, even managing to cover my ever-grubby glasses in the stuff. But is that not when food is at its most enjoyable? Yes, a fancy-pants restaurant might be nice sometimes, but give me a sloppy, messy plate of lovingly prepared whatever and I’m yours for life – especially if I can eat it with my hands!