Urumqi – Shananigans Blog

Xinjiang Lamb with Cumin and Red Onion and Memories of Urumqi

Car seat… Check
Travel cot… Check
Buggy… Check
Random impulse buy of two outfits for 3 – 6 month baby boy from Next… Check
Purchase of four books of Adam’s Amazing Adventures by Benji Bennett to read Dermot to sleep… Check
Shan’s Irish entry visa… Check
Shane’s Beijing resident’s permit and visa to return to China… Check
Lively 3 month old grandson… now in possession of Chinese exit visa and Irish passport and watching his bags being packed to travel to Ireland for the first time this day week… CHECK!!

Impulse purchases — Dungarees on impulse

A big “thank you” to my Twitter friends who helped me borrow the equipment needed. We will be poised and ready to welcome the three of them home next Saturday. We can hardly contain our excitement. 🙂
Meanwhile it’s strange the way food can evoke memories and cumin combined with lamb is a case in point.
Cumin is grown in Xinjiang province, the vast north western province of China where Shan comes from, and where the Muslim Uighur street vendors use it whenever they cook their trade-mark lamb kebabs on portable barbecues. For me the distinctive aroma of cumin and lamb combined will be forever associated with our first trip to visit Shan’s family.
The other night I was playing around with a lamb version of Fuchsia Dunlop’s recipe in her Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook for beef with cumin when the scent of the cumin, mingled with sizzling red onion and lamb and flecked with ginger, garlic and chilli, plunged me back into a backstreet in Shan’s home town in Urumqi, Xinjiang province one hot, dry night early last July.
That day we had visited Tianchi – Heaven’s Lake which is perched at an elevation of 2,000 metres above the gobi desert plains below and lies 112 km east of Urumqi. A place apart, Tianchi deserves its Chinese AAAAA– level scenic spot status and its brochure description “like a shy girl deeply encircled by mountains you can even not find another one like it in the heavens and the world.” It also deserves, and will get, a blog post all of its own. Tianchi freezes over in the winter so it is only accessible in the summer months and is fed by the snows as the ice melts.

We had trekked for more than 2 hours up 2,500 steps and over a distance of about 7 kilometres to finally come over the crest of the mountain to the vista of the beautiful lake with its backdrop of snow-capped mountains. I had marvelled at the stamina of Shan, who was in the early stages of her pregnancy at that stage, and her little 5 year old niece Xuen Xuen who had matched us step for step.
It was 9.30 pm by the time we arrived back to the outskirts of Urumqi. Our driver asked, through Shan, what we felt like eating for dinner and having worked up an appetite on mountain air we said anything served with a cold beer (Shane and I had the simultaneous thought that we supposed a burger and chips would be out of the question!).
Our driver took us at our word and whisked us into Urumqi city centre through the rush hour traffic. On a bustling summer evening, this city of 4 million people was growing on me, revealing its own haphazard charm. Suddenly we were on a back street, just metres from the heart of the city, with run down apartment blocks on one side and a ramshackle building on the other which housed a pop-up restaurant on the ground floor spilling over on to the street and serving only kebabs (“chuan’r”) and beer.

This was one of those places you would never find without insider knowledge, or if you stumbled upon it it’s most likely that you wouldn’t risk eating there. It doesn’t have a name but it was our driver’s local and, during the summer, the eating and drinking goes on there until the early hours on plastic tables strung along the side of the street. The young couple who run it come down from further north near the Mongolian border for the summer months and build up their reserves from the takings to survive the harsh, bitterly cold winters.

Our driver brought us inside to pick our chuan’r and they were dusted with a spice mix of cumin and chilli, cooked on barbecues outside and brought on platters to our table with large bottles of beer – water and tea were not available.

The selection of chuan’r for our table of 10 included: duck pieces, whole small lake fish, squid, crab sticks, chicken wings, chicken stomach, chicken pieces with soft bone, blood (a kind of black pudding), courgettes, green beans, leeks, aubergines, potatoes bread and of course lamb, all dusted with spices. The vegetables and bread were sliced thin like crisps and cooked over the barbecue.

The Gao family — Xuen Xuen and her Mum and Dad enjoying the food

This was delicious food, zingy fresh, all char-grilled without oil and an experience of street food we would never have had without local insight. As the sun finally set and the scent of cumin and chilli wafted across to us on the night air, the Chinese chattered on around us and the cold, weak beer lulled us into that particular sense of peaceful wellbeing that only healthy exercise followed by a good meal can produce.

Eating out Urumi style — Eating out Urumqi style

At the end the owner simply counted up the sticks – long ones for meat, medium ones for fish and short ones for vegetable and calculate the total bill at 2 or 3 RMB per stick. The bill for the lot, for 10 people including beer came to around €35.
Before we left, the owners insisted on having their photos taken with us as the first westerners ever to eat there while the other locals wanted to know all about us. Ireland is now very popular in that part of the city of Urumqi and in a small village near the Mongolian border.

So in memory of that magical evening in Urumqi and with thanks to Fuchsia Dunlop for the inspiration, here’s my recipe for lamb with cumin.

Lamb with Cumin – zi ran yang rou

Ingredients:
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MaMa's Lamb rice

Here at Shananigans base camp my head and my heart are teeming with memories of last Christmas which was very special. In Christmas week Shane arrived with Shan on her first visit to Ireland and it was also our first time to meet her. Claire and Mike came from Australia spending part of the holiday here and part with Mike’s parents in Wales. Christmas resembled a Six Nations convention as we were also joined by my young Italian teacher Solange and her Argentinian husband Agustin. With a bit of talent we could almost have fielded a rugby team between us.

Shane, Claire & Shan — Shane with Claire & Shan last Christmas

What a difference a year makes. Last year around this time I was nervous about meeting Shan and wondering what it would be like to have a Chinese person staying in our home. Now she is my much-loved daughter-in-law and soon to be mother of my first grandchild.
It will be a quieter Christmas here this year. Claire and Mike are spending the holiday with friends in Melbourne, Solange and Agustin are visiting her family in Italy with their 4 month old twin boys. Meanwhile we are waiting with baited breath for Shane to arrive on Saturday from Beijing. He will be on his own this time and it will be a short visit as Shan is now over 30 weeks pregnant and can’t risk the long-haul journey. Still it will be fantastic to have this time with him as he takes a rare break from life in Beijng and gets ready to become a father.
Shan’s MaMa will be with her in his absence and Shan can be sure of a constant supply of regular and nourishing home-cooked meals. Like us the Chinese have all sorts of strictures on diets for pregnant women. They avoid overly spicy food for instance. As a result many of the meals Shane and Shan are eating these days are easy to replicate here in Ireland from readily available ingredients.
I know most of you are probably up to your eyes with last minute preparations for Christmas and cooking Chinese food is the last thing on your your minds but this recipe of MaMa’s for Lamb Rice is so straightforward that I was able to put it together in just a few minutes yesterday evening. What I like about it is that it is winter comfort food, similar in its appeal to Irish stew, but it can be on the table in about 45 minutes. So if you’re stuck for a quick meal to prepare during this busy week, give it a go.

Lamb is always on the menu in the Uighur restaurants in Xinjiang province and a similar rice dish was served at the first meal we ate out with Shan’s Mum in Urumqi at the restaurant attached to the This and That Satisfactory Chain Supermarket. In her simple and authentic version, MaMa makes this with lamb ribs, carrots, onion, tomato, rice and cumin. I’ve jazzed it up a bit below, adding in some of the ingredients I associate with the middle eastern influences of that region – dried apricots, dates which I brought back from Urumqi and a stick of cinnamon. I also took a notion and added in a half bottle of stout which is entirely optional. You could use a light chicken stock or, as MaMa does, simply water.
MaMa’s Lamb Rice

MaMa's Lamb Rice — MaMa’s Lamb Rice Shananigan’s Style

Red Braised Lamb Stew

The arrival of Shan’s Mum in Beijing from her home in Urumqi in Xinjiang Autonomous Region has brought back memories of our visit last Summer to that intriguing area. I will be writing of some of our experiences there over coming days.

Food display — This and That Satisfactory Supermarket

In Urumqi and throughout the region the influence of the Uighur people, who are Turkic speaking Sunni Muslims, is very evident. Lamb dominates the local diet and the nomadic history of other Turkic minorities who live in the area – the Kazakhs and the Kirgiz for instance – is also evident in the food which has echoes of east and west. Their noodles and dumpling link them with the wheat flour – mian – eaters of northern China, with its resonances of Italian pasta. Their spice stalls sell all my Chinese favourites like Sichuan pepper and star anise but also cardamon, cinnamon, cumin, saffron and other aromatic flavours more commonly associated with Central Asia and the middle east and there are raisins and other dried fruits in abundance
They love their tea but their nomadic heritage is evident in their fondness for yoghurt and other dairy foods. These dietary preferences have influenced the Han Chinese too. Shan’s Mum’s breakfast tipple is milky, salted tea. Their vegetables include carrots, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, peppers. Their golden naan bread makes you feel you have stumbled into a Persia of another era. This is a melting pot of cuisines with its own unique characteristics.

Lamb biryani — Lamb biriyani served with yoghurt

That first day we spent there we had lunch in a Uighur restaurant beside the “This and That Satisfactory Chain Supermarket” – lamb kebabs with sesame seeds – chuan’r – a biryani rice dish with lamb and a dish of lamb with pasta like Shan’s Xinjiang spaghetti with lamb. We washed it down with a yoghurt drink and, of course, tea.
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Shan's Xinjiang Spaghetti with Lamb

When we visited Shan’s family in Urumqi, Xinjiang Region every meal included a lamb dish, whether we were eating at home, in a restaurant or having street food. Indeed Shan’s mother believed that a meal was incomplete without lamb. Typically it was served with noodles rather than rice and with lots of vegetables. The noodles were always freshly made by hand, even at home.

P1030631 — A Uighur woman makes noodles in Turpan, Xinjiang

The prevalence of lamb reflects the easy availability of good quality lamb in that mountainous region and the middle-eastern influences on the cooking carried on by the Muslim Uighur community. Though we ate lamb every day for the 8 days we were in Xinjiang, no two meals tasted the same. Every home and restaurant had its own variation of this ubiquitous dish.
Shan’s recipe below is another of those very easy and quick recipes where you can use whatever vegetables you have to hand and adjust the balance of meat to vegetables and the spiciness of the seasonings to suit your personal taste. This version uses packet noodles or spaghetti and is ideal for a speedy family supper after a long day at work or for easy weekend entertaining.
Shan says: “This is a compromise recipe as I couldn’t make handmade noodles the size of spaghetti, so I just used spaghetti. Chinese pre-made noodles usually get soggy easily but it may be possible to get good quality noodles in an Asian supermarket in Ireland.”
Shan’s Xinjiang Spaghetti with Lamb – Xinjiang Ban Mian

Serves 4 – 6 people
Ingredients:

300 – 800 g of lean lamb (depending on how meaty you want the dish to be)
A good handful of string beans
1 fresh green and 1 fresh red chilli (or substitute a red and yellow or green pepper, or a mix of pepper and chillies if you don’t like it too spicy)
One medium onion
One small head of celery (thin and dark Chinese celery, available in Asian supermarkets is better if you can find it – it has a stronger flavour and a bit more bitterness, if not available use about 4 sticks of ordinary celery)
4 cloves of garlic
2 large tomatoes
Salt
White pepper powder (Hu Jiao Fen, 胡椒粉)
Soy sauce
Sugar
Tomato paste/ puree
Cooking oil – groundnut, sunflower or rapeseed oil
Spaghetti to serve

Preparation:

Cut the lamb into thin square slices.
Cut the string beans into 2cm long strips.
Cut the chilli/pepper into diamond shapes and the onion into thin slices or square shapes.
If you find thin celery, cut the stalks to the same size as string beans; if it is normal thick celery, then cut to small cubes so its flavour is easier to get out.
Cut the garlic into thin slices.
Cut the tomatoes into wedges.

Cooking Steps:
Noodle/spaghetti: Start by cooking the spaghetti as the main dish only takes few minutes to cook.
Lamb dish:

Note that the entire cooking process for this dish uses high heat.
Start by heating a wok and putting a generous amount (about 3 tbs) of oil in it. Wait until the oil is really hot.
Add the lamb and stir-fry briskly to brown. Add a small amount of soy sauce, salt to taste and about 2/3 tea spoon of pepper powder. Stir-fry to mix and remove the lamb with a strainer or slotted spoon when it is cooked and set aside. This stage should only take a minute or two in all as the oil is very hot.
Wipe out the wok, reheat it and add about 3 tbs of oil. When it is really hot, add your vegetables and garlic. Stir fry briskly until the tomato juice is cooked out. Add a dash of soy sauce, salt and sugar to taste and a good squeeze of tomato puree (or about half a small can of tomato paste). Taste the sauce to see if the flavour is ok and adjust seasoning if necessary,
Return the lamb to the pan and stir fry for 30 seconds or so, then serve on a dish of spaghetti.

Variations to the dish:
You can replace lamb with beef.
You can use aubergine instead of, or in addition to, the green beans. Aubergine also helps to prevent high blood pressure and protect the cardiovascular system. When preparing the aubergine, wash it but do not peel it as most of the nutrients are in its dark purple skin (especially vitamin E, C and P (bioflavanoid)); Cut the aubergine into thin slices and place into a bowl of clean water to prevent it from becoming oxidised (otherwise it turns to black). Squeeze the water out before cooking it.*
You can also cook it as a vegetarian dish and double the amount of aubergine as it is rich in protein and calcium compared to other vegetables.
If you want it to taste a bit more middle-eastern, add some cumin seeds when cooking the lamb or aubergine..
*Note: The approach suggested by Shan works with Chinese aubergines which can be found in Asian supermarkets. With European aubergines, it is better to sprinkle the slices with salt and leave in a colander to allow excess moisture to drain out and pat therm dry before use.
Verdict:
I love the versatility of this dish which means it can be a handy way of using up left over vegetables and creating a riot of colour on the plate.
See my first attempt to try out this recipe in Exploring China – from Dublin, Ireland. I made it for a second time in late October, substituting mange touts for green beans and using green, red and yellow pepper and a small chilli to create lots of flavour but not too much spice.

Creating new food rituals across continents

The rituals of food unite us and create bonds that make up for lack of a common language and even, sometimes, for the distance between continents. To start a vending machine franchise go to royalvending.com.au/vending-machines-australia/.

The importance of food to Italians is the stuff of legends. As I struggled to follow the conversation the first time I attended a family dinner in Puglia, I realised that much of the animated discussion was about food – buying it, preparing it, eating it. It was fascinating to discover first hand how similar China is in that respect. Food there is more than a necessity for survival. It is a passion and an obsession. There is endless conversation about the importance of food, the health-giving properties of different vegetables and spices, the need for variety in colour, texture and flavour, the way to achieve balance in the diet, how to make use of every part of a plant and animal.
And there are rituals in abundance – noodles offered at the first meal when you arrive to visit family, a reminder of the ties that bind; dumplings served before you part, to reassure you that family wraps itself around you and minds you even when you are far away.
When we stayed with Shan’s family, in Urumqi, Xinjiang province, Shan’s mother served us freshly prepared lamb noodle soup within moments of our arrival late at night. Day trips out of the city with her brother revolved around finding good locations to eat lunch, snacks or dinner. “Are you hungry? Will you eat?” were the most frequent questions.

Lamb noodles — A traditional lamb noodle dish in Urumqi

Breakfast was regarded as an important meal and often included leftovers from the previous evening’s dinner as food is never wasted. No matter what time we arrived back at the apartment, or how much we had eaten that day, a home cooked meal awaited us as well as platters of fresh fruits and nuts, grown locally. Once a meal was served we all sat down immediately to eat – it would have been perceived as the height of rudeness not to treat the eating of food with the same seriousness and respect as our Chinese hosts did.
Throughout our visit, the family remained curious about our eating habits and concerned about our “small” appetites. We were constantly reminded of the importance of variety in our diet and the reasons why we should eat particular foods. I took my first halting steps to learn a few words of Mandarin as Shan’s mother taught me “Yángròu” for lamb, “Miàntiáo” for noodles and “Jiàozi” for dumplings.

This week we discovered a new way of achieving connectedness through food – the sharing of a meal across three continents as I prepared Shan’s recipe for Black Pepper beef in Dublin while Shane attempted the same dish for the first time in Beijing and our daughter Claire made her version of it in Sydney, Australia – our own unique version of a communal Sunday dinner. Skype, iPhones and iPads all played their part in keeping old traditions alive and starting new ones.
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