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Western Region Rhapsody on the Tip of the Tongue: A Foodie's Northern Xinjiang Food Adventure

Text/Greedy Cat Ali

Day 1: Sweet Critical Attack in Urumqi

At 7 o'clock in the morning, I was awakened by the sesame aroma wafting from the naan pit. Pushing open the wooden window of the "Consulate Lane" family hotel, Abdu, the naan master downstairs, was throwing the dough into a moon. The moment the dough "slapped" against the inner wall of the naan pit, the wheat aroma mixed with the smell of firewood exploded, startling the gray doves that landed on the grape trellis.

"Girl, do you want the freshly baked rose naan?" Abdu's iron hook hooked up a golden full moon from the bottom of the pit, and the rose sauce in the center of the naan was still bubbling like volcanic lava. I tore off a piece without caring about the heat. Under the crispy sesame layer, the Hotan rose mixed with Mulei honey set off a storm on the tip of my tongue, and the aftertaste was actually a little minty and cool - it turned out that he kneaded Chamagu leaves in the dough!

I rushed into the main store of "Blood Station Big Plate Chicken" at noon, but was intercepted by the secret weapon on the tricycle at the door. In the glass cabinet of Uyghur lady Gulinar, yellow noodles were soaked in light golden soup, the gluten was full of saffron-dyed brine, and drizzled with walnut pieces and wild chive sauce. When the teeth bit through the noodles and slid into my throat, twenty Tianshan cows danced on my taste buds.

"Don't poke with chopsticks, pick like combing your hair." Gulinar took my cutlery to demonstrate. Her wrinkled wrist shook lightly, and the noodles turned into a translucent round umbrella on the tip of the chopsticks, and were put into the mouth with crushed chickpeas - this is not noodles, it is clearly the flowing moonlight on the Silk Road!

Day3: The taste maze of the old city of Kashgar

In the morning prayers of the Id Kah Mosque, I was like an ant falling into a honey pot, lost in the thousand-layer routine of the century-old teahouse. Uncle Maimaiti, wearing a flower hat, raised the silver-studded teapot above his head. The dark brown medicinal tea drew an amber arc in the air and fell accurately into the coarse pottery bowl in front of me.

"This is saffron-added maren tea, paired with this." He pushed the maren candy inlaid with almonds, and the candy was solidified with figs, raisins and wild honey from Tianshan Mountain. When the tea soup broke the candy shell, the sweetness and bitterness played a love of life and death in the mouth, and I vaguely saw the desert caravan sharing the last food under the starry sky.

Turning the corner, I ran into the smoke of the steamed buns shop. Fifteen naan pits erupted at the same time, and the masters wearing white gloves threw the dough into the sea of ​​fire like throwing grenades. I grabbed a hot "Samusa". The moment I bit through the crispy shell, the hot sheep tail oil mixed with the skin and teeth juice gushed out, and the cumin seeds exploded between my teeth. The spicy taste came from the green agate pepper hidden in the meat filling - this pepper must be soaked in camel milk for seven days before drying!

In the evening, I squatted in front of the pigeon meat stall in Khan Bazaar and watched the boss Ali dissect the pigeon with one hand. He first twisted the neck to bleed, then took out the pink organ string from the lower abdomen, and finally stuffed the pigeon covered with secret sauce into the naan pit. When my teeth sank into the crispy pigeon legs, the sour and sweet taste of wild sand dates oozes out of the bone marrow. It turns out that he added dried purple mulberries that have been dried in Turpan for three months in the marinade.

Day5: Cream Revolution in the Ili River Valley

At the morning market at Horgos Port, Kazakh herders use saddles as chopping boards to cut horse intestines. The smoked horse meat was rosin-colored, and the fat layer was like a sandwich crystal. Uncle Buick, the stall owner, used a dagger to cut off a thin piece: "Eat it with this!" He handed over not garlic paste, but fermented mare's milk in an ox horn cup.

When the sour liquid wrapped in smoked meat slid into my esophagus, I felt like riding a Ferghana horse and galloping on the grassland. Suddenly, I was attracted by the commotion in the stall next door - three Kyrgyz men were fighting for the last piece of baursak. This fried dough cake fermented with camel milk swelled like a hollow golden ball. I took the opportunity to break off the remaining pieces and dipped them in butter. The pastry broke into a thousand milky stars in my mouth.

It was purely accidental to break into the wedding banquet of the Xibe courtyard in Chabuchaer. The bride Tajiguli was sprinkling wild chives into the "Nimha fish stew". In the copper pot with a diameter of 1.2 meters, Ili salmon and wild mushrooms were floating in the sea of ​​milk skin. When the Xibe mothers sang the "Wedding Song", the fish gill meat I was given melted on the tip of my tongue, and the freshness swept through every taste bud cell like an avalanche.

Day7: The Ice and Fire Trio of Turpan Huoyan Mountain

In the 48-degree high temperature, I collapsed in the shadow of the drying room in the Grape Valley. The Uyghur boy Ai Erken suddenly handed me a bowl of "Shalang Dao Ke". A wooden spoon was inserted into the small hill of crushed ice. After pouring yogurt and honey, he took out a Hami melon as big as an ostrich egg like a magic trick.

"Watch it!" He swung the knife to split the king of melons, scraped the melon flesh into snowflakes and dropped it into the smoothie. When the cold and sweet mixture slid across the burning throat, I heard the Huoyan Mountain roaring unwillingly. What's even more amazing is the surprise hidden at the bottom of the bowl-the raisins become crispy and hard at low temperatures, suddenly awakening the drowsy taste nerves like a hidden weapon.

Visiting the barbecue camp next to the ancient city of Jiaohe at night, I found the "king of dark cuisine" grilled camel liver. Forty dark red meat skewers curled up in the charcoal fire, and after being sprinkled with chili powder, they actually glowed blue-purple fluorescence. The moment I closed my eyes and bit into it, the strong iron smell rushed straight to my head, but three seconds later, the sweetness came back, like swallowing a piece of melting raw chocolate - it turned out that this was a special flavor marinated with camel thorn juice!

Day9: The Carbon Water Nuclear Bomb of Taklimakan

Before crossing the desert highway, I went crazy at the Hotan Night Market. In the giant naan pit of Maimaiti, twenty "Kumaki" were stewed between sand and charcoal. This meat naan wrapped in sheep stomach is like a landmine. When I cut it open, the steam blew off my sun hat. The hot lamb and pumpkin flowed in the dead dough. The most amazing thing was the dried apricots on the bottom - they had already melted into a natural sweet and sour sauce under the high temperature.

Challenging the "spicy skin naan" is pure self-torture. The whole naan is covered with Anjihai chili peel that has been dried for 180 days. Under the black red chili slices is a secret weapon: wild garlic paste fermented with sea buckthorn juice. When the burning sensation of the first bite faded, a strange fruity aroma grew out of the ruins of taste. When I drank the third bowl of yogurt shaved ice, I found that my lips were swollen like the head of a Dongbula.

At two o'clock in the morning, I was lured into the alley by the aroma of "watermelon barbecue". The flesh of a half-person-high watermelon was hollowed out, filled with lamb chops, chickpeas and dryland fragrant rice, and the melon rind was covered with river mud and thrown into charcoal ash for stewing. When the old Uyghur craftsman knocked open the charred shell, pink steam with fruity and meaty flavor gushed out, and the rice grains were full of watermelon juice and sheep fat, each of which was like a miniature taste universe explosion.

Epilogue: A fragmented night on the Bayinbuluke grassland

When I drank the tenth bowl of mare's milk in the yurt, the starry sky began to rotate. The herdsman Chaolu carried a whole roasted lamb to the table. The lamb's eyes were inlaid with red wolfberries, and the hind legs were tied with ribbons made of sand onions. I pounced on the lamb's back with the Yingjisha knife in hand. The fat layer trembled like solidified fat under the blade. Suddenly, I found a surprise hidden in the lamb's abdomen - a lamb belly stuffed with wild mushrooms and pine nuts!

When Aunt Qiqige brought the finale "milk barrel meat", I was lying on the saddle to sober up. The three-year-old milk tofu wrapped with lamb meat was slow-cooked in a hollowed-out spruce barrel for eight hours. The moment the lid was opened, the strong aroma woke up the sheepdog three kilometers away. When collagen stuck to my lips, I tasted the moonlight, morning dew and tumbleweeds of the grassland.

The last memory before the blackout was Chaolu's ten-year-old daughter Narentuoya, who used my sports camera to shoot the roasted whole cow at the "Zha Ma Banquet". The rotating cow body in the firelight gradually became a shadow, and her silver bell-like laughter mixed with the sound of oil bursting came: "Sister! Your camera is emitting the smell of oil!"

Postscript:

On the return flight, my taste buds were still playing time-lapse photography:

The sparks in the naan pit are stars that never fall,

The carrot cubes in the pilaf are solidified sunsets,

And the fat lines on the horse sausage casings are the contour lines of the Tianshan Mountains.

The stewardess looked at me crying over the lunch box,

and secretly gave me a pack of Hotan rose naan -

This is probably her last mercy to the food pilgrim,