Today's recipe is for laghman (拌面), or the Uyghur version of spaghetti without parmesan cheese. In Chinese kitchens, people make the noodles by hand from flour, water, and salt, pulling and twisting the dough into long strings. Homemade pasta is far beyond my cooking skills, but here are some precise directions which includes an instructional video for those more experienced. Fortunately, the sauce is much easier to make, except for procuring garlic scapes (蒜苗)-- found year-round in China, but only during the summer in the States. The recipe was translated from a Uyghur cookbook, hence the vague sense of time in the cooking directions.
Ingredients: ½ lb. mutton (or beef); 4 servings uncooked thick spaghetti (or udon noodles); 1 cup garlic scapes (or ½ cup spring onion); 1 cup mild green chile peppers; 2 cups tomatoes; 1 stalk spring onion; 4 cloves garlic; 2 tbsp. cooking oil; 3 tbsp. hot water; salt and ginger to taste.
Servings: Four
Preparation:
(1) Chop mutton into small pieces. Fry in wok on medium heat with cooking oil.
(2) Remove seeds from peppers. Dice peppers and tomatoes. Cut garlic scapes into inch-long segments. (If using spring onions, slice into smaller pieces.)
(3) Crush ginger and garlic. Dissolve ginger into 1 tbsp. hot water.
(4) Meanwhile, boil pasta for several minutes in a separate pot and strain.
(5) After the mutton turns pink, add spring onions into wok. Turn down heat to a simmer.
(6) When the spring onions yellow, add tomatoes and stir until soft.
(7) Add garlic scapes to mixture. Continue stirring to prevent sauce from burning.
(8) Sprinkle salt and ginger, when the scapes are nearly cooked.
(9) Add peppers and garlic with 2 tbsp. (or more) hot water. Cook for two more minutes, then remove from heat.
(10) Serve on top of spaghetti noodles. Use more salt if necessary.
Not bad...now when are you going to teach us how to make the actual noodles? I'm sure the recipe would be easy, but I would like step-by-step pictures on how to stretch them. ;)
You have made me a happy man.
Does it maters in which order I add the Ingredients?
Ah, laghman. I've tried to make this countless times myself with little success. It usually just ends up tasting like mutton spaghetti when I make it. I think the secret's in the noodles.
Besides the mutton which should go in first, I personally don't think it matters that much. This was translated from a Uyghur cookbook, so I thought the author knew more than I did about making good laghman!
Is this the same thing as "Ding Ding Chao Mian"? I had it in Sichuan and have been trying to find a recipe for it ever since.
When you say "mild green chili peppers" to you mean green bell peppers, something similar to Anaheim chilies (i.e., what people in Sichuan use to make Tiger Skin Peppers) or something different?
Fresh content, nice layout. Love the blog.
First, thank you so much for putting this information on the web!! I have been looking everywhere for Uyghur recipes in English!
Second, I think you have written a wrong character for laghman. I am guessing this should be "la mian" which is written 拉面, meaning hand-pulled noodles. 拌面 is pronounced "ban mian" and means noodles served with soy sauce, sesame butter, etc.
Leghmen is the Uyghur name for it. I dont think there is any misstake on that. And I don't know if you are awere that Uyghur is a different language than Chinese. Clearly your Chinese is good, but just don't confuse Chinese and Uyghur.
Thanks for putting these recipes up, there's a real gap in English for information on the wonderful food coming from Xinjiang!