Chongqing Noodles (重庆小面 - chóng qìng xiǎo miàn)

[liuzhou]

Chongqing, 重庆 (chóng qìng) is a major city in south-west China. It is the world’ s largest city by population. Until 1997, it was part of Sichuan province, but was separated by the central government and taken under direct control. Several well known Sichuan dishes originated there.

 

One of their signature street food dishes is 重庆小面 (chóng qìng xiǎo miàn) Chongqing Small Noodles. A simple dish of boiled wheat noodles with some vegetables, pickles, peanuts and seasonings. You can usually then customise this by adding other ingredients of your choice. These consist of meats and beans/peas.

 

 

Now, inspired by the success of Liuzhou luosifen’s industrialisation, they have begun producing packaged xiao mian to finish at home.

 

Details here.

 

I’m not sure it will reach the level of success they are seeking. I have two reasons.

 

a) the amount of variations are heading for the infinite means they would have to choose just one for mass production. Which one?

 

b) the success of luosifen relied on the dish being impractical and much more expensive to make at home. Its broth alone takes 16 hours simmering. Even more is that authentic luosifen can only really be made here in Liuzhou as it depends on local ingredients, otherwise not available. Xiao mian, on the other hand is easy to make with no unusual ingredients. There are recipes on the internet and Fuchsia Dunlop’s The Food of Sichuan (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) has a good recipe.

 

 

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