Good Eats #1

My dear friend Cristina pointed out to be recently that I have not been blogging about a HUGE part of Chinese culture. The Food!  So here is a post dedicated to our most recent, delicious, Chinese food finds. 

Qing tang mian (pro: Ching Tong Me-En) is my favorite NEW soup here. It literally translate into clear soup noodles and come from a part of Chinese called Shanxi. (ShangShi)

The noodles are thick about 1 inch wide and about 1/4 of inch thick. They are long-probably 18 inches long. So in all reality in your soup you only get 5 or so noodles.  Also in the soup are red peppers, carrots, green onions, bok choy, potatoes, garlic and tofu (although the vegetables can vary.) It's served PIPING hot and the spicy-ness really depends on the amount of peppers put in on that day. Now eating soup noodles with chop sticks is truly an art form. Or maybe the opposite of an art form. It's an unattractive rush to get slippery noodles into your mouth ASAP so you don't splash your broth. So you get your head down low and SLURP and SLURP and SLURP. In the picture Jill is demonstrating good noodle technique.

Jill likes a dry version of the noodles in an oil sauce with garlic. It changes the noodles texture and makes them a little thicker and chewier. 

So- that big bowl of soup costs me 8 yuan aka $1.18 and I have yet to finish it. Actually Jill helps me finish the broth every day. Which is what roommates are for. :)