Food in Opal Village

Opal Village, August 21st 2012

Opal Village's prime time is on Mondays, because it's Market Day. However, August 21st 2012 was a Tuesday. So I was a day too late. Anyway, I still have some things to share about Opal Village. It's about food.

People might go to the market once a week, but eat everyday e.g. naan bread.

Let me show the process.


It's 2 yuan each.

My verdict: crispy on the outside, soft in the inside, salty sweet on the taste buds.
My warning: eat it while it's still warm. Otherwise, it would loose its crispiness and become like rubber, hard to pull apart.

Our guide let us have a seat. Soon after, a waiter served us each a bowl.

"Oh, this is the gravy of the noodle," I thought to myself.

"What's this?" asked my Korean travel-mate to our guide.

"Tea," he answered.

"What?? Tea??"

I took a sip carefully. I am not a tea lover but a mad-coffee-lover. However, this tea was so good. The smell, I loved it.

On my very first meal in Xinjiang, I had been surprised buy a bowl used for drinking. Nevertheless, this bowl is double and a half the size!

"Is this sugar for tea?"

"No, that's chilli."

While waiting for my noodle to come, I wandered the restaurant to take couple of shots.

There you go, fried rice and dumplings.

Slice the meat and feast!

This was our lunch, laghman. (You see? The tea bowl is just near the size of the noodle bowl!) This, has been my best noodle of Xinjiang.

I found an interesting link from YouTube about the making of laghman. It's from an Uyghur Restaurant, in Saitama, Japan. Even if you don't understand Japanese, I think you can watch the making of the noodle and still get the picture.

In case you are interested in experimenting in your own kitchen, I've found a recipe here. For the noodles, you can use the noodles for spaghetti.

As a matter of fact, what most impressed me about this laghman was the similarity to spaghetti. Traveling this Silk Road all the way from Xi'An, and now sitting nearly at the edge of China's West-side, I've seen how people's faces changed. The slanting eyes grew rounder, the dark eyes turned bluish, the yellowish brown skin gradated into slight blond, round features turned sharp. So did noodle. (So did tea bowls, they grew wider.)

Two days ago in Aksu, I had had a 'semi-pizza', and now I'm having a 'semi-spaghetti'. The way food transformed tells me, I'm getting closer to the West world: Europe. That's such a thrill for me. That's why I love to travel.

P.S.
Where do you think the word ラーメン ramen for Japanese noodle came from?