A spring roll is a thin wrapper around a filling, rolled and usually fried. An egg roll, in the United States, is a thicker, blistered, deep-fried roll filled with cabbage and pork, and it is an American restaurant dish rather than a Chinese one. The Chinese thing behind both is 春卷 chunjuan, “spring roll” — … Read more
Wontons have been sold under that name in Chinese cities for more than a thousand years, and nobody has ever satisfactorily explained what the name means. That second half is not a gap in the English-language record. It is a gap in the Chinese one, and writers in China have been pointing at it for … Read more
There are two ways to turn dough into a long thin strand. You can stretch it, or you can force it through a hole. English-language writing about Chinese noodles is almost entirely about the first. Hand-pulled noodles have recipes, videos, restaurant names and a well-worn origin story. The second method has almost nothing, even though … Read more
Both arrive cold, both come slicked in chili oil and vinegar, and both get translated into English as “cold noodles.” But liang pi (凉皮) and liang fen (凉粉) — also written liangpi and liangfen — are not variations on one dish. They are made by two completely different processes, and once you know what to … Read more
The Chinese character for noodles is 面 in simplified Chinese and 麵 in traditional Chinese. Both are pronounced miàn, with a falling fourth tone. If you are looking at a noodle shop sign anywhere in mainland China, 面 is almost certainly the character you are seeing; in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, you will see … Read more