The Sinosphere · Volume 35, The Sour Jar, the Steam Funnel and a Border That Runs Both Ways
Mafen, Guilin horse-meat rice noodles
Guilin, Guangxi
Illustration
- Time
- 10 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 107 sources in the brief
Guilin, Guangxi. A Qing-dynasty variant of Dish 8, named here on its own terms.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. Using the lu shui from Dish 8. 10 minutes.
Ingredients
- 300 g horse meat, thinly sliced (or a well-marbled beef substitute, see Sourcing)
- 500 ml the lu shui from Dish 8
- 400 g fresh or dried thin rice noodles
- to taste pickled vegetable and spring onion, to finish
Method
- Poach the sliced meat briefly in the hot lu shui until just cooked through.
- Scald the rice noodles and drain into small, shallow bowls, traditionally a fifth the size of a standard serving, since the dish is eaten as several dozen small refilled bowls across a sitting rather than one large one.
- Top each small bowl with a little of the poached meat, a ladle of lu shui, pickled vegetable and spring onion.
- Serve in the traditional small-bowl, continually-refilled style if entertaining, rather than as one large portion.
What a modern chef changes
The same small-bowl ritual, with a cleaner cut of meat.
Rung 1
Method
- Sous vide the meat at 56°C for 45 minutes for an evenly pink, tender result, then finish with a very brief dip in the hot lu shui just before serving rather than poaching it through from raw.
- Serve the small-bowl format deliberately, not apologetically: this dish's real elevation is precision in each small bowl's seasoning balance, not a change to the communal, repeated-refill way it is traditionally eaten.