I chose to make Dongtai fish soup noodle because Dongtai is very close to my hometown. This is a dish that I often ate in restaurants but never tried to cook myself. The fish soup noodle is a very good representation of noodles made in the South of China. It contains many key elements of Huaiyang cuisine.

Dongtai is a county in eastern China, in the Jiangsu province. As a specialty, the noodle is named after the county itself. The noodle has a history of over 200 years. It is said that in 1758 (in Qianlong’s 33th year), a noodle restaurant owner found a small bazaar selling noodles. He then bought a bowl and tried them. He realized the soup was so delicious, much better than that the noodles he made. He then chatted with the cook to tried to find the secret of the delicious taste of the noodle. From the conversation the restaurant owner found that the cook was originally a cook for the emperor. He was fired from the royal kitchen because once he didn’t make the soup well. He then returned home and opened up a small bazaar selling the fish soup noodle he had invented. A restaurant owner then hired the cook and asked him to make his noodle soup. All customers liked the noodles very much and it became a very famous dish.

Wheat is mostly grown in the northern part of China. Because of the abundance of water in Southern China, rice is the main food of the Jiangsu Province. The wheat can grow on dry land while the rice has to grow on paddy fields. In China lunch is usually the most important meal of the day. As a result, people in the Southern part of China would usually eat rice during lunch. From my own experience, my family would only eat noodles when my parents were so busy that they did not have time to cook a proper meal. Noodles made in this occasion are very simple. Instead, Dongtai fish soup noodles are often eaten for breakfast. The noodle is usually eaten together with pastries. This kind of breakfast usually is not eaten at home but instead at restaurants with friends or business partners. Chinese people like to discuss business and develop friendships while dining. It is too complicated to make the fish soup at home. It is not worth it to spend so much time and use so many materials to make the soup to serve a family of just three or four people. In restaurants, cooks are able to prepare large amounts of soup at a time and serve it to many people. It is quite similar to the way Vietnam restaurants serve pho. The soups are pre-prepared for whenever a customer arrives. The cook only has to cook the noodles in fresh water quickly and add them to the soup.

In China, there are four main cuisines, Huaiyang cuisine, Shandong cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, and the Guangdong cuisine. The cuisines are divided according to different areas. Foods from each of the four cuisines vary greatly because of geographical and cultural differences. Dongtai fish soup noodle belongs to the Huaiyang cuisine. Huaiyang cuisine is very strict in its selection of good and fresh materials. In preparing the food, it focuses on presenting the original taste of the food instead of adding too much seasoning. It pays a lot of attention to the knife work and the controlling of fire (the degree of how much fire should be used for cooking and how long the food should be cooked).

Huaiyang cuisine has especially good soup. The Dongtai fish soup noodle is a typical example. At first glance, it doesn’t seem sophisticated or sumptuous at all. It is just a noodle in a white soup. The key to making delicious fish soup noodles is all about making the soup. The soup fully absorbs the nutrition and the flavor of fish and pork. As a result, the soup is actually very nutritious and delicious. Soup plays an important role in Chinese dishes. As I remember, every proper lunch in the family would include soup. It is believed that the soup can lubricate the stomach and thus be helpful in digestion. It is similar to the reason that Italians eat ice cream or drink wine after dinner. Chinese soup is similar to consommé or broth. There are meat soups and vegetable soups. But they are all much lighter than the minestrone or bisque. The main taste of the soup comes from the vegetable or the meat itself. There is only trivial amounts of salt added to help extract the flavor from the meat or vegetable.

“Xian(鲜)” is what Chinese people call the kind of flavor that is draw from meat or sea food. “Xing(腥)”is the raw smell of the meat. It is quite easy to cook vegetable soup. The difficulty of making a meat soup is to get rid of the “Xing” smell and draw off the “Xian” taste. The crux of getting rid of the “Xing” smell is picking fresh meat and cleaning it well to get rid of all the blood. Cooking wine, ginger, and garlic bulbs are added, not only to season the soup, but also to eliminate the smell. Once the bad smell is eliminated, by frying the meat and carefully controlling the fire, we would be able to successfully extract the “Xian” taste.