Quilt-Sheet Wide Noodles 铺盖面

How it is made

The Rongchang district government singles out the way the dough pieces are worked as the distinctive step, and the finished sheets are notably springy. Locally it is also called "扯麦粑" (pulled wheat cake).

The soup is cooked with free-range chicken and pork leg bones together with seafood such as cuttlefish and squid. Peas are the traditional topping.

Flavour and texture

The traditional bowl is fresh and savoury, with the clean taste of the peas combined with the seafood note of the stock. Over the years cooks have added other toppings to suit diners: minced-pork sauce (杂酱), beef, a rich fatty broth (肥汤) and pork with pickled greens (酸菜肉丝). The broth itself can be numbing-hot (麻辣), fragrant-hot (香辣), hot and sour (酸辣) or clear (清汤).

Where it comes from

The district gives two origin accounts. In one, a noodle seller named Chen Youquan (陈友权) developed the dish in Rongchang at the end of the Qing dynasty and start of the Republic, after which it spread to other parts of China, especially Chengdu and Chongqing. In the other, the noodles came to Renyi (仁义) town in Rongchang from Xuyong County (叙永县) in the first year of the Republic (1912), sold at a street stall run by a Zhou family under the name "鸡婆头" (hen's head). A country woman took the seller's calls of "hen's head" as an insult; as the dough in his hands was pulled wider and wider, like a quilt, he renamed it on the spot.

The district government describes Quilt-Sheet Wide Noodles as a food brought by the migrants who resettled Sichuan (填川移民), carrying a flavour from Fujian and Guangdong.

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