Gaozhou Bean Sprout Rice Rolls 高州豆芽粉

Gaozhou Bean Sprout Rice Rolls (高州豆芽粉) are sheets of steamed rice batter rolled around mung bean sprouts, cut into lengths and dressed with oil and sauce, a street food of Gaozhou (高州) in Maoming (茂名), Guangdong. A local saying runs "if you haven't eaten douya fen, you've lived in Gaozhou for nothing" (未食豆芽粉 枉作高州趸).

How it is made

The basic steps are grinding the rice batter, preparing mung bean sprouts, steaming the sheet and rolling it. The cook ladles batter onto a tray, spreads it flat, scatters bean sprouts over it and slides the tray into the steamer for a minute or two, then rolls the set sheet with a special scraper and cuts it into sections. One long-running Gaozhou shop grinds its batter from old rice rather than new, because it is less sticky, and keeps stirring the batter until it goes into the steamer so the sheet comes out smooth and translucent. Its owner says that in the hot summer and autumn months the sprouts are blanched first and wrapped into the steamed sheet; in the cooler winter and spring they are steamed raw with the batter so that sprouts and sheet set together.

How it is eaten

The rolls are served with fresh peanut oil and a cooked soy sauce, sprinkled with crushed peanuts. There are three kinds: plain bean sprout, meat, and a mixed "mandarin duck" (鸳鸯) version with both. At the shop Gaozhou people call "Dongmen douya fen" (东门豆芽粉), the sauce is cooked with sand ginger, garlic and shiitake mushrooms and comes hot or mild, and the rolls are eaten with the owner's own sweet vinegar and plain rice congee.

Where it comes from

Before the Qing dynasty, Gaozhou people already made rice sheets (粉皮) to eat at the Zhongyuan Festival (中元节), and the food later became an everyday one. Douya fen made its name at the stalls around Dongmen Road (东门路) in what is now Panzhou Subdistrict (潘州街道) of Gaozhou. The Maoming chronicles office describes it as a close relative of zhuchang lu (猪肠碌), the rice rolls of Yangjiang (阳江).