Jiaxian Tofu Soup with Sweet Potato Noodles 郏县豆腐菜

How it is made

Cooks treat the broth as the key. Mutton and beef bones are the main ingredients, simmered for several hours over a low fire with more than thirty seasonings, among them fennel, star anise, chilli, pepper, goji berries and cassia, until the stock is pale yellow and mellow.

Tofu is sliced and fried in pure rapeseed oil until crisp outside and tender inside, then cut into fine shreds. The noodles are sweet-potato vermicelli, and the mutton offal and mutton blood are expected to be fresh. The chilli oil is made from mild chillies with more than ten Chinese herbs: mutton fat is heated, the chilli powder goes in, and the oil is taken off the heat as soon as it turns fragrant.

For each order, boiling stock is ladled into a small pot with the tofu shreds, vermicelli, offal and mutton blood, cooked for a few minutes, poured into a bowl and finished with chopped spring onion and chilli oil.

Flavour and texture

The dish counts among the six culinary specialities of Jiaxian (美食六绝) and is known for carefully chosen ingredients, a fresh savoury taste, fragrance without greasiness and a long finish. Diners in Jiaxian eat it with a few hot fried dough sticks (油馍头) on the side, alternating mouthfuls of tofu and noodles with the broth.

Where it comes from

In Xuedian, one tofu-soup shop follows another along the street. Local tradition puts the dish at more than a thousand years old: in a drought year a kind-hearted wealthy household had its servants boil beef and mutton bones with seasonings, add tofu, mutton blood and mutton and beef offal, and share the soup with the villagers. Sweet-potato vermicelli and fried tofu shreds were added later.

Zhao Tingxuan (赵听选) of Zhaozhai East village (赵寨东村) is the fourth generation of a family that has made the dish since the late Qing. He learned it from his uncle at market stalls built around an earth stove and a hand bellows, took over the business in 1983. In the autumn of 1994, finding that customers were driving out from the Jiaxian county town for a bowl and that no shop there sold it, he moved into town, first renting premises at the Dakeng farmers' market (大坑农贸市场).