Yulin Buckwheat Bowl Jelly 碗托

Yulin Buckwheat Bowl Jelly (碗托) is a buckwheat-flour batter steamed in bowls and left to cool, a snack of Yulin (榆林), Shaanxi. The Suide County (绥德县) government counts it among the ways local people make coarse grains into refined food, and Yulin Daily reports that in Wubu County (吴堡县) nearly every household makes the daodao version.

How it is made

In the Suide method, buckwheat flour is mixed with cold water into a stiff dough, kneaded until soft, then slowly thinned with more cold water until the batter falls from a lifted chopstick in an unbroken thread. It is ladled into bowls, steamed over water for 40 minutes, and left to cool before eating.

Wubu cooks add a little salt to the dough, warm the bowls before ladling in the batter, and steam for about 15 minutes once the water boils. Yulin Daily calls the key step the one after steaming: the hot batter is stirred without pause with a flat spatula. Wang Xiaobing (王小兵), a Wubu maker, patented a wantuo machine and dresses his with Ningxia flaxseed oil and oil pressed from whole dried chillies.

How it is eaten

Suide has two styles. Daodao wantuo (刀刀碗饦, "little-knife wantuo"), the older way, stays in its bowl: it is scored into diamonds with a small knife beaten from iron wire, dressed with vinegar, garlic, sesame salt and sesame oil, and eaten straight off the knife. The daodao wantuo of Yihe Town (义合镇) is known across Shanxi, Shaanxi and Ningxia.

In the newer mala liver style (麻辣肝子碗饦), the jelly is turned out and cut into slices or strips and covered with a numbing, spicy sauce. For the sauce, Sichuan pepper and chilli are fried in a little oil until golden-red, lifted out and ground, then returned to the wok with slices of cooked sheep's liver, water and salt, and thickened into a paste. The Suide County government singles out the Chen Qi (陈启) family's wantuo as outstanding and calls its liver sauce unmatched.