Chinese regional cuisine: Shanxi knife-cut noodles and where to eat them in Hong Kong
- Hand sliced from a slab of dough and served with braised meat, Shanxi noodles are gaining popularity in Hong Kong
- Noodle makers train for months to get their cutting skills up to scratch
Chefs from China’s Shanxi province have magic hands that can turn a humble lump of dough into noodles of varied shapes, lengths, widths, thicknesses and even colours. Their noodle-making skills especially for dao xiao mian (knife-shaved noodles) – are attracting attention from chefs and food lovers in Hong Kong.
Wong Shui-yin, a young noodle maker at Shi Wei in Wan Chai, is shaving a fat slab of dough into strands of noodles – a routine job for him but it invariably attracts a lot of camera clicks from diners. Balancing the slab of dough on his left shoulder, Wong slashes it with a parer-like tool, moving repetitively up and down, too fast to see.
Long strands fly off the sharp utensil, the noodles falling into boiling water.
There’s a certain standard for perfectly shaved noodles, Wong says. “Every strand of noodle should be approximately uniform. The strand cannot be too thin or too thick. Too thin, it will lose texture and chewiness, too thick, it’ll be too hard to chew. The noodle should be wide and thick in the middle and slim towards the ends.”
In search of perfection, Wong spent a year in Beijing at the age of 16 learning the craft with a Shanxi master. “You have to make sure the paring knife is placed at the right angle on the dough,” explains Wong. “The technique is sometimes beyond description. It can’t be orally taught. Through practice over time, you get a ‘feel’. It’s instinct that tells you how to do it.”
