Lagman in countries Central Asia takes pride of place in cookbooks. This dish was born, according to historians, in China, and from there it began its victorious march to the west with the help of the ancient people of the Uighurs. No wonder along the way original recipe overgrown with numerous versions. Now there are about one hundred and twenty lagman recipes. The Russian person is mostly familiar with the Uzbek and Tajik versions of this dish. In this article, we will learn how to make an authentic Uighur lagman. The recipe differs from the Central Asian version we are used to in terms of ingredients, technology, and even appearance ready meal. Unlike Central Asian, there is almost no gravy in Uighur - only meat juice and fats. In addition, the ingredients are not stewed, but fried. In the Uighur version, the noodles are always drawn, while in Central Asia they can be cut.
Something about lagman
For the Slavs, who are more familiar with the Central Asian version of this dish, it resembles noodles with a very thin stew. But in its original form, the lagman was not such. In China, it is customary to serve big dish noodles, and to it in separate bowls a few gravy. The diners mixed them with pasta already in their bowl. Uighur cuisine is closest to Chinese. The lagman of this people consists of two components: “chuzmy” (noodles) and “saya”. In the Central Asian version, instead of the last component, “vaja” is used - that is, gravy. It is she who turns the lagman into a half soup or half a second course. Sai is drier. If we compare the Uyghur lagman with something familiar to us, then it is more like naval pasta. You can add supplements separately to chuzma. But more often sai is laid out on noodles. That's it, enough theory. Let's start cooking real lagman. The recipe below makes three to four servings.
Uighur lagman recipe at home. Ingredients
And yet, this is not naval pasta for you! The list of ingredients is impressive. Less expensive, but more laborious is noodles. Unlike Uzbek lagman, the Uighur version does not use eggs. The dough is made only on the basis of flour (150-200 grams), water and salt. But in the choice of meat Uighur dish gives the chef more freedom. It can be not only lamb, but also beef. Requires 250 grams of pulp or tenderloin. What other products does the Uighur lagman recipe require? It is, of course, a lot of vegetables. We need to stock up on three small onions, half a Margilan radish (or daikon), a small eggplant, six pods of green beans, a bunch of celery leaves (or three of its stalks), half a red bell pepper, two tomatoes, three garlic cloves. From spices, we need two tablespoons of ground coriander. Optionally, you can add a pod to the list of ingredients hot pepper chili and a pinch of chopped cilantro.
dough recipe
The preparation of the Uighur lagman usually begins with the most time-consuming step - stretching the chuzma. The noodles in this dish are special. It has super elastic properties. When cooking, it swells, so it is important for us to stretch it into as thin threads as possible. Therefore, the use of eggs in the test is strictly prohibited. Sift the flour into a bowl, mix it with two pinches of salt. We begin to add warm water so that a rather steep dough is obtained. Transfer the piece to a floured worktop and knead. The longer and more diligently we do this, the better the result will be. Knead the dough with your knuckles, then roll it into a bun. Wrap it in cling film and leave to rest in a cold place for an hour and a half. After this time, knead the dough again with your palms. When it stops sticking to your hands, roll it into a sausage. We cut it into pieces with a thickness of a finger. From each we roll thinner bundles - with a pencil. We put them on a dish, generously sprinkle with vegetable oil. Turn the bundles over so that the dough can be soaked with fat. Let's leave it like that for half an hour.
Chuzma stretching
Uighur lagman different from other varieties of this dish interesting taste noodles. But she will have to deal with it. In half an hour, our flagella were saturated with vegetable oil and became very elastic. We check their ability to stretch. We take one flagellum in the left hand, and with the fingers of the right we pull it by the tip. If the dough is still steep and the rope is about to break, wait a little longer. And if the flagellum is pulled out well, we continue to work. We intercept the rope with the fingers of the right hand closer to the opposite tip and twist the thread. We put the resulting bundles in the same dish, fatty from oil, but so that we do not lose the edge of the pasta. Experienced chefs for cooking Uyghur lagman, they can pull spaghetti two meters long from a piece of dough! The first two pasta will make you sweat, but then the work will start to argue.
Boiling noodles
You should not leave the chuzma for the Uyghur lagman damp for a long time, otherwise it may wind up and become brittle. Boil the noodles separately, in a large amount of salted water and at a rapid boil. Chuzma, like Italian pasta, should be brought to the state of al dente, that is, it should be well chewed, but remain slightly hard. We throw the noodles into a colander, but so as to save the water in which they were cooked. We'll need it later. We wash chuzma cold water, sprinkle with vegetable oil and mix. Now let her wait in the wings in a dish under the lid.
Laza jan
Before you cook the Uyghur lagman, you must first make a "brand" seasoning for it. Laza jan is a mixture of hot pepper chili, garlic and ground coriander. It is diluted to a pasty consistency with calcined vegetable oil. First, finely chop two or three cloves of garlic and rub them with a pestle with 2-3 teaspoons of red hot pepper, as well as with a few pinches of coriander. If desired, you can add a little chopped cilantro leaves to the laza jan. When all the ingredients of the paste are combined, pour in three to four soup spoons of hot vegetable oil. Mix well. Leave to cool under the lid.
Uighur Lagman: white sai recipe
This version of the dish is closest to the original, Chinese recipe. And in the Celestial Empire, it is customary to serve noodles on a large dish, and to it, separately, in small plates, several meat seasonings. In Uighur lagman we will cook two sai - white and red. Meat, garlic and onions are used in both. Therefore, having cut them, you need to divide them equally and lay them on different boards. Based on the fact that the meat in this dish is exposed to a short heat treatment, it must be crushed into thin strips. Vegetables are cut into larger pieces. Let's start cooking with white sai. In a wok pan (a cauldron is also suitable at home), heat 2-3 soup spoons of vegetable oil. Quickly, just three minutes, fry half the onion and garlic, all the green beans. Season with salt and ground coriander (a pinch each). Add chopped celery stalks. If we use the leaves of this plant, they must be added at the end of the preparation of white sai. Stirring with a wooden spatula, fry for two to three minutes. We throw half the meat into the cauldron. We take the same three minutes to fry. Season again with pinches of coriander and salt. Now we send the eggplant and radish to fry. AT this case we will increase the thermal treatment period until the last ingredient softens. Pour in a scoop of water in which the noodles were cooked. Stir, let it boil and even evaporate a little moisture. Transfer the finished sai to a bowl, close it and put it in a barely warm oven.
red sai
If you are a beginner and do not really know how to cook Uyghur lagman, make it with tomato dressing. In the same wok (or cauldron) where the white sai was cooked, heat up two or three tablespoons of vegetable oil. We fry the meat. It should be cooked longer than for white sai. Pieces of meat should not only turn white, but also be covered with light golden brown. Season them with a pinch of salt and ground coriander. We add to the meat that part of the onion and garlic that we set aside for the red sai. If desired, you can include vegetables and a piece of chili pepper in this composition. Fry everything for exactly three minutes. Now it's the turn of another pepper - sweet, Bulgarian. With intensive frying, cook it for three minutes too. The next step is tomatoes. We process them longer until the juice released from them is boiled down. Season the dish again with salt and coriander. Then - ideally - here it would be necessary to add dzhusai chopped into pieces, but in the conditions of Slavic cuisine, cilantro greens are also suitable. And How The final stage, add a small ladle of water in which chuzma was cooked. We remove the red sai, like its white counterpart, into a bowl with a lid.
The first way to submit a lagman
This type is suitable when we have prepared only one dressing. And according to the method of serving, such a fried Uighur lagman will be closer to the Central Asian stew. We heat everything in the same wok or cauldron with a little vegetable oil. Lay out the noodles. Interfere quickly. It should not only warm up, but also turn slightly yellow. Add sai. We mix. We take it off the fire. Transfer to a large dish. Separately, serve a bowl with laza-jan seasoning. We distribute bowls and spoons to guests.
The second way to feed the lagman
This look is more traditional. We put on the fire the remains of the water in which the noodles were cooked. Chuzma itself, as you remember, is kept in a warm place with us. But all the same, if it has not cooled down, then it has become windy. To revive her amazing taste, take a colander with noodles and lower it into a wide pan with boiling broth. Or, if the sieve with chuzma is too voluminous, we wash it under running water. hot water. Put the noodles in a large dish. Serve separately in separate bowls. different types saya and laza-jan. With this method of serving the Uighur lagman, each guest decides for himself how much noodles and how much gravy, as well as which one to choose. Eaters can feel all the halftones and nuances. For example, season chuzma with red sai and spice up the dish with a drop of spicy laza jan. Those who are accustomed to more calm combinations of taste can limit themselves to white gravy. It comes out less sharp. The meat in our two sai was fried with different intensity. In white there are tender slices, and in red - appetizingly crispy pieces. In a word, everyone sitting at the table will be satisfied with the dish.
So we learned how to cook lagman. The Uighur type of dish turns out faster, because the sai for it is not stewed, but quickly fried. This must be taken into account, so you should cut all vegetables and meat in advance, keeping them ready. After all, frying in a wok pan over high heat is enough for two to three minutes. Finally, let's give a few tips. If the noodles are not elastic enough, wet your hands with a solution of water, vegetable oil, salt and baking soda. Meat for lagman in Uighur can be different. But then you should take into account its fat content. If you decide to cook lagman from pork or some parts of lamb, you need to put less vegetable oil in sai. In addition to ground coriander, you can add other spices. Turmeric, cumin, star anise, ginger and a mixture of peppers will be felt organically in this dish. The finished lagman should also be decorated with greenery. Here you can use arugula, basil, wild garlic, chives, cilantro, dill or marjoram.
And if we add gravy prepared according to the Uyghur recipe to it, then we will get a real Uyghur guyru lagman. The Uighurs cook guiru sai in a frying pan resembling a Chinese wok, or rather, it is probably a modification of a wok with a handle, or vice versa... This is how they cook in a cafe and 1-2 servings at a time.
But if there is no such utensil, you can easily cook guira sai at home on the simplest cauldron. Of course, it is more convenient to do this on a spherical Uzbek cauldron and in small portions, but now at a master class from the Romantika restaurant we will be shown how to cook such a gravy and in large quantities, this is when you need to serve several eaters at once. And yet, "experts" say that a real Uighur lagman cannot be cooked without special spices and herbs. But let's move away from all these stereotypes, and let's cook from what is available. And let those "experts" themselves sit and "wait for the weather by the sea."
I also won’t tell you what proportions of products to take, because it’s a matter of taste and availability, take more meat of everything else a little less and cook to your taste.
We need low-fat lamb or beef pulp. It is cut into small pieces, I would cut into rectangles with sides of 2-4 cm and a thickness of 3 mm.
Slightly marinate the chopped meat. Add salt, ground coriander, khazhu (Chinese pepper), a little bit of ginger, soy sauce, mix and set aside.
Meanwhile, cut the vegetables. Pepper can be cut into petals slightly larger than in the photo. It turns out beautifully and tasty in a combination of red and green bell pepper. If you really like spicy, then chop more hot peppers.
Dungas radish or daikon is also cut.
Onions in half rings, quarters.
We call it Korean cabbage.
From it we need only a hard core, which we also cut into petals. Soft leaves around the edges can be used in salads.
We separate the leaves from the celery, and cut the stems 2-2.5 cm long. We will use the leaves to sprinkle the finished dish.
Finely chop the garlic.
We also need janda ( green beans), dzhusai (can be replaced with garlic feathers, wild garlic), tomatoes. And a whole set of Chinese-Uyghur spices, which you probably don’t have, so we make do with salt, ground pepper, coriander, ginger.
We lay out the chopped products in cups and put them in a convenient place near the cauldron.
We strongly heat the cauldron, pour a little vegetable oil on the eye so that the meat and onions can be fried in it. The fire must be as high as possible. At the end of the post, you can watch the video of how the ideal gravy preparation process goes.
In a very hot oil, first we throw a star anise. It gives the oil a specific aroma and taste. Fry star anise until almost blackened, then remove it. After adding the meat, fry it until crusty. Add onion and fry too.
Now, with an interval (in our case) of 3-4 minutes, we begin to add in turn, mixing the products - celery stalks, tomato, garlic, janda, jusay, radish, bell pepper, cabbage.
Stir, add spices, mix again and fill with water or better clear broth. And leave to cook until the products are ready at a medium boil.
Products should turn out not quite boiled, more "alive". When cooked in a frying pan, small portions of guiru sai are cooked in 10-12 minutes.
Now cut the celery greens. And we invite guests to the table.
Rinse the dough that we laid out on plates in boiling water so that the plate and dough are hot. We put on our dough meat sauce, sprinkle chopped greens on top. You can also serve separately the dough and separately the gravy with a small amount of broth, it is very tasty. In general, guiru sai can be served as independent dish.
Eat with chopsticks or last resort with a fork, a spoon to grab such a long lagman is unlikely to succeed. When I wrote, I almost forgot about laza-chang, without it, lagman, they say not lagman, but do not overdo it. Vinegar sauce and various other sauces are also served, but you can do without them at home.
Perhaps somewhere, I missed something, for which I apologize. It's just such a spectacle that you need to watch, and not write and read. In the video, you can see everything in brief - this is a unique spectacle.
Enjoy your meal!
There is so much I want to tell you that I always forget something. As with the dough, in this case, you can also make semi-finished products / blanks. For example, bell peppers sliced for laying in a dish can be packed in portions in flat plastic bags and put in layers in the freezer. At the right time, get it, defrost and use it for its intended purpose. Now everything seems...
Asian cuisine is "delicious" and varied! A special place in the menu is lagman - a multi-component dish of meat, vegetables and homemade elongated noodles. The Uighur lagman is valued above all else. Its feature is drawn noodles, the preparation of which takes a lot of time and effort. Uighur lagman is served to festive dinner the first and second at the same time.
Today we will cook just such a complex, juicy, tasty and incredibly hearty meal. Let's be patient and move on.
We knead the dough for lagman noodles in the likeness of dumplings. Would need: Wheat flour, water, chicken egg. Salt and sunflower oil - for the formation of noodles.
The preparatory process is quite simple. Flour is sifted into a bowl with sides and a warm egg is broken.
Then you need to add water and salt.
A tight dough is kneaded, which needs to rest for 30 minutes under cling film.
The dough is laid out on a greased sunflower oil cutting circle, flattened with a cake and cut into cubes.
Each bar must be rolled out with your hands into a long and, if possible, thin flagellum.
The flagella, in turn, are sent to a flat dish and braided with a snail (as shown in the photo).
"Snail" is coated with sunflower oil, covered with cling film and sent to rest.
Next, the flagella must be stretched into noodles. You can wind the noodles around your hands in the likeness of winding yarn and pull all the bundles at the same time, or you can stretch each bundle individually, slowly moving from beginning to end.
Lagman noodles are cooked in boiling water with sunflower oil in small batches. Cooking time - until floating (about 5 minutes) with regular stirring.
The Uighurs remove the drawn noodles with a special ladle, similar to a slotted spoon, only deeper. I threw the finished noodles into a colander, and then transferred them to the bowl. Correct lagman It is served in bowls or kese.
Waja is made from meat, spices and vegetables. We take products from the list.
Beef, chopped into cubes, is sent to a heated cauldron. Well fried in oil until golden. During the frying process, the meat must be salted.
Following onion and cubes of carrots.
Then tomatoes, bell pepper, and mix everything quickly.
Seasoning for lagman and chopped garlic.
Noodle broth - to taste. Simmer the sauce until done.
We combine the noodles with Waja sauce - the Uighur lagman is ready!
Lagman, before he began his victorious march through our cities and villages in a variety of, sometimes bizarre, hypostases, the Uighurs were “brought” to Central Asia. It was so long ago (a hundred years ago for sure) that in Central Asia itself, the lagman managed to transform into its own, Central Asian version which is mostly known to us. Moreover, it has transformed so much that, in fact, only the method of preparing noodles, which is pulled from dough pieces, has remained from the Uyghur lagman. If the Central Asian Uighurs themselves had not remained adherents of, so to speak, the primordial lagman to this day, we probably would not have had a chance to try it, not to mention the fact that this dish would have been framed in the form of an intelligible recipe or materialized would be in a beautiful food photographer's culinary blog. In this regard, I cannot help but thank the Uighur friends of my parents, who not only every time I visit Tashkent, who meet me with their signature lagman, but also dedicated to its preparation.
However, lagman is probably good because there are much more liberties in its preparation than the rules that the cat cried. And the features of one or another of its versions are sharpened mainly on practicality and variety. For example, how to pull out the noodles more dexterously. Or - in what sequence and in what combination to add (or even separate) other components, so that the dish in every sense plays brighter. There is reason to take a closer look at these features, if only in order to expand our own horizon of ideas about the lagman, which, I repeat, no one has ever tried to fit into any reinforced concrete installations, except for the prolific home-grown myth-makers who “know” what kind of lagman " real" and which is not. Here we will “dance” from the features of the Uighur lagman, like from a stove, noting how it differs from the Central Asian one:
1. First of all, "gravy". I put this word in quotation marks, because in the Uyghur version it does not exist as such. That is, if the Central Asian gravy in a combination of stewed meat and vegetables contains relatively a large number of sauce, which makes lagman semi-liquid, in the Uighur version there is practically no liquid, except for the fats and juice of meat and vegetables. In addition, the lagman components are not stewed, but quickly fried.
2. The Uighur “gravy”, unlike the Central Asian one, is called not “vaja”, but “sai”, and the point, of course, is not only in the difference in names. Vaja is a “gravy”, although it is multi-component, but, so to speak, monolithic, you cannot divide it according to your taste. Uighur lagman rarely does without two or three different sais, which are served separately with noodles and either mixed with noodles in a portioned bowl as you like, and in any proportions, or added to noodles separately.
3. Noodles for the Uighur lagman are prepared, as a rule, by the method of stretching the dough. In Central Asian versions, in addition to drawn noodles, sliced noodles are widely used.
To feel the difference in practice, let's take 2-3 full-weight portions of lagman following products, the proportions of which can be changed at your discretion, add something, subtract something, etc. (I provide a list of products that use "generally"):
1. 150-200 grams of flour for dough
2. 200-250 grams of lamb or young beef pulp. If beef is used, in order not to miss, it is better to take a little tenderloin or pulp from a thick or thin edge.
3. Two to three medium bulbs
4. Half a medium radish (either green Margilan or daikon)
5. Half a medium eggplant
6. Five to six green beans
7. Two or three stems stem celery, or a bunch of leaf celery
8. Half a medium bell pepper, preferably red
9. Two or three medium tomatoes or 6-7 small ones like cherry tomatoes (out of season cherry tomatoes are more adequate)
10. Three to four garlic cloves
11. tablespoon chopped cilantro (optional)
12. Hot pepper pod (optional)
13. Two teaspoons of ground coriander, salt to taste.
To begin with, let's deal with the most time-consuming process - cooking noodles. The traditional composition of the dough among the Uighurs is nowhere simpler: flour, salt and water. True, this simplicity has its own zest. If everything is done correctly, noodles from such a dough are pulled out elementarily, which, in general, is important for those who do not have special skills in this matter. The question of taste remains, since the dough is on water and, for example, on chicken eggs, despite the fact that it is more capricious when stretched, is not quite the same thing. This is true, apart from the fact that lagman is a multi-component dish, this fact alone already affects the taste of noodles. However, if we take into account that the main advantage of drawn noodles is its unique texture, which is radically different, for example, from sliced noodles, it becomes clear why in the Uyghur version they are not particularly smart with the composition of the dough.
We will not be smart either. First, add a couple of pinches of salt to the sifted (necessarily sifted!) flour and add as much warm water so that when kneading the dough turned out quite cool.
Then knead the kneaded dough on a table dusted with flour. And the more carefully and longer we do it, the better the result will be.
We roll the thoroughly crumpled dough into a ball, wrap it with a clean napkin or film so that it does not wind, and put it in a cool place for proofing for an hour and a half. This is an important time point, since our dough is intended for lagman, and not for pies, for example.
Knead the rested dough again, dusting the desktop with a small amount of flour if it is sticky. Then, holding the dough with our palms, we roll a tourniquet out of it thick, for example, into a Krakow sausage.
We cut the tourniquet into pieces no thicker than a finger, and again, with the help of the palms, we “wind” thinner tourniquets from each piece - about a pencil.
Let's put the "pencil" tows on a suitable dish and generously sprinkle them with vegetable oil, smearing each tow separately with the same oil. Let's let the dough rest for about half an hour, turning the bundles from time to time so that they do not wind.
After half an hour, we check how ready the dough is to be stretched by experimenting with the tip of one of the bundles. If the dough is stubborn and the tip threatens to come off the tourniquet, let's not rush to stretch the noodles - let the dough rest a little more. If the dough stretches easily, you can get down to business. The main thing is not to rush and not try to stretch the noodles of the desired section at a time.
So, we begin to pull the tip of the tourniquet with the fingers of the right hand, holding the tourniquet with the fingers of the left hand about ten centimeters from the tip being pulled out. Pulled - retreated another 10 centimeters from the elongated section. And so - along the entire length of the tourniquet, leaving the noodles still relatively thick.
Now, in the same order, stretching the noodles to a thinner section, we follow in the opposite direction.
Usually such a tourniquet is pulled out in two or three steps by one and a half to two meters - it all depends on the section of the noodles that you like. The main thing to remember is that when boiled, the noodles increase in volume, and the thinner you can stretch it, the better. After pulling out two or three bundles, you manage to adapt to this process so much that you get rid of the remaining dough much faster than it might seem. The main thing is to do all this directly above the plate, where the bundles are located, laying the finished noodles on the same plate. Moreover, laying it so that you can grab the tip of each strand stretched into noodles when the time comes to boil the noodles.
Noodles for lagman are boiled in advance - in a large volume of rapidly boiling salted water. To the correct, that is, to the state of al dente, the noodles reach quite quickly, after which it must be taken out of the pan either with a colander or a slotted spoon into a colander and poured over with cold water, then sprinkled with vegetable oil and mixed. We do not pour out the water in which the noodles were cooked, it will still come in handy. And the finished lash can be moved to a suitable bowl and covered for the time being with a lid.
It is rare that a special seasoning intended only for him is not served with a lagman from a mixture of garlic, spicy ground pepper and coriander (it is called laza-jan or laza-chang). If there is a desire to cook this seasoning, then it is better to do it immediately after cooking the noodles, since all other lagman actions will proceed quite quickly. One of the ways to prepare laza chang is like this. Mix two or three chopped garlic cloves with two or three teaspoons of hot ground pepper, two or three pinches of ground coriander or the same amount of chopped cilantro and lightly salt. Then, in a suitable dish, heat up three to four tablespoons of vegetable oil and pour it into the prepared mixture.
Mix the mixture quickly and thoroughly and set aside to cool. Laza-chang is ready.
Now you can start preparing (cutting) products for sai, more precisely - for two varieties of sai, which we will conditionally call white and red sai. They are prepared in almost the same way, but with a different set of products, although, for example, meat, garlic and onions are used both there and there. White sai, as it should be, is softer in taste than red. Red, as a rule, is prepared by the method of deeper frying of products, moreover, it is sharpened with pepper to a reasonable extent. Products for both sais are cut arbitrarily - as anyone likes. The exception is meat, which, due to the fact that it is subjected to a short heat treatment, it is desirable to cut into thin slices.
In any case, the prepared products should be placed on an auxiliary plate or board so that they are at hand and that it is clear which components are intended for white sai and which for red (meat, onion and garlic will be divided equally for each sai).
Let's start cooking with white sai, for which we heat two or three tablespoons of vegetable oil in a cauldron or wok and lightly (2-3 minutes) fry half of the prepared onion with a clove of garlic cut into plates and green beans.
Add a pinch of salt and a pinch of ground coriander, followed by pieces of stem celery (if leaf celery is used, it is better to add chopped celery at the very end of cooking this type of sai). While stirring the products with a slotted spoon, continue frying - another 2-3 minutes.
Now meat. For white sai, we take exactly half of the prepared slices of meat. And again, stirring the products, we set aside the same two or three minutes for the meat.
Season the sai again with a pinch of salt and a pinch of ground coriander and send the sliced eggplant and radish to the cauldron. Here, during subsequent frying, the main thing is to ensure that the radish softens.
We complete the preparation of the sai by adding a scoop of "broth" in which the noodles were cooked and which we left in reserve. Its main function is to deglaze the cauldron, that is, to remove from the walls and dissolve in the sai everything that was fried on the walls of the cauldron while the sai was being prepared. Let the moisture come to a boil, mix everything well and transfer the contents of the cauldron to suitable dishes, closing it with a lid or tightening it with foil so that the sai does not cool down.
Now we take on the red sai, which is cooked in the same cauldron as the white one. Reheat two or three tablespoons of vegetable oil and fry the meat in it first. We fry harder than for white sai - that is, until a light golden crust forms.
Season the meat with a pinch of salt, a pinch of ground coriander and add the second half of the reserved onion with a chopped clove of garlic and as much hot pepper, if used, as suits your taste and the taste of your guests. To determine the spiciness of a pepper, cut a thin ring at the top of the pod where the seeds are concentrated and measure the spiciness by a tooth. I think it will be clear in what quantities to dose it for sai.
Fry the onion, garlic and pepper for the same two to three minutes.
The queue is for slices of sweet, bell pepper. Another two or three minutes of intensive frying.
Finally, - coarsely chopped tomatoes, from which, if necessary, you must first remove the skin. We will fry foods with the addition of tomatoes just enough so that the juice released from the tomatoes is almost completely boiled down.
Then we season the sai with another pinch of salt and a pinch of ground coriander, add chopped cilantro, although ideally and if it is better to add chopped jusai and repeat the trick of deglazing the cauldron by pouring in a small scoop of broth from under the noodles. Boil the sai, stir and transfer from the cauldron to a suitable dish with a lid.
Before serving the lagman, we will revive the noodles by spilling it in a colander either with the highly heated remains of the broth from under the noodles, or with boiling water.
Uighur lagman, as I said, is served differently from the Central Asian one, when the noodles are immediately poured with one or another amount of gravy. Everything is put on the table separately, in deep bowls or in large bowls - both noodles and certain varieties of sai. The guest himself decides how much noodles to put in a serving bowl and what to do with the sai. This procedure is very interesting. After all a small amount of noodles can be mixed first with white sai, slightly seasoned with more spicy red. Or vice versa, compensating for the lack of spiciness by adding laza-chang. There are a lot of options here, the main value of which is that the Uighur lagman allows you to play with taste tones and semitones. Sometimes before meals true connoisseurs Uighur lagman is served in bowls with hot broth from under the noodles, which is also not without originality. For example, I also like this accompaniment to the lagman. How to like to deal with pilaf not with a spoon, but with your own palm. It's up to you to decide what to do :)
Lagman. By this name, in Tashkent, the Uyghur version of this dish has been increasingly understood lately. Although there are more Uzbek options, they are served less and less in local restaurants. The dough for the Uzbek lagman is used in most cases sliced, in strips, and the gravy, unlike the Uighur version, consists of other components, is cut differently and is subjected to a longer cooking. It must be admitted that in terms of presentability, the Uyghur lagman wins compared to the Uzbek, and apparently therefore it has become more widespread.
Today we will try to briefly describe how the Uighur lagman is prepared in one of the restaurants in Tashkent. The options for its preparation, the products used by different chefs may differ slightly, but the general technology is almost the same.
First you need to knead the dough. To do this, pour so much water into 200 g of sifted flour so that a rather steep dough is obtained when kneading. Sprinkle a little flour on the table, knead the dough. And the more carefully and longer we do it, the better the result will be.
Knead the distanced dough, kneading it with your palms, knead it on the table into a plate 1.5-2 cm thick. Cut the rolled dough into flagella of the same thickness, oiling the palms, grease each tourniquet with vegetable oil, and cover with a film, let it rest for about 30 minutes. Step-by-step proofing of the dough is very important in order to get the viscosity of the noodles.
Now we stretch the bundles into even thinner bundles, twisting them with our palms and at the same time stretching the dough on the table. You should get bundles about 5-7 mm thick. That's not all.
Again, lubricating the bundles with oil, gently coil onto a large plate. Cover with clingfilm and let rise again.
In the meantime, you can start preparing a thick gravy for the lagman - sai.
For this we need:
A little vegetable oil
- 200 grams of lamb or young beef pre-marinated in soy sauce and black pepper. The pulp is cut into petals about 3 x 3 x 0.3 cm.
- one medium onion, chopped along the meridian,
- a little hard part Korean cabbage, cut into petals,
- a little janda, in its absence, you can use green bean pods,
- two or three stalks of stalk celery,
- Bulgarian pepper, for the beauty of the dish, you can use three colors - red, green, yellow. It must be cut into petals,
- a couple of medium tomatoes in small slices,
- 2-3 cloves of garlic,
- some chopped cilantro (optional)
- a pod of hot pepper (optional),
- ginger, stars or ground star anise, soy sauce, black pepper, salt to taste.
Let's put all this in cups and put it aside for now. Our recipe makes about 2 servings.
Now it's your turn to finish stretching the noodles. This is perhaps the most difficult part of cooking the Uighur lagman, requiring some skill and skill. But if you try a little, everything will work out.
Noodles, twisting between the fingers of both hands, gently begin to pull into thin flagella. When all the noodles are pulled out, about 3 mm thick, they are wound around two hands, approximately like in childhood when playing “strings”.
And tapping a little on the table, they spread their hands, pulling out thin noodles.
The thinner you can pull the noodles, the better.
The noodles are ready, it remains to cook them in a large volume of salted water. The water should boil vigorously. The dough is wound on a long wooden stick and lowered into boiling water. At first, it will begin to sink to the bottom, but after a couple of minutes it will rise. This signifies her readiness. You need to cook until al dente.
Now put the dough in a colander and rinse in cold water. Shake off moisture and sprinkle with oil, set aside for now in a separate cup.
To prepare the sai, you need a special wok with a long handle. This is the most spectacular part of cooking, a real fire show.
On a very high fire, the wok itself is heated first. Then, step by step, we start laying the products. We heat up the oil, fry the meat. When it is tossed up and lightly touched with a tongue of flame, a beautiful flash is obtained. Knowledge of safety measures will not hurt here.
As soon as the meat is browned, the remaining components are laid in turn. Vegetables in the Uighur lagman are not strongly fried, they remain a little half-baked.
