Naked-Oat Noodles (Youmian)

Youmian is a flour food made from naked oats through a "three cookings" process — the grain roasted, the dough scalded, the finished pieces steamed — and shaped into honeycombed nests, ox-tongue rolls or pressed hele noodles, chewy in texture and rich in oat fragrance.

Naked oats are a traditional crop of the cold, dry north, long grown on the Tumochuan plain around Hohhot; youmian, filling and warming, became a staple of frontier farms and pastoral areas, with a wealth of preparations born of the mingling of herding and farming cultures on the Chilechuan steppe.

Once the nests or fish-shapes are steamed, they are dipped in a lamb-and-mushroom sauce or in cold broth with garlic; they can also be served cold or in soup, a local staple suited to both everyday meals and hospitality.

The oat fragrance of the "three cookings," the countless hand-shaped forms — nests, rolls, pressed noodles — and the warming, frontier-hardy character are the hallmarks of youmian.