In Search of Spaghetti: Jen Lin-Liu's 'On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta'

Where were noodles invented: China or Italy? If you mean a long, thin, spaghetti-like thing, then the correct answer is, neither.

This and other discoveries await in Black Sesame Kitchen founder Jen Lin-Liu's On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta, due out on Friday. After more than five years writing for publications including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and cooking in Beijing, Lin-Liu started her noodle quest not in a hutong, but while on holiday in Italy.

"It was my husband's and my first trip to Europe. He surprised me with a pasta-making class as a gift. I saw that the method for making fettuccine was the same as that for making noodles in China," she said in a telephone interview, noting that while proportions and some ingredients, like eggs, of course varied, that the kneading, rolling and cooking processes were almost identical.

A native of Chicago who grew up in Southern California, Lin-Liu was surprised by the pride attributed to noodles and their national origin. "[Americans] don't ascribe the same mystique to bread," for example, she said.

Having previously published Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China, in this book Lin-Liu discovers that before China made noodles, it made bread, and that in its earliest incarnations, noodles were called bing, a term now associated with smaller bread-like products, like pancakes or rolls. Tang bing, or soup cakes, were the way noodles were first cooked in water and then eaten.

The current common turn for noodles, mian, first appeared as a chunkier noodle in western China, in today's Qinghai province, among ethnic minorities including the Hui. Mian pian, noodle pieces, are still common and popular in Xinjiang and other dishes from western China, Lin-Liu said.

There is evidence that noodle culture may have first evolved in non-Han areas of China, and it was certainly non-Han noodles that had an impact on areas west of China. A noodle that may have been 4000 years old was discovered in western China, but dissolved in transit on its way to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Made from ground millet and not wheat, "that doesn't really qualify as a noodle," Lin-Liu declared.

Her noodle journey took her from China to Italy and several intermediate stops not automatically associated with noodles, including Turkey and Iran. She consulted ancient manuscripts for the earliest mentions of noodles and interviewed chefs, but mostly, spent a lot of time cooking noodles with women who still prepared them in traditional ways.

Lin-Liu's biggest surprise wasn't found at the bottom of a bowl. "It was the many women I met, their hospitality, and the time I spent with them. They put me to shame," she said, moved by their willingness to share time, cooking methods, and bits about their own lives with someone they had just met. Lin-Liu said she was "invited into homes by Uighurs, Uzbeks, and into a women's only cooking school in Iran."

As for the Italy-China, chicken and egg question, she said that the well-known story of Marco Polo discovering noodles in China and bringing them back to Italy comes not from his book, The Travels, but from a 1930 US trade publication called, wait for it, Macaroni Journal. Published in a non-bylined article was a story of Polo discovering noodles that were being dried, which is an Italian custom, but one that has never been practiced in China, Lin-Liu said.

Currently living in Chengdu, when Lin-Liu steps off the plane in Beijing and wants noodles, she knows where to go.

"My favorite is The Noodle Bar at 1949. It's not the most authentic, but in Beijing you don't find too many authentic places anyway. The soup is a little bit Cantonese-style, but their Lanzhou noodle chef gets it just right." Lin-Liu prefers Noodle Bar's thin noodles (patrons have the choice of thin or thick), and goes for a half-brisket, half-tendon combination.

As for long, skinny noodles, they came neither from China nor Italy. The first reference to this culinary creation was found in Jerusalem, in the 5th century AD, Lin-Liu's research revealed.

Jen Lin-Liu will present a Silk Road Dinner with The Wine Republic at the Orchid Hotel on Sep 7 at 7pm; a special noodle cooking course at Black Sesame Kitchen on Sep 8 at 11am; and a book talk for On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta at Capital M on Sep 8 at 7pm. Please contact the venues for pricing and reservations. The book is available for pre-order from Amazon.com.

Photos courtesy of Jen Lin-Liu.