Linhai Maixia (Wheat-Batter Drop Noodles)
A wheat batter scraped in short ragged strips straight into boiling broth, cooked with pork slivers, greens and sometimes clams or dried squid, and eaten as a filling bowl.
How to eat it
Everything comes in one deep bowl, so use chopsticks for the strips and toppings and the spoon for the broth. The strips are thick and slippery, closer to torn dumpling dough than to noodles, and they hold heat, so blow on the first few. Most tables have vinegar and a chilli paste; a splash of vinegar is the usual local touch. Finish the broth, which has taken on the flavour of the pork and greens. Do not expect any shrimp unless you ordered the seafood version.
The story behind the dish
The name means "wheat shrimp", but there is no shrimp in the basic dish. The cook mixes flour and water into a loose batter, holds the bowl over the pot and scrapes the batter off the rim with a chopstick or knife, so each strip curls as it hits the boiling liquid and looks a little like a small shrimp. It began as a quick home meal in Linhai, where wheat was a common crop in the hills behind the coast, and later moved into small shops. Today it is one of the foods people from Linhai most associate with their home town, eaten at breakfast, as a late supper and in every season.
For reference
Every kitchen does it its own way. What follows is the typical version — ingredients, heat and price shift from city to city and from one restaurant to the next, so take it as a guide rather than a fixed recipe.
If you have an allergy or something you can't eat, check with the staff before you order.