MWW 50: Цуйван

Cyrillic	цуйван
Transcription	tsuiwan
IPA	[ˈtshʏ:.wəŋ]
Layman’s Pronunciation	TSOY-wung
Meaning	a Mongolian noodle dish
In bygone days it was cuyiwing.

Цуйван is a tasty Монгол үндэсний хоол made of partly fried, partly steamed meat, vegetables, and long flat noodles. But don’t tell Mongolians that, because they will vociferously deny, “Tsuiwan is NOT noodles!” Instead they will tell you, “Tsuiwan is flour.” To the Mongolians, noodle means гоймон, which means instant-ramen-type stuff. Whereas when they say flour, they mean гурил. In Mongolian, гурил collapses three concepts that are separate in English: flour, dough (which the Mongolians call зуурсан гурил, “mixed flour”) and tsuiwan noodles. They’re all made of the same substance right? But even though the result is a a long, thin, worm-like starchy food item, Mongolians don’t see why we call it noodles, because they certainly never call it гоймон! And you can’t convince them that they’re the same thing, no matter how well it fits the English definition of noodle. The lumping of цуйван with гурил instead of гоймон continues with soup. When you add tsuiwan noodles to soup, it’s simply called гурилтай шөл, “flour soup,” and never гоймонтой шөл.

So how is tsuiwan made? Tsuiwan starts by mixing flour and water to form dough, which is rolled into a large flat sheet and baked briefly on a hot stove. When it gets solid enough, you cut the hot dough into long flat noodles. Now in a wok start frying finely sliced meat and vegetables (in some places, this may be no more than potatoes and onions) in a wok and flavor them with lots of salt (and Vigora, and anything else if you can get). Stir the noodles (er, flour) together with the meat and veggies. Finally, fill the wok with a little bit of water (about 1/3 of the way to the level of the noodles) and put the lid on for a few minutes to let it soften up. Yum!

Цуйван бол гурилаас хийдэг.

Tsuivan is made from flour/dough/noodles.

Цуйван хамгийн амттай Монгол үндэсний хоол бөгөөд хийхэд үр чадвар их шаарддаг.

Tsuiwan is the most delicious Mongolian dish but making it requires a lot of skill.

Tsuiwan recipes

• http://www.mongolfood.info/en/recipes/tsuivan.html
• http://www.desktopcookbook.com/recipe/88541/Mongolian-Tsuivan---fresh-noodles-w-meat---veggies.htm
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3dAo1mxnx8