Lamb to love

Winter is the time for hearty fare, and diners in the capital have made one animal a seasonal favorite.

A good piece of lamb has always been a great temptation, especially in the cold seasons of Beijing. Quite a few good dishes of this kind command respect in the capital city - boiled goat in bronze pot at Inner Mongolia restaurant 99 Yurt, grilled sheep leg at Big Bear Roast Leg of Lamb restaurant, and grilled Australian rack of lamb prepared by Chinese chef Fu Yang at My Humble House in Parkview Green.

But if you try the lamb chop at Beijing Ningxia Hotel, you will want to add that to your list of "best lamb in Beijing".

It is hard to find lamb as smooth or as flavorful as the stewed lamb chop at the hotel's Xixia Palace Restaurant.

Executive chef Ma Jianhua explains that the restaurant uses tanyang, a kind of sheep raised in arid or semi-arid grassland in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region. The sheep is famous not only for its jade-white fur, but also for its tasty meat.

Ma says tanyang feeds on many herbs on the saline, alkaline land in desert regions near the banks of the Yellow River. The geographic conditions are special: dry, windy and sunny - and there are a lot of minerals in the soil.

A helping of select stewed lamb chop weighs 200 grams and costs 168 yuan ($27.70) per person. One sheep only produces eight such whole chops from the ribs. Topped with fragrant fried pieces of garlic, it is a signature dish of the restaurant. Another, more ordinary version of the stewed lamb chop is smaller, weighing 450 grams a plate. It is priced at 128 yuan.

The lamb dishes might not seem cheap, but their high quality makes them really good value for the capital.

The lamb is flash-frozen to minus 12-15 C, and transported by air to Beijing from Ningxia. The chefs then soak the lamb in water for 10 hours before boiling it with mineral water.

Xixia Palace is a Muslim restaurant and Ma, himself a Muslim, says the lamb here is all processed by Islamic missionaries known as ahung. Apart from lamb and beef, the restaurant uses chicken, duck and fish only from "trustworthy" sources, all prepared according to halal procedures.