Lijiang Flaky Baba

A signature food of the Naxi people of Lijiang in northwest Yunnan. The traveling geographer Xu Xiake, passing through Lijiang in the Ming dynasty, recorded eating "crisp cakes" and "oil-shortened flour cakes" — taken to be the baba's ancestor. Because it kept well, it became an important provision for the mule caravans of the Tea-Horse Road; an old Yunnan saying pairs it with the region's other prides: "Lijiang baba, Heqing wine, and Jianchuan carpenters are found everywhere." The ham-filled version came later, as the cake's range widened.

Deep golden and blistered on the surface, the cake breaks open into dozens of paper-thin, oil-rich layers. The sweet version runs with melted sugar in the middle; the savory one is salty and aromatic with ham, scallion and a numbing edge of Sichuan peppercorn. The outside is properly crisp, the inside soft and short, almost pastry-like. Best straight from the pan, before the layers lose their snap.

The flakiness comes from lamination, the Naxi way. Fine Lijiang wheat flour is worked into a dough, rolled out thin on an oiled stone slab, brushed with rendered lard, scattered with filling, then rolled into a rope, coiled, and pressed flat — trapping many sheets of fat between many sheets of dough. As it fries over low heat, the lard melts and steams between the layers, lifting them apart into distinct leaves while the surface crisps. Gentle, patient heat is key: too hot and the outside scorches before the inside cooks and separates.