A firm fresh cheese of goat's milk, pressed into blocks, then sliced and fried or grilled until golden, and eaten with salt and pepper or sugar.
What makes it rubing
Goat's milk, curdled with something sour and pressed.
Fresh, mild and firm, holding its shape in the pan.
Fried or grilled golden, with a dip of salt and pepper or of sugar.
Where it comes from
Cheese is rare in Chinese cooking, which makes Yunnan's unusual. Rubing — 'milk cake' — is traced to the Sani, a Yi people around Shilin and Lunan, who curdle goat's milk with a sour whey, then press it.
It doesn't melt, so it fries like halloumi. The Bai around Dali have a cheese of their own, rǔshàn, cow's milk stretched into thin sheets and dried on frames.
How it varies
Steamed with ham
Slices layered with Xuanwei ham and steamed.
Rǔshàn
Dali's stretched cow's-milk cheese, grilled and rolled round rose-petal jam.