SIMPLE INGREDIENTS EXPLORE THE FLAVORS OF ASIA
Noodle Recipes under 1 hour
THE BRIEF HISTORY OF NOODLES Know Your Noodle:
The Ultimate Guide to Asian Noodles
Ramen To The Rescue:
How Instant Noodles Fight Global Hunger
JANUARY 2019 ISSUE 1 / NOODLES
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CONTENTS Feature
What’s Cooking?
THE BRIEF HISTORY OF NOODLES ....................4-5
THAI RED CURRY NOODLE SOUP .....................6
Facts
VIETNAMESE BEEF PHO ....7
KNOW YOUR NOODLE .............................8-9
CHICKEN LO MEIN ............10
Stories
MISO RAMEN ......................11
RAMEN TO THE RESCUE ..........................12-13
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FEATURE
THE BRIEF HISTORY of NOODLES By HILDE LEE
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re noodles pasta? Yes and no. Pasta consists of a mixture of a ground grain, such as wheat, and water. Most noodles, however, also consist of a ground grain, but use an egg or egg yolk as the liquid. Thus the frequent use of the term “egg noodles.” While there are various shapes and lengths of pasta, noodles are usually flat, thin strips of dough, which are cut into various lengths. The dough have been tinted with some tomato or spinach to give the noodles more flavor and a different color. Where and when did noodles come into being? The addition of eggs was not always the case, as evidenced by early noodles made in China and the Middle East. A 4,000 year-old bowl of noodles unearthed in China is the earliest example ever found of one of the world’s most popular foods. One of man’s earliest foods was a paste made from either cooked or raw grain mixed with water. In Asia, millet, wheat, barley and rice were mainly used, while in Europe, only wheat and barley were common.
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As people became settled, they began to cook these pastes — as early as 1500 B. C. in China. The earliest Chinese noodles, however, did not appear as strands of dough, but were little bits of random size. They were put in a wok of boiling water and cooked. The earliest of these “noodles” were actually bits of bread cooked in liquid in a wok. By 100 B.C. broad noodles called lagan on were a regular part of the diet in Greece. Also, at the same time, rice and wheat noodles were being used throughout Asia, particularly in dishes where many ingredients were added to a broth, which was kept hot at the table. By the sixth century A.D., noodles had become common in China, but only for the lower class. Fried and steamed dumplings, meat fillings enclosed in noodle dough, were being sold on the street. Noodle sellers also were peddling their products on the streets of Japan. When the Magyars came from Asia to invade eastern Europe in the 9th century, they brought with them tarhonya, a dried wheat paste that’s
broken into small pieces. They would add these to the stews they were cooking. These dried pastes, which could be stored indefinitely, also were found in Greece and Persia. Food historians don’t know if these came from Magyar influence, or if this was a natural development from the Italians. Thus, both the Italians and the Chinese lay claim to inventing the noodle. However, noodles (or egg noodles, as we know them) are not the only ones. There other varieties of noodles in Asian cuisines. One of the most popular is the cellophane noodle. These noodles look like thin strands of glass and are made from starch, such as from mung beans, potatoes or cassava and water. They are sold in dried form and reconstituted when cooked in water or broth. The dish became a huge success. It was not called ramen but “shina soba.” Soba are buckwheat noodles, although the Chinese noodles used in “shina soba” are wheat-based. (Today, there are soba shops and soba stands all over Japan selling
these noodlemeals). As “shina soba” expanded in Japan in the early 20th century, so did Japan’s empire. To eat “shina soba” in those years was to symbolically gobble up China. Ramen noodles, although thought to be Japanese, are really Chinese. They first appeared in Japan in 1910, when Chinese cooks at Tokyo’s Rairaiken restaurant created a dish comprised of broth and Chinese noodles. These noodles were more yellow and more elastic than Japanese noodles. The dough was kneaded with kansui, a sodium carbonate infused alkaline mineral water. After Japan lost its empire in World War II, the word “shina” came right under fire. Deplored by many of the aggressions and water atrocities committed by the Japanese before and during World War II, shina soba became politically incorrect. In 1958, Nissin Foods introduced the first packaged instant version of soba. Ramen now nets more than $4 billion a year. One of the most popular is the cellophane noodle. These noodles look like thin strands of glass and
are made from starch, such as from mung beans, potatoes or cassava and water. They are sold in dried form and reconstituted when cooked in water or broth. By 100 B.C. broad noodles called lagan on were a regular part of the diet in Greece. Also, at the same time, rice and wheat noodles were being used throughout Asia, particularly in dishes where many ingredients were added to a broth, which was kept hot at the table.
“A 4,000 year-old bowl of noodles unearthed in China is the earliest example ever found of one of the world’s most popular foods.”
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THAI RED CURRY NOODLE Yield: 6 servings Prep time: 15 mins Cook time” 35 mins Total time: 50 mins
INGREDIENTS: • •
• • • • • • • • • •
1 Tbsp olive oil 1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1-inch chunks Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 3 garlic cloves, minced 1 red bell pepper, diced 1 onion, diced 3 Tbsp red curry paste 1 Tbsp freshly grated ginger 6 cups chicken broth 13.5oz can coconut milk 1/2 package rice noodles 1 tsp fish sauce
GARNISHES: • • •
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3 green onions, thinly sliced 1/2 cup chopped cilantro 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
DIRECTIONS: 1. Heat olive oil in a large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Season chicken with salt and pepper, to taste. Add chicken to the stockpot and cook until golden, about 2-3 min; set aside. 2. Add garlic, bell pepper and onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 3-4 minutes. 3. Stir in red curry paste and ginger until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in chicken broth and coconut milk, scraping any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. 4. Stir in chicken. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until reduced, about 10 minutes. 5. Stir in rice noodles, fish sauce until noodles are tender. 6. Remove from heat; stir in green onions, cilantro, basil and lime juice; season with salt and pepper, to taste. Serve immediately
VIETNAMESE BEEF PHO Yield: 4 servings Prep Time: 20 mins Cook Time: 30 mins Total Time: 50 mins
INGREDIENTS: • • • • • • • • • • •
•
8 cups beef broth 4 cups water 1 medium yellow onion, quartered 4 cloves of garlic, roughly minced 3 whole star anise 3 whole cloves 1 (3-inch) knob of ginger, sliced into coins 1 cinnamon stick (optional: 2 Tbsp. fish sauce) salt and black pepper 1 package pho rice noodles (look for the word “pho” on the package) 12 ounces steak, very thinly sliced against the grain
DIRECTIONS: 1. Stir together beef broth, water, onion, garlic, star anise, cloves, ginger, cinnamon stick (and fish sauce, if using) in a large stockpot, and bring to a boil over high heat. Cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and let simmer for at least 20 minutes. 2. Meanwhile, cook the noodles according to package instructions. (If your package of noodles did not have instructions, simply bring a large pot of water to a boil. Then cook the noodles until al dente, about 3 minutes.) Immediately drain the noodles, and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking. Drain and set aside. 3. When you are ready to serve the soup, fill the serving bowls about halfway full with noodles. Then cover with the hot broth, and immediately stir in the steak so that it cooks. Top with your desired garnishes. (*Most people stir the cilantro, ginger, lime, jalapenos and Thai basil into the broth to give it extra flavoring, but you don’t necessarily need to actually eat those ingredients whole.)
GARNISHES: •
bean sprouts, fresh cilantro, lime wedges, thinly-chopped, green onions, thinly-sliced jalapenos, Thai basil 7
FACTS
They’re quick to cook, hard to mess up and universally loved. Here are the different types you are most likely to encounter when shopping or eating out!
Wheat noodles
This is the broadest category of all. It encompasses many dried and fresh iterations across every width and length imaginable. There are various brands with inconsistent elements so getting grips with all the different types can be a curly proposition, particularly Chinese wheat noodles. • • • • • • •
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Udon Somen Somyeon Shanghai noodles La mian Knife-sliced noodles Jjolmyeon
NOODL The Ultimate Guide to Asian Noodles B y L E A N N E K I TC H E N
Rice noodles
Another large category of noodle, rice noodles come in a range of shapes and sizes, both fresh and dried. They’re made from rice flour and water and their soft texture and mild flavour make them the perfect vehicle for just about any suite of flavours, whether bold or subtle. Culinarily, they’re used across the gamut - in everything from salads to soups to stir fries, as well as an accompaniment to curries and grills. They cook incredibly quickly and some iterations just need soaking, not cooking. Noodles made with 100 per cent rice flour are gluten free. • • •
Rice vermicelli Rice stick noodles Chow fun
Starch-based noodles
This family of (mainly) dried noodle is translucent, with a polished sheen that makes them resemble plastic in their raw state. They’re made using vegetable starches, not flour, and the vegetables range from mung bean, cassava, potato, sweet potato and tapioca to yams. They’re easy to use, but require soaking in hot water to soften them first. Note that these types of noodles are gluten free. • • •
Bean thread noodles Dangmyeon Harusame
LE Buckwheat flour noodles
Buckwheat flour is nutritious, which contains plenty of fibre, protein and high levels of manganese. It has an appealingly nutty and earthy flavour. Noodles made using buckwheat flour are popular in Korea and Japan. Many commercial iterations contain wheat flour or buckwheat, as buckwheat flour lacks gluten and gluten is important for the strength of the noodle. Proportions of flours can vary and the higher the percentage of buckwheat, the better the quality. • • •
Soba Naengmyeon Dotori guksu
• In Japan, it is considered good form to loudly slurp your noodles as a way of telling your host that you are enjoying the meal. • Noodles symbolize longevity in China.
Egg and alkalised noodles
These noodles are all wheat based and either contain egg (or egg colouring), or look like they do, thanks to the addition of an agent that raises the pH levels. The higher alkaline level encourages greater water absorption into the flour and strengthens the flour’s proteins. High pH also releases yellow pigments in the flour, which are colourless when pH is neutral. The resulting golden hue is, in this type of noodle, not from the addition of egg, although they’re often mistaken for egg noodles. • • • •
• “National Noodle Day” is on October 6th. • Instant noodles, which are an inexpensive food item today, were once sold as luxury items. • By federal law, a noodle must contain 5.5% egg solids to be a noodle.
Hokkien noodle Ramen Lo Mian Yi Mian
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CHICKEN LO MEIN Yield: 4 Servings Prep Time: 10 mins Cook Time: 20 mins Total Time: 30 mins
INGREDIENTS • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
10 ounces Chinese egg noodles 1 tsp sesame oil 2 Tbsp canola oil 2 chicken breasts sliced thinly 1 red bell pepper thinly sliced 1 tsp minced ginger 2 cloves garlic minced 3/4 cup water 1/4 cup lite soy sauce 2 Tbsp cornstarch 1 Tbsp oyster sauce 1 Tbsp vegetable oil 1 carrot thinly sliced 1/2 cup onion slices 1/2 cup shredded cabbage 1 cup bean sprouts
DIRECTIONS: 1. Cook the egg noodles one minute shy of the directions. Drain and toss with sesame oil in a bowl to coat. 2. Heat canola oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat. Cook the chicken 3-4 minutes on each side until cooked through. 3. Remove from the pan and add in the red bell peppers, ginger and garlic and cook them for 1-2 minutes, stirring frequently until just softened. 4. Add in the water, soy sauce, cornstarch, and oyster sauce into the skillet. 5. Add in the carrot, onion and cabbage and cook for 1-2 minutes before adding back in the chicken and egg noodles. 6. Add in the bean sprouts, toss all the ingredients together well and serve
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SPICY MISO RAMEN Yield: 4 Servings Prep Time: 15 mins Cook Time: 15 mins Total Time: 30 mins
INGREDIENTS • • • • • • • • • •
• •
Fresh ramen noodles 4 cups water 4 Tbsp white miso paste 3-4 tsp S&B La Yu or chili oil 1/2 tsp hondashi 2 hard-boiled eggs Half 15 oz can corn kernels 1 narutomaki Japanese fish cake with a pink swirl 1 stalk scallion finely chopped 1 Tbsp white sesame seeds pound with mortar and pestle until fine Light soy sauce to taste Some seasoned roasted seaweed cut into thin strips
DIRECTIONS: 1. Bring the water to boil and then add in the hondashi, eggs, and finely ground sesame seeds. Bring the soup base to boil and reduce to 3.5 cups. Add in the miso paste, stir with a ladle of chopsticks until well dissolved. Add in the chili oil and light soy sauce to taste. 2. Blanch the ramen noodles in a pot of boiling water until they are cooked. Rinse with cold running water, drain, and set aside. 3. In a serving bowl, add the noodles and then topped with the hard boiled egg (sliced into half ), narutomaki, corn kernels and chopped scallion. Pour the miso soup into the bowl and add the roasted seaweeds. Serve immediately.
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STORIES
RAMEN to the RESCUE:
How Instant Noodles Fight Global Hunger
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sk about the foods that have conquered the world and you’re likely to hear about Coca-Cola and McDonald’s Big Macs. But the most successful industrial food ever produced flies far under the radar. And it has finally been outed by three anthropologists in a new book The Noodle Narratives, which analyzes the rise of instant ramen, from its birth in postwar Japan to its sales of just over 100 billion servings worldwide in 2012.
By ELIZA BARCLAY of Kyoto University and Deborah Gewertz of Amherst College. And it’s here that they make one of their most intriguing arguments: Instant noodles do good by alleviating the hunger of millions of people around the world. These supercheap and superpalatable noodles, they write, help the low-wage workers in rich and poor countries alike hang on when the going gets tough.“They’re cheap, tasty and tweakable. They’re capable of being transformed to everyone’s cultural taste.” Instant
In 1957, businessman Momofuku Ando decided he wanted to invent an industrial take on freshly made ramen — the stuff Chang has helped make trendy again — for his hungry, budget-minded compatriots using surplus wheat donated by the U.S. It took Ando years to perfect the process of making a dry block of noodles. He succeeded by applying the principle of tempura: steaming and dousing the noodles in chicken broth and then bathing them in hot
“They’re capable of being transformed to everyone’s cultural taste.” While our foodie culture currently has a fling with ramen (think ramen bars and the ramen burger), we’re only the world’s sixth-biggest market for the noodles, according to the World Instant Noodles Association. Our consumption is dwarfed by that of China and India — and even Vietnam. Indeed, it’s the multinational noodle companies’ conquest of countries like Papua New Guinea, Nigeria, Brazil and Mexico that really interests the anthropologists: Frederick Errington of Trinity College, Tatsuro Fujikura 12
ramen in Thailand is seasoned with lemongrass and cilantro. Mexicans can buy Maruchan noodle soup cups flecked with shrimp, lime and habanero pepper, among other flavors. Papua New Guineans have incorporated the noodles into rituals as cardinal as weaning babies and honoring the dead, she says.
oil. This dried them out and made them shelf-stable but also easy to rehydrate. He added the winning combination of MSG, salt and sugar (which now comes in a flavor packet) to round out the flavor. And to this day, manufacturers haven’t strayed far from Ando’s original recipe, the authors report.
In Japan, the consumer appetite for novel ramen products is so ravenous that manufacturers introduce 600 new flavors a year, the authors report. But it all started in the postwar period.
While not exactly nutritious, instant noodles are a “proletariat hunger killer,” as the anthropologist Sidney Mintz would say. They’re made with wheat flour, which has a high
glycemic index (a metric for how soon a food is likely to make you hungry again). But they’re also fried in palm oil, which is 49% saturated fat — higher than pork lard (40%) and soybean oil (14 percent). All that fat keeps you feeling full longer and helps bring the noodles’ overall glycemic index down. The fact that instant noodles become soup once you add water helps, too — as the authors note, soup provides longer satiety than, say, noodles alone. And that helps explain why ramen have become a staple of the world’s undernourished. Sure, that would be ideal, the authors say, but the reality is that in many cities, the poor lack affordable alternatives that are more healthful than ramen. “How are you going to feed these people?” says Gewertz. “I would love to feed them with fruits and vegetables at the local markets, but they are expensive.”
like ramen, raise important questions about its perils. But the authors also call ramen a “virtually unstoppable” phenomenon. And they foresee a world of 9 billion people “in which the affluent will be presented with too many food choices and will be called upon to use their survival skills to choose wisely, and in which the poor will use their survival skills to get by on cheap food” like ramen.
the noodles more nutritious: They could be “reduced-sodium, lower-fat, higher-fiber, better fortified,” though that will also translate into a slightly higher price.
“We find it difficult to imagine the increasingly urbanized food future without this humble form of salt, MSG-enhanced, oily and sometimes sugary” food, they write. But “we conclude [that it’s for the best] with The authors say that “real food” advocates like journalist Michael Instead, a better way to help the great reluctance.”sugary food,” they Pollan, who wring their hands over poor who rely on ramen is to make write. rising consumption of industrial food 13
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