MISO RAMEN

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.

RAMEN to the RESCUE: How Instant Noodles Fight Global Hunger

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. 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 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 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. 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. 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 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. 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 “They’re capable of being transformed to everyone’s cultural taste.” By ELIZA BARCLAY A

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.”

The authors say that “real food” advocates like journalist Michael Pollan, who wring their hands over rising consumption of industrial food 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.

Instead, a better way to help the poor who rely on ramen is to make

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 great reluctance.”sugary food,” they write.

Brand Style Guide Print 8.5x11 inches, 80# matte paper, perfect bound

Pantone Colors: Yellow - Pantone P 10-16U Red - Pantone P 47-15 U White (background and text) Black (text)

Cover Margin top: 0.5 in Margin bottom: 0.5 in Margin left: 0.5 in Margin right: 0.5 in Photograph: close up (off to the right side), fill the whole page Title: SIMPLE INGREDIENTS; Helvetica Neue regular and bold, red, 70pt, all caps, flush left, top left corner of margins Tagline: EXPLORE THE FLAVORS OF ASIA; Helvetica Neue regular, black, 16pt, all caps, flush left below title Articles & Recipes: Helvetica Neue bold, black, 23 pt, flush left, starts at bottom left corner of margins so that it matches up with issue date Subheadings: Times New Roman italic, black, 20 pt, flush left Feature Article: Helvetica Neue bold, red, 30 pt, all caps, flush left Issue date: Month, year, issue # / (ingredient); Helvetica Neue regular, black, 12 pt, all caps, flush right, bottom right corner of margins

ALL Pages Margin top: 1.5 in Margin bottom: .75 in Margin left: .50 in Margin right: .50 in 3 column grid Horizontal guides at: 1.5 in, 5in, 6 in, 10.25 in Page numbers: Helvetica Neue regular, 12 pt, below .5 bottom margin and should have .5 margin right (line up) Bookmark symbol: present for feature, shorts and briefs (all articles to indicate them)

Table of contents (always on pg 2) (First page will always contain an advertisement) Background: White Photograph: Close up, possibly half of the full image, image must only fill up the first column on the left hand side Title: CONTENTS; Helvetica Neue bold, yellow, 51 pt, centered between 2nd and 3rd column, starts below horizontal like at 1.5 inches Articles: - list articles under their categories (FEATURES, FACTS OR STORIES) which uses Helvetica Neue bold italic, pt 13, black, flush left - Articles names; Helvetica Neue regular, black, 16pt, all caps, flush left - Use periods and add in page numbers Recipes: - What’s Cooking?; Helvetica Neue bold italic, yellow, 25 pt, flush left, below the articles - Recipes; Helvetica Neue regular, black, 16pt, all caps, flush left - Use periods and add in page numbers

Feature Article (uses 2 full pages) Background: White Photograph: From above, good close distance, stylish dish, takes up far right corner column Title: THE BRIEF HISTORY of NOODLES; Helvetica Neue bold, yellow, 35 pt, Of (conjunction words); Times New Roman italic, yellow, 35 pt Title start below 1.5 inch line and centered on left page Author: HILDE LEE; Helvetica Neue regular, yellow, 12 pt

- ‘By’ ; Times New Roman italic, yellow, 12 pt for the word - Body: Times New Roman regular, 12pt, uses up the 5 columns (columns could be moved around in issues), add initial letter (optional), justified Pull-quote: Helvetica Neue bold italic, yellow, 16 pt, add one line above and below to distinguish quote, placed after article, centered in the column it’s in Bookmark: Yellow, add line above the word FEATURE

ALL Recipes (1 page) Background: red Photograph: square, below the 1.5 inch horizontal line, centered in 2nd and 3rd column on right side, must be slightly above and close enough Title: Helvetica Neue bold, white, 25 pt, all caps, flush left Ingredients Heading: Helvetica Neue bold, white, 14 pt, all caps, flush left Ingredients: Helvetica Neue regular, white, 12 pt, far left column, bullet point, flush left, takes up the far left column Directions Heading: Helvetica Neue bold, white, 14 pt, all caps Directions: Helvetica Neue regular, white, 12 pt, must be numbered, flush left, takes up 2nd and 3rd column

Short (uses 2 full pages) Background: White Photograph: Close up, stylish, different angles, place photo inside text OR add in a picture into far right column Title: KNOW your NOODLE; Helvetica Neue Bold, yellow, 103 pt, all caps, use flush left 2nd to 4th columns (Size of text could vary along with placement) - Of (conjunction); Times New Roman italic, yellow, 107 pt, flush right, could overlap the next word (size of text could vary along with placement) Author: Helvetica Neue regular, yellow, 12 pt all caps for LEANNE KITCHEN - Times New Roman italic, yellow, 12 pt for the word ‘By’, Subheading: The Ultimate Guide to Asian Noodles; Times New Roman italics, 20 pt, yellow, flush left Body: Times New Roman, 12pt, below the 6 inch horizontal line, fill up columns Pullquote: Times New Roman italics, 12 pt, yellow, placed next to or above body text Bookmark: Yellow, add line above the word FACTS Optional: add decorative lines

Sidebar (one column) Background: yellow Title: 5 FUN FACTS ABOUT NOODLES; Helvetica Neue regular and bold, white, 24 pt, all caps, centered Text: Helvetica Neue regular, white, 14 pt, flush left, numbered - All should be centered in the column

Brief (uses 2 full pages) Background: White Photograph: From above, close distance, stylish dish, takes up far right corner column Title: RAMEN to the NOODLES; Helvetica Neue bold, yellow, 35 pt, To & the (conjunction words); Times New Roman italic, yellow, 35 pt Title starts below 1.5 inch line and centered on left page Author: ELIZA BARCLAY; Helvetica Neue regular, yellow, 12 pt all caps - ‘By’ ; Times New Roman italic, yellow, 12 pt Body: Times New Roman regular, 12pt, uses up the 5 columns (columns could be moved around in issues), add initial letter (optional), justified Pull-quote: Helvetica Neue bold italic, yellow, 16 pt, add one line above and below to distinguish quote, placed after article, centered in the column it’s in Bookmark: Yellow, add line above the word STORIES

Margin top: 1.5 in Margin bottom: .75 in Margin left: .50 in Margin right: .50 in 3 column grid Horizontal guides at: 1.5 in, 5in, 6 in, 10.25 in