Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
Noodles (Page 29)
Nissin Cup Noodles are outrageously popular in Japan and have a firm following worldwide. Now, to keep the love flowing throughout the hot summer months, they’ve released a new special version designed to be eaten icy cold. For the first time, the company will be releasing somen, the thinnest of traditional Japanese noodles, for a meal so light and tasty you’ll be wanting to eat them all year!
I have a minor confession to make: I’m really not a fan of udon noodles. When asked to rank the big three – namely ramen, soba and udon – I’ll give my answer from most to least liked in that exact order. Ramen is quite frankly the man and hard to go wrong with, and soba is, although far simpler, nearly always delicious even hot or cold. But udon I just can’t seem to make friends with. Far heavier than its other noodle brethren, I find myself tiring of udon’s flavour even halfway through a meal, and those thick, heavy wheat-flour noodles slip from my chopsticks and splash into my soup. Every. Single. Time.
But these awesome new gelatinous “gummy” udon noodles, I think I could handle.
Pasta, for many of us, is the miracle food. Boil, strain, add sauce, and just like that you have a delicious dish! It’s cheap, easy, and quick–the perfect food for everyone from starving students to busy professionals. It’s even moderately healthy, as long as you choose the right sauces.
On the other hand, it’s so easy and cheap that some of us tend to eat it often enough for it to get a bit boring. If you’re starting to get tired of your dry pasta dishes, why not try using some “fresh” noodles?
If you’re thinking that making noodles by hand sounds like a lot of work, well, we’re sure you’re probably right–but our colleagues at RocketNews24 Japan have a trick that will basically revert your dry pasta back to its “fresh pasta” state!
During the height of summer, we’ve been known to plonk ourselves down in front our home-made air conditioner with a pile of sliced watermelon or even chilled soba noodles and mentsuyu dipping sauce as a way of keeping cool while engaging in our favourite pastime of filling our faces. But we never imagined for a second that someone would put noodles, yoghurt and fruit together in one dish.
Tokyo and Osaka-based noodle chain Tsurutontan, specialists in udon wheat-flour noodle dishes, is currently offering patrons something rather tropical with its Mango Yogurt Udon. The very thought of eating a cold, sweet version of one of our favourite kinds of noodle at once excited us and made us feel a little bit queasy, so we sent one of our bravest reporters over to try it out. Find out what they thought after the jump.
The choices we make in life define who we are. Your friends may not admit it, but when you choose mint chocolate chip ice-cream (and bravo by the way), they’re scribbling a couple of lines about you in their mental scrapbook. When you leave your iPod on your workmate’s car, they’re either nodding along or guffawing as they cycle through your albums before bothering to call and tell you they’ve found it. As a wise man once said, “books, records, films; these things matter.” And noodles, my Asia-loving friends, are no exception. Do you like ramen or udon? Udon or soba? When you take a trip to soba town, to you eat them steaming hot or cold and dunked in mentsuyu dipping oil? If you could only eat one kind of noodle for the rest of your life, which would it be?
Cup Ramen, known to Westerners as “Grade A college student feed,” is perfectly formulated with enough sodium and other preservatives to both fuel late-night study sessions and cure massive hangovers, but nobody’s ever accused it of being a gourmet food.
Instant noodles – also known as cup noodles and what this writer lived off during most of his university days – have been a food staple for the busy, cost-conscious and kitchenphobic since their inception back in 1958. Peel back the lid, pour in some hot water, wait a few minutes and you have a hot, filling, if not especially nutritious meal for about the cost of a cup of coffee.
But with the handy meals being something that many associate with students and lonely bachelors, many women shy away from instant noodles, regardless of the fact that they’re just as pressed for time as their male coworkers. And all stigmas and stereotypes aside, few women in their 20s and 30s would be especially happy about replacing their nutritious mid-day meal with a plastic cup of rehydrated noodles swimming in a salty broth.
Enter the girly noodle.
This Udon Museum will open on December 22nd from 11:00 in the Gion area of Kyoto. Udon is a thick noodle made from wheat flour. With all the variations out there – over 45, including noodle shape, thickness, soup varieties, ways to be eaten, included ingredients and cooking procedures – it makes perfect sense to have a ‘Udon museum’!
One of the best things about Japan is its vast and comprehensive food culture where a wide variety of culinary dishes can be enjoyed. Japanese people take great pride in their ‘washoku‘ (Japanese food), with multiple varieties of the same dish according to geographical location. Different areas have their own version of country cooking, sweet or savory, which becomes that area’s ‘meibutsu‘ or speciality, often times giving that area a name which they become famous for. So it is with Udon. Read More
Japanese food manufacturer Nissin, maker of incredibly popular “like fresh” instant noodle brand Raō, has taken the unusual step of opening a tiny restaurant of its own in Shibuya station, Tokyo. The restaurant opened just yesterday and is situated, of all places, in the very centre of the busy Yamanote line platform.
The miniature restaurant’s menu consists of just two items: two flavours of regular, shop-bought instant ramen, each costing just 250 yen (US$3).
Always eager to try out new food and discover interesting new locations, our intrepid RocketNews24 reporters headed down to see the restaurant for themselves.
Udon is one of Japan’s most well-loved noodles dishes, ranking in line with soba and ramen. Everyone has an opinion over which is the tastiest, but those who like a bit of girth in their noodles will probably go for udon, which are traditionally rolled thicker than other Japanese noodles.
If you really want something to chew on, Tawaraya, an established noodle house in Kyoto, makes udon noodles so thick that only one fits inside the bowl.
Our resident foodie, Kuzo, recently took a train out to the ancient capital to try Tawaraya’s udon for himself. Check out his report below!
When I was a kid, there was a period of about a week in school when everyone became obsessed with making “jokes” using “What’s the definition of…?” set-ups.
As well as failing to make anyone laugh, they rarely made much sense and were always both immensely long-winded and contrived…
Allow me to share an example:
“What’s the definition of ’cheeky’? Throwing a brick through someone’s window, then knocking on the door and asking for it back!”
Oh my sides….
Thankfully, though, a 16-year-old in Wakayama prefecture, Japan has done us all a favour and made an example of himself, putting an end to the eternal mystery “what’s the definition of ‘stupidity’?”
The world’s most venturesome ramen shop, Musashi Noodles, fearlessly created a cold ramen dish with soy milk soup and rayu, or chili oil, ice cream. Musashi Noodles is a Japanese noodle shop franchise. Their Shinjuku branch held a Valentines special promotion back in February featuring Unique Chocolate Ramen.
Summer in Japan is when ramen shops do a booming business in cold noodle dishes like hiyashi chuka. This new creation dubbed ‘tonyu hiyashi men’ or soy milk cold noodles, is available for a limited time only. Notice the scoop of red rayu ice cream floating in the white soy milk soup. A timely creation, full of national pride for all those medals won in the Olympics! But what about the taste? One of our reporters went to check it out. Read More
Ramen comes in a wide variety of flavors. In the mood for soy-sauce based shoyu ramen? Or maybe you want to have miso-flavored ramen? How about salt (shio) or pork-stock (tonkotsu) ramen? These are the standard options for just about every ramen shop in Japan.
But what would you say to milk flavored ramen? Is such a ramen flavor even available?
Well, it is at a certain ramen shop in Tokyo, and apparently it’s quite tasty too!
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