pasta (Page 2)
If you’re hungry and quick enough, this eating challenge in Tokyo’s liveliest student neighborhood can make a tidy profit.
We looked at this Shibuya restaurant’s 2.3-kilogram (5.1-pound) spaghetti serving and said, “Naw, that’s not enough.”
This chain’s 100-yen pasta and noodle dishes are just the thing when you’re looking to stretch your budget.
Craving some carbs? Indulge in this limited-time weekday lunch special for only 800 yen (US$7) per person.
The recipe calls for meticulously sticking dry noodles into numerous mushroom stalks. Uppercutting the entire dish into the atmosphere out of sheer frustration at the difficulty of that step is, we presume, optional.
For those living outside Japan, a good bowl of ramen is almost impossible to find unless you’re in a big city like New York or London, and even then the options can be a bit of a let-down. And for many, the only ramen available is the dried variety that frankly has made some of our Japanese culinary experts gag.
But all is not lost, dear ramen lovers around the world. We’ve found a kitchen hack to turn ordinary everyday pasta into noodles fit for a delicious bowl of homemade ramen.
We don’t know why people always make the same mistakes, and history always repeats itself. In this case we are talking about Lotteria, one of Japan’s largest fast food chains. In the past, it had once made the mistake of selling a ramen burger that sandwiched droopy ramen between buns. It wasn’t well received. And then they brought to us a tsukemen burger, which also didn’t do well. We thought they’d have learned their lesson, but no! Much to our dismay, starting on September 8, they started selling a neapolitan spaghetti burger. We’re not quite sure why they are so insistent on putting noodles between buns, but we do know that the new noodle burgers aren’t impressing diners in Japan.
With the highest concentration of anime and video game specialty stores on the planet, it’s pretty easy to go over-budget spending a day in Akihabara. But while some otaku might claim that Japanese animation is their lifeblood, eventually everyone needs to eat something.
So for everyone with a crying wallet and a grumbling stomach, a new restaurant has just arrived in the neighborhood, serving pasta to-go, starting at just 190 yen (US$1.88).
Although Italian in origin, the words pasta and spaghetti are now everyday words in English. Thanks to the foods’ proliferation around the world these words can also be found in Japanese, pronounced pasuta and supagettī respectively.
But in recent years, it seems as if the word “spaghetti” has been falling out of favor in Japan, being replaced by the word “pasta.” Although in English the distinction between “spaghetti” and “pasta” is pretty clear (pasta being the foodstuff, spaghetti one of its many varieties), it seems there is a whole other world of nuances when the words cross over into Japanese.
The other day we brought you news about Brazilian style cup noodles and as the saying goes, you eat with your eyes before your mouth and we’re sure many of you became suddenly hungry after looking at the picture. Even though you knew it was Cup Noodle, that didn’t stop you from salivating at the words “BBQ” and “Brazilian spices”. Seeing instant ramen undoubtedly brings the thoughts of, “I wonder if I could make my own ramen noodles myself, instead of whatever is in this Styrofoam cup.” Starting from July, you can and this new product from Waganse is just as easy as “making” a Cup Noodle and probably a whole lot healthier too.
Gari-Gari Kun, arguably the best popsicle on the face of the earth, is no stranger to strange. The shaved ice-filled frozen treat from Japan has been served in a variety of weird flavors ranging from potato stew to Ultraman. Of course, Gari-Gari Kun also comes in more conventional flavors like kiwi and cola, but Akagi, makers of this fine dessert, never cease to provide wild new versions for those tired of normal. Just take a look at the company’s latest Gari-Gari Kun, which takes a cue from a savory italian dish: spaghetti napolitana.
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!
I freaking knew it!
Spaghetti and other pasta recipes have repeatedly asked us to “boil with salt” – a rule that has always baffled me. Once, early on in my cooking life, I decided to be a good boy and add the salt as requested only to find that it didn’t make a lick of difference to the end result. I haven’t looked back since.
In an interview with website, President Online, Tokyo Kasei University Graduate School of Home Economics, Keiko Nagao, puts this myth of boiling with salt to rest once and for all, thus saving us from a needless cooking step. Read More
A common addition to many Japanese dishes is a substance called Konjac (Konnyaku in Japanese which may sound confusingly like Cognac). It’s a peculiar, virtually tasteless gelatinous mass that admittedly has an excellent texture to it.
What may come as a shock to millions of Japanese people is that America is beginning to embrace this garnish not as the Japanese have, but as a replacement for conventional pasta.
Thanks to the West’s keen marketing sense, Japan’s often underappreciated purplish-grey slab gelatin has been reborn there as Miracle Noodles!
This summer isn’t even half way through, but everyone in Japan can firmly agree that it sucks – hard. For the past two weeks the temperature has hovered around 35℃ in many parts of the country with a hardly a cloud to weaken the scorching sun.
Walking around in the streets, heat exhaustion has me pining for winter like it was a long lost lover whom I’m willing to forgive for cheating on me with 10 dudes as long as she comes back for one precious moment to ease my soul.
Just then some news hit me like a bucket of cold water. There is a restaurant in Ginza called Fresh Pasta Monster that is serving “Shaved Ice Fresh Pasta” for a limited time Now that’s something to make me forget about that tramp, winter.
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