| Confessions of a noodle freak |
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| Wednesday, 02 August 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Richard Ng goes noodles again, this time sharing his personal (and very specific) "quick noodle" cooking method!INSTRUCTIONS FOR COOKING QUICK NOODLES 1. Start with Decent Ingredients This doesn't mean roast pork or fishballs, which are all well and good but won't help if the noodles themselves are fundamentally yacky (technical term). Buy a brand that has been recommended by someone you trust and generally stay away from anything that costs 8p from Safeway, noodle or otherwise. When in doubt, the basic building block is Nissin ramen. In most oriental supermarkets, Nissin dominates the shelves. All the flavours are good. Taste the rainbow and buy one of each if you have the inclination, find a favourite. Currently I swing wildly between between good old fashioned sesame chicken, shoyu (with the seaweed packet) or, for late night snacks, nothing beats curry. If you can find them, wonton flavour Doll noodles used to be the classic quick noodle, however they don't seem to be stocked at UK supermarkets any more. This makes me sad. For the purposes of these instructions, I will be concentrating on Nissin-style packets of noodles, as opposed to those that end up resembling fried noodles or those that come in their own cup. Also, the spectacularly inappropriately named 'Super Noodles' will not be entertained. 2. Get the Water Boiling In an ideal world, saucepans would be made just slightly larger than a dried noodle 'cake'. However, I'm told that the world has to cater for people who eat other things too. Find a saucepan not too much larger than your noodle cake. This will allow the noodles to be completely or mostly submerged, ensuring even consistency. It also means a shorter cooking time since you would have to wait longer for a larger amount of water to boil. I did science, you see. A stainless steel pan on a gas hob will do nicely. If you have an electric hob, put the kettle on. Boil enough water so the noodle cake will be just or mostly submerged but don't put it in yet! If you require more instructions on boiling water, turn everything off, step away from the appliances and wait for an adult. 3. Open the Packet Tear or cut the plastic bag open. Try not to break off any more of the cake than is already broken. Remove any paraphernalia and set them to one side. These may include soup base, chilli powder, chopped fried vegetables or fish, squares of seaweed nori, seasoning oils or plastic toys. Seriously. The noodle cake should look like an unravelled woollen baby cardigan, ivory coloured and faded. It should be about the size and weight of a decent peanut butter sandwich but dry and inviting as puff pastry. Give it a sniff. No, really. Sniff it. You'll find that even one brand of noodle uses different noodle cakes for different flavours and you can smell and later, feel the difference. The dried noodle in Indo Mie's chicken flavour noodle cake smells identical to the Doll wonton one. Deep sigh. What is it they say about smells evoking memories more powerful than any other sense? I'll move on now before I start welling up. 4. Flash boil the Noodles Drop the whole noodle cake into the rapidly bubbling water. Keep the heat high; we want to boil them, not stew them. DO NOT BREAK THE NOODLE CAKE Breaking the dry noodles is tantamount to running over puppies. Noodles were made this way, to be long and stringy, for a purpose. Who are we to deny them their reason for being? "I just like them that way" or "they're just too long" I've heard soon-to-be ex-friends say, as I gritted my teeth and made a mental note to lose touch ASAP. Slurping noodles, like spaghetti, is one of the joys of life. Biting through a thread cooked to al dente perfection should send a thrill through your very being. Conversely, the sounds of snapping a noodle cake bring to mind broken bones or a dreadful brushfire. Oh the horror! After about a minute, when the noodles have begun to separate, help them along by waving your wooden chopsticks or fork through the water. Wooden chopsticks are preferable since plastic can melt and ivory can warp. Also, ivory is illegal and elephants are the best animal in the world. Separating the noodles like this helps to cook the noodles consistently. Note that their texture is still a little crisp or springy and they may look clean and dry too. Leave them another 40 to 60 seconds, until they relax a little more and have a wet, more silky appearance. 5 Rinse with Cold Water [CONTROVERSIAL] Take the pan off the stove and throw the contents into a small sieve. Immediately run cold water through them until steam no longer rises. If you have no sieve, add cold water directly to the pan, then tip all the water out, holding the noodles back with your chopsticks / fork. Repeat this and note that all the white bubbly gunk that surfaces the second time round. Purists will scoff at this and indeed, on the packet there are no guidelines concerning rinsing. Nevertheless, noodle eaters are divided firmly into two camps: those who rinse and those who do not. The reason for this is found in a story, that may or may not be apocryphal. It was reported in a Hong Kong newspaper that a woman in her thirties had died of mysterious causes. Just fell over. In her autopsy, surgeons found a great ball of tacky glue in her throat or digestive system, so large that they could not understand how it got there. It later transpired that this woman loved quick noodles so much that she ate them every day, indeed, every meal if she could. (Right on, lady!) However, her monomania had led to a conglomeration of the guar gum used to stick the dry noodles together, which in turn led to a fatal blockage. Thinking about it now, I seem to remember a similar story regarding a postal worker licking stamps for a living. And, of course, the old wives' tale that still sends a wave of inexplicable panic when I accidentally swallow a piece of gum. Further research has been undertaken and I remember being profoundly nervous watching a piece on That's Life about how unhealthy guar gum is for you. On reckless occasions or water shortages I have thrown caution to the wind and not rinsed, more often when cooking more than one packet at a time. But then they feel kind of soapy and alkaline. Try it for yourself, see what you think. I do believe that too much of anything is bad for you and even I don't eat noodles every meal, since sometimes my wife cooks. 6. Get the Heat Back On OK we're in the home stretch now. Add clean cold water to the pan, about a quarter of what you originally used to cook the noodle cake, or a half if you like a lot of soup. If you used a sieve, toss the noodles into the pan. If you used a kettle earlier, you can use that instead to save a little time and energy. Place the pan on a high heat and wiggle the noodles around a little to spread them around flat and evenly before covering. Sprinkly on any flavourings and sachets. Don't stir them in at this stage or the flavour will be diluted in the soup. With the exception of plastic toys and nori, which should be added as a garnish, all condiments can be added at this stage. Now cover and wait for the water to bubble. If you're being civilised or are entertaining, get a bowl ready. 7. Finish Off Once the water's boiling, which should only take a minute or so, shut down the heat, give the whole lot a stir to distribute and lock the flavourings on the noodles. Then… 8. Eat Standing in the kitchen, sitting in the bath, it's all good.
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