| Noodle nuances |
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| Food | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 02 August 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Q. Do noodles really taste better with chopsticks? A. Since taste is something like 70% smell, unless you have particularly filthy cutlery or have been using your chopsticks to clean the cat tray, the scientific answer has to be no. However, imagine eating a Sunday roast with a clean garden spade. Imagine the shape of it in your mouth, scraping the roast potato off with your teeth. The texture. It feels different, handles differently. It probably wouldn't be your first choice. I love the play of noodles with chopsticks, teasing them from their soupy sea, passing them into air, then up and over my lips. Sucking up a tail, biting through a greedy mouthful. With a fork, all the action happens in the water and by the time it's in your mouth, it's already over. Plus, fishing for those last few strands is easier with chopsticks. If you haven't yet learned how to use chopsticks, there's sufficient difference to make it worthwhile. And anything tastes better when you've earned it. Q. What do you do with the bits that have broken off in the packet? A. Personally, I dump them. From a purely utilitarian standpoint, they are an acceptable loss. With noodles, rate quality above quantity and in the absence of tragic events, these flotsam shoudn't make much difference to quantity anyhow. Should you lean that way, they may make the soup a little wheatier. To reduce the chances of collateral damage to individual packets, unless testing new varieties I tend to buy my noodles in cases, normally of 30. These are readily available in Chinese supermarkets and will also save you some pennies than buying singly. If I go with my brother we'll buy a different box each and swap half over (carefully). Q. What's the best way to cook more than one packet at a time? A. As with most kinds of one-person feeding, this method does not scale up easily. For two packets, you can just about get away with the same method but the noodles must be removed from the heat slightly earlier before rinsing. For guests, I'd actually be inclined to cook one packet at a time. Q. What's the best way to turn a bowl of noodles into a fully fledged meal? A. Leftovers warmed up while you're cooking work well and you cannot go wrong with a fried egg and a splash of soy sauce. A friend recently introduced me to canned Monks' Vegetables, half a tin of which makes you feel full, healthy and benevolent. Tastes a bit funky at first but if you like braised bamboo shoots, you're on the right track. I guess it depends on your definition of a complete meal but in a certain mood, nothing goes better with a bowl of noodles than... another bowl of noodles. Happy slurping, folks.
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