Something about Darren Elliott's photo of a bowl of tonkotsu Taiwan ramen is making me unable to think of much else besides scarfing down a huge bowl of noodles. I only just looked up what tonkotsu ramen was after looking at this photo, which Wikipedia explains uses a "thick broth made by boiling pork bones, fat, and collagen over high heat for hours on end, suffusing the broth with a hearty pork flavor and a creamy consistency that rivals milk or melted butter or gravy." Melted butter. I'd drink it.
Student Erick Montes created this instant ramen noodle soup packaging that's based on the work of Japanese "superflat" artist Takashi Murakami. "I originally set out to do only one flavor (shiitake mushroom) to communicate the references to hallucinogenics in Murakami’s work," Montes says, "and also as a metaphor for the bombing of Hiroshima, which Murakami sees as the birth of today’s westernized Japan."
I love how the bowl also forms a mouth—and that it's a cut-out that reveals the product. Snappy design. [via Superpunch]
Do you really like udon? I mean, really, really like udon to the point that you'd want to eat a bucket of it? Then Japanese competitive eater Nobuyuki Shirota has the restaurant for you: Shirotaya, a limited-time noodle shop in Osaka whose standard bowls of udon come with 16 portions of noodles for about $40. Don't be intimidated; those with normal appetites can order a sixteenth of a bowl of udon.
Budae jjigae, or "army stew," is a Korean soup dish whose name stems from the use of surplus foods from the US Army in a traditional gochujang-based soup. Su-Linadded the former Army surplus foods Spam and hot dogs to her budae jjigae along with ramen, spring onions, and Chinese cabbage, and served the stew over white rice.
My favorite type of noodle is soba, a Japanese noodle primarily made of buckwheat flour commonly served chilled with its own dipping sauce. FX Cuisine's photo-laden account of making soba at Tsukiji Soba Academy illustrates the labor intensive process from mixing the flours to rolling the dough to precise thicknesses and—my favorite part—ultimately cutting the noodles from the mother dough with a gigantic cleaver. If you ever find yourself in Tokyo, visit Tsukiji Soba Academy to learn the ways of the sobatician.
Here's a great video of the soba making process packed into less than three minutes:
Ben and Nate roamed Asia for months on a belly-expanding mission to find the best bowl of noodles on the continent, or possibly the world. Today they revealed their number one bowl hailing from a greasy ramen shop in Tokyo named Ramen Jiro:
As I look around and take in the sights and the sounds (mostly raucous slurping), the overwhelming fragrance in the room is a deep hue of soul wrenching pork stock. This is not a pretty bowl of noodles; it will taunt you, it will tease you, and after 5 minutes of eating the crap out of this thing it will somehow breed more noodles, more bean sprouts, more cabbage, more melty, fatty, juicy chunks of days-cooked pork, more chopped garlic, more soup, more...ramen. I notice that every single bowl that goes back on the counter has been completely demolished, perhaps only a bit of soup remaining. It becomes very clear to me that absolutely no one can leave there without finishing the whole thing.
Read the rest of Ben and Nate's "unforgettable journey of taste-bending glory," preferably not on an empty stomach unless you want to feel sharp pangs of ramen hunger. Also be sure to check out their other top Asian noodle picks: #2 and #3, and #4 and #5.
If you're interested in hearing more about the greatness of Ramen Jiro and the shame that results from failing to finish a bowl or the glory that comes after polishing off your order, listen to the excellent ramen battling stories in "Ramen Jiro Noodles: A Test of Greatness" on NPR.
In anticipation of Singapore Day in New York's Central Park, we'll be posting descriptions of the country's signature street food, which is sold there in hawker centers. Here, we give you ...
Fried hokkien mee: "A favorite among Singaporeans, fried hokkien mee is served with fresh and delicious slices of squid, prawns, slices of fish cake, vegetables and strips of pork. For the best eating experience, this hokkien mee is served wet and not too dry, and you may want to squeeze the lime juice into your spoon first, remove the lime seeds, and pour it onto your hokkien mee. For added enjoyment, sambal chili and lime juice must be mixed together with the noodles."
If you like both noodles and science, you should get a kick out of this video from the physicist Philip Morrison's 1987 PBS show The Ring of Truth: Atoms, in which chef Mark Pi makes noodles to demonstrate the principle of halving:
After handpulling and folding the noodles just twelve times, Pi's created 4,096 strands so thin they're called dragon's beard noodles; Morrison points out that if Pi pulls and folds them another thirty times, the noodles would be so fine as to approach atomic thickness!
Sam Sifton, currently the New York Times culture editor, is the greatest writer about food you've never heard of. Although he is too busy in his present job to write much at all these days, he does find time to occasionally contribute to the New York Times Magazine. Yesterday he wrote a fantastic piece about the history and evolution of cold sesame noodles. He even includes a recipe, with the help and aid of yarn-spinner and Chinese restaurateur Eddie Schoenfeld (aka "Chop Sooey Looey"). It calls for a tablespoon of smooth peanut butter and a quarter cup of chopped roasted peanuts. Alas, no jelly.
We asked a handful of Asian noodle freaks about their favorites—what was the best bowlful they'd eaten in the last year, where they got it, and why it was so delicious. Here are their answers. With a recipe from New York City's David Chang, a young chef on the rise known for creating his own killer noodle dishes. Dig in—slurping is encouraged!
Posted by Adam Kuban, December 14, 2006 at 11:53 AM
Foodblogger Cha Xiu Bao has great photo set of the noodle-making process at a Hong Kong noodle shop. Complete with a knife that would make Crocodile Dundee proud.
The cleaver held by master Shiu weighs in at 2 catties and 12 taels (1.6kg in plain English). Each day, he hand-cuts each one of the hair-thin gold noodles with this massive blade of his. The broth for the noodles is made of chicken and Yunnan ham, and is double-boiled for over 12 hours. Believe it or not, the noodles sell sinfully cheap at just HK$28 [US$3.60] a bowl.
1.6 kilograms in plain "American" is roughly 3.5 pounds!
