Food, Stories, Uncategorized

Slurp

37 Comments

You all know that I’m fascinated by coincidence and the baader meinhof phenomenon. I don’t know why, but it won’t surprise you that it’s happened to me again.

Last weekend, while watching some cooking show (something about how you’re eating it wrong?), there was a snippet about slurping noodles. The theory is that slurping makes the noodles taste better because the increased air in your mouth allows the flavors to mingle and develop.

Then last night I started watching “I’ll Have What Phil’s Having” (thanks BiR for the suggestion). The first episode is filmed in Tokyo and Phil spends one whole afternoon and evening going from one noodle shop to another.  In the first of the shops, the owner/chef tells Phil that he needs to slurp the noodles and then explains how they will taste better with the extra aeration! This is amazing to me to hear this tidbit twice in a week when I’ve I’ve never heard it before.

How to you like your noodles?

 

37 thoughts on “Slurp”

      1. there are a bunch of ways to go
        soba noodles and the oil ar ethe primary things in all those dishes
        pick your flavor from there. it is amazing how little you have to do to make a good thing out of noodles. i end up getting carried away when i cook most of the time. i start with a mushroom and then add onions and go tot the ginger and then some sort of greens, and garlic you gotta have garlic then some soy or lime depending on swhich way….
        if you just do mushrooms and stop it is a flavor you can embrace and tweak a bit to go one way or the other.
        go to a chinese gorcery and just look at the shelf (and the prices) the suff is wonderful and exotic and cost a dollar.
        be sure to get some fresh bok choy. boil 3 minutes and eat.

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  5. I haven’t paid much attention to noodles I guess.
    Certainly not to slurping.

    I recall as a kid being kind of interested in all the different shapes.

    And of course there is Fusilli Jerry!

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  6. i have evolved into a soba noodles guy
    those white sticks that come wrapped in a paper band and are big in thai and chinese noodle dinners for microwaves and small batch orders

    spaghetti has an appeal but until i get the hang of gluten free pasta i am kind of putting it on the back burner,

    i will try the slurping technique. i can see how it might make a difference. i have been a spoon pasta eater for so long myt slurping is minimal at best
    i grab up the correct amount of noodle on the fork and then grab the spoon and sping the noodle into the spoon making a gold ball sized mass that goes into my mouth. thereis a bit of a noodle left dangling that gets the proverbial slurp but hardly what you could call a good hearty slurp, more a tidying up little suck to give a chew to on its way to the belly to become my energy for the next little while.
    i love tortalini but there is certainy no sluroping involved in that except the sauce off the fork. the pest or cheese or squash filled little pillows seem to be the proper way to me to make the pasta presentation. fix the main course, wrap it in bite sized format, cover it with a delicious sauce and make a pretty presentation on its way to dinner time memories

    noodles are fine but the noodles are really about the stff that goes on the noodles.
    i go crazy paying $2.50 or $3.00 for my tea bag with a cup of water. i feel tha same way about the $3.00 $4.00 dinners in the grocery store with the little plastic bag of noodles in which you are supposed to either put them in boiling water or the microwave with a dallop of water in the little plastic bowl. then there is a vegetable packet ( 1 tablespoon of dehydrated peppers onions and tomato along with a dash of the chinese version of itialian seasoning, then add the sauce your choice of orange sweet and sour or hot mustard and thats it. if you bought the componants the combined total for enough to make 25 meals would be $8.00 but in a single package presentation it is $3.79 each. people buy them 12 at a time… really?
    a giant can of hoisan sauce and a handfull of broccoli and some garlic are a staple for me, tofu if im industrious, maybe something mediterranean like falafels for bulk.
    noodles are a great way to get a meal out of a cupboard with no food in it. a little sauce from a jar in the refrigerator door and a dab of something to go with it could be a 3 night a week program if thought out a bit.
    got to try slurping somewhere in all those noodles.
    thanks for the inspiration.

    a noodle in my cup with a bit of robust sauce
    makes my tongue do somersaults and makes my eyeballs cross

    a bit of protein added in with a dash of heat
    will make the noodles a main course a perfect thai dinner treat

    noodles can go either way, the east the west you’ll find
    with heat or sugar cheese or meat the noodle is the tie that binds

    the new stuff made of spinich and sundried tomatoes is fine
    but the good old fashion egg noodle or the soba noodle to me is the best kind

    you can add salad and some bread but dont try to skip the noodles
    a plate of cheese and sauce wont do it india pay with rubles

    todays question of slurping makes me smile remebering when
    id slurp my spaghetti really hard and it would fly up toward my face and then
    the noodle slap to my nose and cheek would leave a scarlett trail
    and often end up on the wall as speghetti sauce would sail

    my mother in her june cleaver dress would blot up the sauce stain
    blot dont rub wouuld be the chant form her june cleaver brain

    id have it in my hair and on the collar of my shirt
    but why clean up with a whole plate thats bound to spray and squirt

    i didnt notice as a kid about aeration effecting flavor
    i mostly like it cause the taste was something i could savor

    the powdered cheese in the green can that sprinkeld on each plate
    mate the bread and butter sop it all up man but that was great

    my brother never got a drop anywhere at all
    me i had it ear to ear im not at all like paul

    noodles noodles everywhere now pass the jug of wine
    some bread some cheese you my dear tonight will be just fine

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    1. Too bad you haven’t given this any thought, tim. I was hoping someone would differentiate the different kinds of slurping: “a good hearty slurp, more a tidying up little suck to give a chew”..
      Thanks for the rhymes… and a fun image.

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  7. I like noodles
    Slurpy long noodles, short elbows with cheese
    Egg noodles with beef, curly noodles with ham
    Leftover noodles, noodles the first time
    Any kind of noodle
    I like noodles

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      1. I hate to admit it, but yeah. I’ve already thought of how I could have made it better but oh well. Imperfection is good enough.

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  8. From “The Wedding Procession of the Rag Doll and the Broom Handle and Who Was in It” by Carl Sandburg

    The music was furnished mostly by the Musical Soup Eaters.
    They marched with big bowls of soup in front of them and big
    spoons for eating the soup.They whistled and chuzzled and
    snozzled the soup and the noise they made could be heard far
    up at the head of the procession where the Spoon Lickers were
    marching.So they dipped their soup and looked around and dipped
    their soup again.

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  9. I like lo mein noodles with peanut sauce, some cubed chicken and some broccoli or beans. They are not soupy enough to slurp, though.

    There is a place on Snelling Avenue called Rah’MN – MN for Minnesota, I guess – that I haven’t been to yet but I’d like to try.

    Noodles & Co. does a nice job with their noodle dishes. I’m sometimes a little put off by the prices, though. I have occasionally ordered extra vegetables, like tomatoes, and it adds a couple of bucks to the price. Then you get the bowl of noodles and the tomato looks like the equivalent of two or three small cherry tomatoes chopped up, and you wonder why you bothered. I would like the noodle-to-vegetable ratio to be a little more veggie positive.

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  10. I love noddles of all kinds, but especially fresh pasta. Home made pasta is the best. Tim referred to spinach and sun dried tomato pasta as new, but there’s nothing new about it. At Kinderspital in Basel the whole kitchen crew was Italian, and those ladies knew how to cook. One of my favorite dishes on the menu was a spinach fettuccine dish that was out of this world. They made it as a special farewell treat for me when I left after my year was up. To this day, freshly made spinach fettuccine is one of my favorite things.

    Last year I took a class in making ramen soup at Cooks of Crocus Hill. I thought of ramen soup as what comes in the cheap little cellophane packages of curly noodles with a flavoring packet inside; students have subsisted on it for many years. I figured there had to be something more to it after looking at the menus and prices of ramen at some local restaurants. It’s a laborious undertaking to make, and frankly, more trouble than I think it’s worth. That said, I do enjoy a good ramen soup and am even willing to pay a goodly amount for a bowl of it from time to time.

    Noodles in Asian dishes are a whole different thing, but I love them all. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say, I love the ones I’ve tried so far. Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Laotian, and Korean all have differences and similarities, and I don’t claim to be an expert on any of them, but they sure are fun to explore.

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  11. Like ljb, I like noodles of all kinds. I like the inexpensive ramen packets that I buy a case at a time from Amazon. I love fancy ass pasta. I love soba and I love rice noodles with chow mein. I’ve been craving noodles recently and I’m not sure what that means. Noodles & Company was a godsend when YA was younger.

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  12. I remember when living in NYC being taken to a tiny restaurant in The Village called Mary’s, which had Northern Italian dishes. Up until then I’d had only the red tomato sauces in Italian restaurants. I wish I could remember what I had, but I know noodles were involved, and probably some kind of cream sauce… I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, and am here recalling it 43 years later. I wouldn’t be surprised if I slurped something.

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  13. I’ve been making Singapore Chow Mei Fun lately. It’s more chewy than slurpy, incorporating all manner of stir-fried vegetables and kinds of protein with softened rice vermicelli and an omelet cooked thin and sliced into ribbons, the whole thing flavored predominantly with curry. Very satisfying.

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        1. Right. Usually Chow Mei Fun has several– shrimp, chicken, Chinese barbecued pork. As with many of these dishes, the ingredients vary with what you have on hand.

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