I don’t really understand noodles. They’re
rather like rice, not anything I grew up with. Yep I know how to make them,
I’ve cooked them, I’ve followed detailed recipes from Harold McGee to make
proper alkaline noodles to go in Tonkotsu broth lovingly distilled from a shit
load of bones. This doesn’t mean I get them; it doesn’t confer upon me an
appreciation of their finer subtleties.
Many moons ago I when I worked at Oddbins
people would come in and ask for Champagne for special celebrations and the
like, they’d ask about Dom Perignon or Krug, and I’d question them as to
whether they thought it’d be money well spent? Did they drink Champagne enough
to really justify all that extra cost, wouldn’t they prefer to buy a couple of
bottles of Bollinger Grande Annee for the same price? I wasn’t trying to make
people feel foolish, I was just worried that as we get to the higher price
points the law of diminishing returns starts to gnaw away at the obvious
differences, leaving subtleties. And the one thing I do know about subtleties, is
how easy they are to miss. Just talk to me about interpersonal relations for a
pretty swift demonstration of that.
So anyway, I’ve read loads about Ramen
noodles, pretty much the whole of the first issue of Lucky Peach was one long
soggy love letter to them. They sounded awesome. David Chang outlined their
sheer wondrous brilliance in many a third person piece, and I wanted in on all
this good stuff. But where was I to cut my teeth?
A full day’s worth of boiling, kneading,
chopping and, well actually more boiling again, supplied me with a bowl of
steaming porky, fatty broth. Rustically cut noodles curled around my fork (I
didn’t have any chop sticks), the still ever so viscous yolk of my soft boiled
egg leaked dangerously into the soup whiule scattered herbs and spring onions
gleamed emerald round the puddles of fat languorously coalescing on the
surface. Yet still I didn’t really feel that I’d got it. It was nice, I had a
glorious sense of satisfaction over a dish well made, but it didn’t feel like
it was mine to love. There was no tugging at heartstrings, no moments of
wistful reminiscence; I just didn’t have any context. Not having grown up
eating noodles, I didn’t really have a backlog of flavour memories with which
to compare what I’d made. It was frustrating; deep down I knew that if it had
been roast potatoes, I’d have had an opinion. Fuck yes I would have done, and
I’d not have been backward about coming forward with it. You’d have known,
because I’d have told you, how much better, or indeed worse, I could have done
the potatoes. But with these noodles I was silent.
When you’re mighty geeky like I am, there’s
a certain helplessness about being confronted by things that you can’t judge
flavour wise. It’s sad, but I’ll admit to liking to know about what I’m eating,
I feel a little lost at sea when I don’t, that little boy lost in China town
not knowing what in the world to order.
Btw, read into this whatever you will….
