Text 27018, 140 rader
Skriven 2015-05-14 08:54:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av JIM WELLER
Ärende: Ramen 659
=================
 -=> Jim Weller said to Nancy Backus <=-

 NB> bottom line often is expense rather than taste... sigh...
 JW> Sadly there is a growing gap in the marketplace. The top and the
 JW> bottom ends are both doing well. Dave speaks of 49 cent chicken legs
 JW> in 10 pound bags and Michael laments that free range, organic
 JW> heritage breed chickens are $5 to $7 per pound in Boston. Whatever
 JW> happened to pretty good $2 chicken?

The compromise solution, to me, is to buy the bulk protein
and season it well. Even at its worst, chicken is no less
palatable than tofu and stands up well to flavory sauces.
Plus for those 49c a pound you get quantities of fat and
skin for rendering and bones for making broth out of.

 JW> It's like department stores in that Bergdorf, Lord & Taylor,
 JW> Bloomingdale's, Saks, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom are all doing very
 JW> well as is Canada's Holt Renfrew, and Walmart continues to grow like
 JW> a cancer on steroids but Sears, the Bay and Eatons are all reeling
 JW> or totally defunct.

 JW> There are no middle class markets anymore, possibly (no undoubtedly)
 JW> because the middle class is shrinking. 

That may be true, but many of the plebeian places have shrunk
down to nothingness - whether that's due to bad business
practices, unwillingness to cut costs by going to China, or
what, I can't say. Montgomery Ward, J.C. Penney, Almy's, and
I'd put Sears in that category as well. One can't really say
that the lower class is shrinking, just that they're being
predated on more effectively.

 JW> ... If you mix Taco Bell hot sauce in ramen it tastes like poverty.
 NB> Quite!
 JW> And despair.
 JW> Real Ramen with freshly made noodles, a quality broth and good
 JW> ingredients is something else again.

The difference between fresh noodles and a good-quality
dried noodle is less than you'd think. Further, the top
brands of dried sometimes go for $2 a serving, 8-10 times
what Maruchan or Nissin sell their basic products for.

I'd take a block of Maruchan, boil it for half the time,
and put it in the sauce or soup of your choice, saving the
"flavor" packet for sometime when you need a sprinkle of
MSG to tasty something up (one packet usually lasts me
3 or 4 dishes, each serving 2 to 4).

 JW> Title: About Ramen

Bunches of dubious info here.

 JW> Most ramen noodle are made from four basic ingredients: wheat
 JW> flour, salt, water, and Kansui. Originally, Kansui was water from
 JW> Lake Kan in Inner Mongolia that contained a high amount of
 JW> potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate as well as a small amount
 JW> of phosphoric acid. It gives ramen a yellowish color and a
 JW> particular flavor to the noodle.

Somehow I find that far-fetched. I'd never heard of such a
lake anyplace, much less Mongolia, and if the water (or its
salts) were so prized as to be trucked over hundreds of
miles of mountainous country, it should be pretty well
known. And kansui looks suspiciously like kansui, which can
mean "dry water" - i.e., water that puckers your mouth.
Wikipedia says the original term was "salt water," but I
am not sure I fully believe that either.

Also, a cursory look at the various wikis and atlases does
not yield a similarly named lake. Tsagaan Lake is as close
as I can find, and there are several of them, all real
backwaters about which little information is available.
I'm guessing that some snake-water salesman in the distant
past invented the story, and it, as so many evocations of
exotic places do, took off in its own crooked way.

Anyhow, carbonates are easy to come by wherever limestone
and/or burnt organic matter has been found. No need to get
them from Mongolia!

 JW> Four different noodle types exist: dried ramen noodle (kanso-men),
 JW> fresh ramen noodle (namamen), steamed ramen noodle (mushimen), and
 JW> instant ramen noodle (insutanto ra-men).

One can classify these noodles in numerous ways. Four,
twenty, who knows. I don't think that mushimen deserves
its own category, as it is uncommon and tastes bad (the
false cognateness is not misleading in this case).

 JW> Ramen is a newcomer in Japanese cuisine; while Tokugawa Mitsukuni
 JW> had reportedly eaten ramen in late 17th century, it was only in Meiji
 JW> period that ramen became widely known.

Hard to say that, too. Remember that noodles in general are
said to have appeared in Japan around 1240, courtesy of a
Buddhist monk named Enni, and the various forms have evolved
gradually since. When ramen became its own separate entity,
and whether it originally was called na-mian (handled noodles)
or lao-mian (aged noodles) will always be a source of
discussion, especially as the product is neither handled nor
(usually) aged.

 JW> After World War II, cheap imported flour from the US swept the
 JW> market and millions of Japanese pulled out of China. Many of these
 JW> Japanese learned Chinese cuisine, and set up Chinese restaurants all

What is clear is that Mr. Nissin (Momofuku Ando) made the
stuff popular, almost singlehanded, in the 1960s, by doing
this:

 JW> across Japan. Eating ramen, while popular, was still a special
 JW> occasion that required going out. In 1958, instant noodles was
 JW> invented. Credited to be the greatest Japanese invention of the 20th
 JW> century in a Japanese poll, this let anyone make a ramen by simply
 JW> boiling for measured amount of time.


---------- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.01

      Title: Creamy Chicken Broccoli Noodles
 Categories: Poultry, Pasta, m'm, m'm, urgk
      Yield: 4 servings

      2 pk Ramen noodles (chicken)         1 1/2 c  Cooked broccoli flowerets
      1 cn Cream of Mushroom Soup            1/2 c  Quartered cherry tomatoes
    1/2    Soup can milk                            (optional)
  1 1/2 c  Cubed cooked chicken

  1>. In saucepan, cook noodles according to package directions. Add
  seasoning packets; drain off most of liquid. 2>. Stir in Cream of Mushroom
  Soup and milk. Heat through, stirring often. 3>. Stir in tomatoes
  (optional). Source unknown

-----


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