American’s Love Complex For Asian Noodle (1/3)

Food Trends American’s Love Complex For Asian Noodle From buckwheat to seaweed, different raw materials bring new taste and texture. Everyone in the restaurant world knows that Americans are in an enduring, torrid love affair with noodles. Our love for noodle broke the back of low-carb diets, and it drives the success of restaurant chains that focus on Asian food and Italian alike. Although the majority of the noodles that Americans eat are made from wheat flour, and most of the rest come from rice flour, other raw materials — ranging from buckwheat to seaweed to shrimp — are being formed into shapes for twirling and slurping by eager consumers. Some restaurants veer from the traditional for thematic reasons, some for health reasons, some for shock value, and some do it to encourage their customers to try new foods. Although buckwheat is thought of as a grain, it's actually an herb, but that doesn't stop people from grinding its seeds into flour and making noodles out of it. The Japanese call those noodles soba. At BAMcafé, the restaurant at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, Chef Carlos Baca uses cold soba noodles to complete the Japanese theme of his salmon dish. He brushes the salmon fillet with egg white and then dredges it in a mixture of panko breadcrumbs and wasabi powder. He sautés the fish and finishes it in the oven. In the meantime he makes a salad of boiled, drained and cooled soba dressed in rice vinegar, sesame oil, chopped ginger, miso, soy sauce and brown sugar emulsified with canola oil. Rounding out the salad is julienne of carrots and cucumber. The salmon goes on top of that and is topped with pickled ginger. At North One 10 restaurant in Miami, chef-owner Dewey LoSasso soaks cooked soba in slurry of white wine and cornstarch flavored with cilantro, basil and mint. He wraps the noodles around shrimp dusted in cornstarch and deep-fries them to order, serving them with chimichurri, wasabi butter and kimchee a?oli. Sous Chef Daniel Baldwin says the a?oli is made from a base of chile, garlic, vinegar and tomato, such as might be used for preparing kimchee. LoSasso says he likes how soba's somewhat nutty flavor holds up to other bold-tasting foods, such as mushrooms. "If you get a great chanterelle or morel, or even white truffle, the buckwheat stands up really well to it," he says. "It also crisps up well when fried," he adds. In San Francisco, Michelle Mah, the chef of Ponzu, uses premade green tea-flavored soba for a pasta salad with steamed mussels and poached prawns, shredded carrots, celery and wakame seaweed. It's tossed in a dressing of white soy sauce, fresh ginger juice, garlic, shallots and a canola-olive oil blend. Mah says she likes the noodles' texture. "Buckwheat noodles always have a firmer texture, and they're traditionally served cold," she says. The green tea noodles add a different flavor, "as well as a nice color contrast since they're this bright, vivid green," she says. Chefs looking for something slightly more edgy than soba might go for mung bean noodles. "Mung bean noodles are great little things," says Charlie Deal of Grasshopper in Durham, N.C. "They seem to be more resilient than other noodles." Deal uses mung bean noodles —also known as cellophane or glass noodles — in a clay pot dish for which he braises beef short ribs in a slightly sweet broth made from star anise, chicken and dark soy sauce. He picks the meat and adds carrots, the mung bean noodles and some greens. Deal says he likes the noodles' firmness, which makes them almost crunchy. "They have sort of a permanently al dente bite to them," he says. And unlike with rice noodles, which will continue to absorb moisture until they become more like pudding, Deal can leave his mung bean noodles in their clay pot until they're ordered. So he stores the prepared dishes — noodles and all — in his walk-in.