Help! Noodles!

It's late! I'm hungry!

How do I cook this!!!!!?????







I can only read the red parts. There are six parts to this thing and "around 4 times as much", "around 2-3 times as much", and "300c.c." isn't enough help!

I'm such a struggler. Outsmarted by Japanese instant noodles! :(

Topless Nissin Cup Noodles Light commercial

While surfing yourtube I found this one. You guys all like Cup of Noodles right? :)



Would this commercial ever be allowed in America?

Ramen shop closes; too popular

Source: Daily Yomiuri

A ramen shop where customers line up for hours to eat a bowl of noodles has decided to close its doors. The reason: customers line up for hours to eat their noodles.

Rokurinsha in Shinagawa Ward will close on Aug. 29 in response to repeated complaints from neighbors about customers blocking traffic, smoking on the street and talking loudly. "We don't want to cause any more problems for our neighbors," the shop said.

Rokurinsha, a six-minute walk from JR Osaki Station and located on a shopping street next to a residential area, opened in April 2005. Its tsuke-men, thick noodles dipped in a rich sauce, has attracted ramen-lovers and the media, and has been featured several times in magazines and on TV. As soon as the shop opens, a line starts to form.

According to Matsufuji Shokuhin, a company based in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, that runs Rokurinsha, the line stretches to about 100 people on weekends, and waiting times of two hours are common. The thick noodles take longer to boil, exacerbating the long waits.

The shop has tried to solve the problem by opening early, or changing the way customers line up, but failed to come up with a good solution.

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Failed to come up with a good situation? They failed to do the most basic thing when things are going well, sometimes too well.

JACK up the price! Find out who your real loyal customers are! If the noodles are really good people will still come and if people leave because it's too expensive then no more lineups!

Come on Japanese people, be business saavy!

Save The Noodles!

Source: San Mateo County Times

An effort is under way to preserve a traditional Asian approach to preparing certain noodles that currently goes against state health codes.

State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, plans to craft legislation to protect a long-standing method involving the production of fresh rice noodles that stores the food at room temperature for up to eight hours before being served.

State regulations, however, require such food to be refrigerated or kept at or above 140 degrees at all times to prevent harmful bacteria from growing and sickening restaurant patrons.

But that requirement "destroys the characteristic of this particular rice noodle," Yee said during a news conference Friday at the Koi Palace restaurant. The evidence shows that "this product has been produced, sold and eaten for thousands of years, and we have never had a problem with this particular food at all."

The existing codes "can be unnecessarily broad" and culturally insensitive, he added. "Both history and independent tests demonstrate that these noodles are safe, and our laws should allow for their production."

I'm all for saving noodles that are tasty and healthy but laws are laws. Instead of claiming racism and using terms like "culturally insensitive" just provide the government with proof that these noodles are safe and actually taste better under these conditions. There are plenty of exceptions and other foods that are left out for hours. The government can't think of all scenarios so just present factual evidence and they'll turn around.

The state senator's right in that millions of people eat them that way without any problems. He's also a jackass for resorting to the cultural insensitivity card, since it's basically used as a trump card to end all further rational discussion.

They didn't make this law to specifically be racist so give the rhetoric a rest. It's really tacky.

N.Korea's 1st Fast-Food Restaurant Opens

Source: Chosun Ilbo

North Korea's first fast-food restaurant selling hamburgers and waffles has opened in the center of Pyongyang. Although there are hamburger joints in North Korea, this is the first full-fledged franchise-style fast-food restaurant there.

The Choson Sinbo, a Pyongyang mouthpiece in Japan, last Saturday reported the fast-food restaurant opened at the Kumsong Intersection in Pyongyang early last month and plans to open a branch in downtown Pyongyang in the near future.

According to the newspaper, the restaurant has an "affiliation with a Singaporean company specializing in waffle joints." The Singaporean company supplies only the facilities, while the local operation hires staff and supplies raw materials.

"Before the restaurant opened, staff were trained on cooking and service techniques by a staffer dispatched from the Singaporean company, but it developed food with new flavors after repeated tasting and sampling," the newspaper wrote.

The menu lists chiefly hamburger and waffles plus various carbonated drinks and Kumgang draft beer.

Food prices were fixed "at an affordable level," it said. A hamburger and bun is 190 North Korean won and a mug of Kumgang draft beer 76 won. The average monthly pay of ordinary North Korean workers is reportedly about 3,000 won. The price of each hamburger is similar to that of 100 g of rice (about 200 won) in North Korea and much cheaper than a piece of illegally imported South Korean choco pie (500 won).

Sounds good. I'd like to try it. If they ever let me into North Korea! The more business in North Korea the better :)

Memphis Gas Station Sushi in Gourmet Magazine

Source: Notes From Memphis

In the travel section of the August issue of Gourmet Magazine (page 44) in between articles about the raw mik cheeses from Ragusa Province in Sicily and the food artisans of Vancouver Island, there is a small piece about the sushi at the BP gas station at Ridgeway and Poplar. Apparently, they sell about 300 boxes of fresh sushi each day made by an on-site sushi chef. I knew this gas station had been selling sushi for years but I've never had any or even thought about stopping in to get any.

You know you're in Memphis when....

Sushi in a box is GOURMET!

China: Worst pizza ever

Source: ISpyShanghai

I’m guessing they didn’t fly a top pizza chef in from Tuscany to come up with the “Abseriction Orchard”, and I do wonder how many other ingredients they tried alongside “Meat Gut” before they decided that pineapple was just the ticket.

The potato special sounds particularly insipid

It sounds so bad that it would be worth trying- sadly though they only deliver to Pudong.

If anyone in the ‘Dong is feeling brave, I’d love to hear what these things taste like. In fact I DOUBLE DARE YOU.

There are too many pizzas being created. Some are interesting some are blah. In Canada we have a Great White North pizza with two cheese (mozza and cheddar) and back bacon.

Philippine roasted pig parade

From Reuters, Roasted pigs in costumes are paraded on the feast of John the Baptist.



That's alot of pigs!

Blue, Red, and Green Japanese beer!

Source: Japanorama

One beer two beer red beer blue beer! Japan's
Abashiri Brewery is well on their way to offering us the united colors of beer, though nobody seems to have requested this of them. Regardless, Okhotsk Blue (also known as Ryuho Draft) joins Abashiri's rainbow-hued beer lineup along with Hamanasu Red draft and Shiretoko Green draft.

Here's a short video from Abashiri showing the cool blue beer and a bit of the local scenery:


Youtube Link

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Not sure I would like coloured or flavoured beer. Reminds of Dennis Leary standup about Cranberry Beer :)


Youtube Link

Japanese like American Food

Source: Slate

The image of Japan as being inhospitable to imports is old, enduring, and not entirely unjustified. The government is offering immigrants from South America—many themselves descendants of Japanese emigrants—$3,000 to return home (the better to free up jobs for native-born Japanese). The vista that meets visitors at Narita Airport is hardly more welcoming: masked staffers, health disclosure forms, and a sign warning that people who are coming in from countries such as Bolivia and Brazil must go in a special line. (They're looking for either soccer players or swine flu.) On the 80-minute ride from Narita Airport to Tokyo, I tried in vain to spot an imported car on the road.

But Japan—Tokyo, at least—isn't uniformly hostile to imports. Though fiercely proud of its many cuisines, Japan is surprisingly open to food-related businesses from overseas. I instantly marked the Subway franchise as the place to turn off the main drag to get to the hotel. An array of recognizable names welcomes visitors to Gaien-Higashi Street: Wolfgang Puck, McDonald's, Outback Steakhouse, the Hard Rock Café (with Hello Kitty playing the guitar in the window). And there's even the ne plus ultra mediocre American cuisine: T.G.I. Friday's. I've traveled about 20 hours and 7,000-odd miles to wind up in a strip mall. Tokyo's SPC (Starbucks per capita) ratio rivals that of Manhattan. And there are also what might be dubbed theoretical imports—faux American brands that exist only outside the United States, such as Bagel & Bagel, which features the ice bagel. (To me that sounds more like a Jewish congregation in Manitoba than something to put some lox on.)

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I think the article here is trying to say that even though it seems that the Japanese don't like foreigners but they like foreign food and so that might ease relations and help people learn about each other. I think that's kind of irrelevant. Food is a service and people don't mind other races when they're serving them. People don't really care where the food comes from and sometimes they just want something different.

For example, Chinese takeout is very popular in America. The fact that people like it doesn't mean they like Chinese people. In fact I think it's the opposite. If there were to be a racist American, he would want the Chinese guy to make cheap Chinese food and nothing else. No professionals and no trades people. Just a slave to service. I bet you someone from the KKK wouldn't mind a Chinese guy delivering food to him all the time. But if you take his job from him, he'll whack you.

Thai and Lao Food: Tangy and Hot

Source: NY Times

IT is a long way, Kwan Bellhouse said last week, from planting rice in her parents’ paddies in northeastern Thailand to roasting it in Kwan Thai, her small restaurant here in Rockland County.

“Only the smell is the same,” she said, as the raw grains turned from starched white to dark brown, and the lime leaves and lemon grass fronds she added to the kata (a wood-handled wok) curled and singed. The roasted rice and herbs would be ground into a smoky, nutty powder that gives depth to her larb gai, a dish of chopped chicken, mint, basil and red onions dressed with lime juice and ground red chilies. (The dish is sometimes spelled laab, lob or lop.)

“We never get tired of eating larb, 24 hours a day,” she said. Ms. Bellhouse’s “we” refers to the people of Isan, a rural section of Thailand where she grew up, and where her parents still grow purple, jasmine and sticky varieties of rice.

Isan borders on Laos, and regardless of modern political boundaries, the people of the region have traditionally shared a language, a climate (hot, steamy) and a love for two foods: larb and green papaya salad, made from the crisp, pale green flesh of unripe papayas mixed with garlic, lime juice, tomatoes and chilies.

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I've never tried Thai food! I'm afraid it's too hot and my tongue doesn't handle spices well. I might try to make it, with less spices but then it probably won't be as good.

Here are the recipies.

Chicken With Lime, Chili and Fresh Herbs (Larb Gai)

Green Papaya Salad (Som Tum)

TV Show: Beautiful Cooking 2

Wikipedia


Was surfing the other day and bumped into Beautiful Cooking II, a HK TVB show. Looks like this is like Iron Chef but with pretty girls cooking.



Youtube Link

They seemed impressed with her!

Sea Otter Boogers? Whaaaat?

Source: Pink Tentacle

These delectable, sweet-tasting Sea Otter Boogers (rakko no hana-kuso) are available at zoo and aquarium gift shops across Japan. The ones shown here are from Kamogawa Sea World in Chiba prefecture.

The protein-packed booger snacks are actually made of amanattō, or candied black beans, and they are quite tasty if you can get over the name.

Priced at 525 yen (under $6) per 110-gram package, Sea Otter Boogers can also be purchased online via the Hanakuso web shop (shipping in Japan only), which also sells the ever-popular Gorilla Boogers.

For something that seems tasty and healthy, why would it be given the name boogers!?

IFC: Food Party debuts tonight!

Got an email from IFC about a puppet cooking show hosted by Thu Tran that I've seen snippets of before. It makes it's TV debut tonight at 11:15pm Eastern on IFC. That's awfully late isn't it?

Unfortunately I can't get IFC in Calgary as it is channel 614 on Shaw Digital which I don't have :(

Food Party is a mind-bending, non-reality cooking show with Thu Tran as your hostess, a cast of unruly puppets as culinary aides, and a cavalcade of fictitious celebrities as surprise dinner guests. Shot on location in a Technicolor cardboard kitchen as well as other foreign and exotic cardboard locations, each episode will or will not instruct you on how to prepare wild gourmet multi-course meals with ingredients you probably have on hand in your kitchen already, such as pretzel rods, eggs, narwhal lungs, bizarre plot twists, secret ingredients, and pizza. After all, you never know who might show up for dinner.

Here are some clips

Episode 104:


Behind the Scenes:


And a review from the NY Times

Taco truck a Twitter hit

Source: CNN

A Korean barbecue taco truck has thousands of loyal customers who find it on Twitter. CNN's Ted Rowlands reports

This might the the most idiotic thing I've ever seen. Why are people chasing a truck and standing in line for a TACO! Are you people insane? You can get any type of food in the world in 5 minutes anywhere. I must be a spoiled brat cause I don't wait in line for anything.

And I love the quote from the co-founder

"It doesn't make any sense whatsoever, we make our people wait in line for two hours, we make them wait in the rain, we don't give out chairs to sit on, we don't take reservations, we're late half the time but we must be doing something right".

Bullshit. You're doing nothing right. This is the worst customer service I've ever heard of and you people still flock like sheep to wait for this shit? Idiots.

Using twitter is a great idea. But if you twitter that you'll be at this corner at 10pm then be there. If you're going to be late, twitter that! People have iPhones and Blackberries and can see if you're going to be late. It's not rocket science.

So screw this. How about taking your SO or your friends to a nice restaurant where you will have a nice table and get good service from people who appreciate your presence, instead of making you wait in line for a quick cashgrab.

If I was your gf and you took me to chase a taco truck, I would dump you right on the spot. You can wait in the rain by your own lonesome ugly-ass. I don't care if the tacos are so good they make you instantly orgasm, good customer service should still be appreciated.

China puts a stop to snake-bitten cock-in-a-pot

Whaaaaaaat?

Source: Reuters

Chinese health authorities are putting a stop to restaurants serving chickens which have been bitten to death by poisonous snakes and cooked up for a supposedly detoxing meal.

The dish, served by a small number of eateries in the southern province of Guangdong and the southwestern city of Chongqing, has generated a storm of publicity and controversy in the Chinese media and amongst bloggers.

A video showing a cook holding a snake and forcing it to bite a live chicken until it dies has been widely circulated online, (http:/you.video.sina.com.cn/b/21145091-1405053100.html) generating mainly angry comments.

"It's disgusting and really cruel," wrote one poster on the popular portal sina.com.cn.

"Not only is it cruel and blood-thirsty, but totally amoral," the Chongqing Business Daily cited a neighbor to one of the restaurants as saying.

Health authorities in Guangdong have already told restaurants to stop serving "poisonous snake-bitten chicken" and now those in Chongqing have joined in.

"Although nobody has been poisoned, this at the very least is an irregular way of slaughtering poultry," the business newspaper quoted a local health official as saying.

One dish, prized among some in Guangdong, is monkey brains scooped from a live animal, which has regularly upset animal rights campaigners in the West.

Supposedly detoxing meal? Must be another crazy superstition.

Kobayashi beats Chestnut in eating rematch

Source: NBC

In a chewy chow-lenge, Takeru Kobayashi outlasted Joey Chestnut when the eating titans faced off to see who could devour the most pizzas.

Kobayashi, a six-time world hot dog eating champion from Japan, consumed 5¾ P’zones in a six-minute span of chaotic consumption Saturday to edge Chestnut. The 25-year-old from San Jose, Calif., wolfed down 5½ P’zones on Stage 15 at Sony Studios.

“I’m a little bummed,” Chestnut said. “There’s nobody I like beating more than him, he pushes me harder than anybody.”

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This sets up the ultimate battle, the annual fourth of July hot dog eating showdown. Chestnut has won that the last two year and Kobayashi wants his title back!

Little Saigon Coffee Shop is the New Hooters

Source: laist

Say you're a guy that likes attractive Vietnamese gals. You also have a passion for caffeine. You've no doubt been frustrated, and said to your friends time after time, "geez, when will Garden Grove get a Vietnamese coffee shop that offers more sex appeal than Starbucks' green aprons?" Time to get happy. Cafe Di Vang 2 is the spot. They're the "Asian Hooters for coffee," according to one of their bikini-wearing tea-pourers.

The bikini bar is nothing new so since the Vietnamese like to drink coffee, play cards and chess, a bikini coffe shop makes perfect sense.

New Japanese snack foods

Source: Japan Probe

Mezamashi TV shares some new snack foods that should be hitting a convenience store near you:

* Plum Pretz and Pea Pretz
* Pizza Jagariko
* Watermelon Karipori
* Salt n’ Garlic Shrimp Chips
* Beef Kebab Pringles
* Cookies released in collaboration with Afternoon Tea drinks (the hosts of the show mock the model’s correct English pronunciation of “collaboration”)
* Coconut Milk Churros snacks

The Bimbo Du Jour shows you snacks you should be eating while watching anime :)


Youtube Link

A Chili Sauce to Crow About

Source: NY Times

AFTER-HOURS calls to Huy Fong Foods, here in the suburbs of the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles, are intercepted by an answering machine. One recent day, 14 messages were blinking when Donna Lam, the operations manager, hit “play.”

A woman told of smearing Huy Fong’s flagship product, Tuong Ot Sriracha (Sriracha Chili Sauce), on multigrain snack chips. A man proclaimed the purée of fresh red jalapeños, garlic powder, sugar, salt and vinegar to be “the bomb,” and thanked Ms. Lam’s employers for “much joy and pleasure.”

Another caller, hampered by a slight slur, botched the pronunciation of the product name before asking whether discount pricing might be available. Finally, he blurted, “I love rooster sauce!” (A strutting rooster, gleaming white against a backdrop of the bright red sauce, dominates Huy Fong’s trademark green-capped clear plastic squeeze bottles.)

“I guess it goes with alcohol,” deadpanned Ms. Lam, who, like David Tran, the 64-year-old founder of Huy Fong and creator of its sauce, is both proud of the product’s popularity and flummoxed by fans’ devotion.

The lure of Asian authenticity is part of the appeal. Some American consumers believe sriracha (properly pronounced SIR-rotch-ah) to be a Thai sauce. Others think it is Vietnamese. The truth is that sriracha, as manufactured by Huy Fong Foods, may be best understood as an American sauce, a polyglot purée with roots in different places and peoples.

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I don't like hot sauce that much and I can take a little dab in a bowl of PHO. So there's always a bottle of Sriracha in my fridge :)