Survival Sunday 217: East Meets West

I love trying fusion cuisine. You never quite know what you're going to get, but it's usually pretty good, in my experience. Wonton Tacos? Delicious. Jalapeño Popper Sushi? Pretty awesome. Sushi Pizza? Fascinating. Eastern & western cuisines can mesh really well. Most of the time.

When it comes to Japan trying to make Italian food, however...

Well...

It's been hit or miss. Especially with spaghetti...

Now, I'm sure I did something wrong with the konjac-noodle Spaghetti Ramen, but... when we got another pack of Japan-Attempts-Italian ramen, I was a bit (a lot) worried.

Would this be a repeat of the weird, watery, crunchy noodles from last time?

I'm usually pretty happy to see Kumamon's happy face, but I was a bit apprehensive at the "microwave ok!" label...

The picture on the label looked friendly enough. Red ramen with veggies and happy black bear mascots all over the place. I flipped the pack over to see what the instructions were.

They were, of course, in Japanese, but fortunately, Google Translate was working properly.
I didn't get anything about my father or accusations or something...

 Nerves calmed by a fairly calm cooking process, I got out my ingredients. I couldn't reach any open cooking oil, so I kludged it with a buttload of spray and several teaspoons of water.

The noodles also looked very much like... spaghetti.

I should mention at this point that both Z & I were trepidatious about making something labeled as a bolognese with purely powdered ingredients. We were a little worried that the sauce powder would taste like the beef ramen you can get from Maruchan at Wal~Mart. Ugh.

Also, we had about 3/4lb of deli chicken in his fridge that we both felt the need to use most of. I grabbed it and shredded most of it into the pan and set about heating it through.

You know that funky smell deli chicken can have? That went away in seconds.
We were left with that brilliant frying-chicken smell in the kitchen.
Then we dumped in a bunch of pepper & garlic powders!

After I'd heated the chicken up for quite a while (and because we were both getting hungry at this point), I followed the instructions and dumped the brick of noodles in. I also added another teaspoon of water to help loosen the glutinous noodles from each other. At least, I assume the noodles had gluten in them. They usually do. That's what makes them so good (provided you don't have celiac or some other gluten sensitivity).

It... didn't really look too appealing at this stage, and I kind of wished I had some onion.

It took quite a while (and another teaspoon of water) to get the noodles teased apart, and at this point, it all smelled incredible. I was getting hopeful.

Once teased apart, I could tell the noodles were at the perfect consistency.
Microwaving them would have made them fat and soggy.
I'm so glad I stuck with the pan method.

Then came the moment of truth.

Time to add the mysterious powder.

I'm not exaggerating when I say I thought all was lost when I first added the powder because the moment the mixture hit the noodles, it looked pale. Then the magic happened. I added another half teaspoon of water over the top.

And out came the red color! And the herby, tomato smells! Wonderful!

Oh man, guys, this stuff smelled great! I only needed a couple more drops of water to get it to mix together properly, too!

It looks a little... pale in this shot, but I promise, it was a nice pink-orange color!

We tossed the noodles into a bowl and chowed down! 

A much better shot of the color here.

The lunchmeat we'd chucked in there now tasted like stir-fried ground chicken rather than deli meat, and the tomato flavors from the sauce made everything smell & taste amazing. The noodles were firm and bouncy, and everything was fantastic! The addition of the garlic & pepper made everything even better!

But with every noodle, you need a beverage to go with it, and our Noodz Doodz brought us a beverage to try.

Behold: a milk-based soft-drink.

Calpico is pretty popular throughout Asia, from what I hear, and having tried some, I can understand why. I was fairly skeptical at first, what with it being a milk-based soft-drink without bubbles, but... it tastes like lemon ice cream. Not bad!

Speaking of things I was skeptical of at first, let's talk about eel.

Eel is delicious. Broiled eel, specifically. Here's a Black Dragon Roll (tuna, cucumber, tempura crispies, avocado, broiled eel, eel sauce, spicy mayo, sesame seeds). It's amazing. I could live off these things.

I fell in love with eel on my second or third sushi adventure at our local sushi restaurant.
This roll comes from a restaurant one or two towns over.
If you're ever near Tomi's give it a try!

That'll about do it for me, today!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC