A Noodle Lover's Favorite

I love noodles.

I can easily live without another grain of rice in my life, but if I were to swear off noodles, I'd be in some serious dietary stress.

Just to give you an example of my noodle-y obsession, I had at least one noodle meal for six out of the seven days for the past week:

Friday: Pho at Beef Noodle #1, San Jose.
Saturday: Stir-fried noodles at a mediocre Vietnamese restaurant.
Sunday: Noodle break!
Monday: Pho at Pho Binh.
Tuesday: Ramen at Kahoo, San Jose (soon-to-be-reviewed).
Wednesday: Ramen at Himawari - my favorite ramen shop in the Bay Area. Despite all the new shops opening, Himawari is my #1 favorite.
Thursday: Mixed so-men and udon in dashi soup.

My aunt and uncle who were visiting me from Japan reminded me that I always loved noodles. My poor aunt, who is not a big fan of ramen, told me that the last time she ate ramen was when she was in San Francisco last year!

The reason why I love noodles so much is because of its texture. I love feeling it flip and flop inside of my mouth, resisting my bite while dancing on my tongue. Soggy noodles are the biggest sin; even the best broth cannot rescue over-cooked noodles. As a noodle-texture lover, my favorite noodle dishes play up to the texture-aspect of noodle-y goodness...

Whenever I am making noodles at home, I try to add different noodles into one dish - spaghetti and parpadelle, so-men and udon, bo(stick)-ramen with pseudo-hand-pulled ramen. I love how fun noodles are when you mix more than one width, girth, or chewiness into one bite. Of course I have to stagger when I put the quicker cooking noodles into the pot, but the trouble is only 1/10 of the deleciousness.

...

......I might have to go make a bowl of mis-matched thickness noodles now!