Good Luck Noodles
Saturday, January 1st, 2005
As is tradition, I’ve brought in the new year with noodles. It’s supposed to be good luck. I can’t say for sure whether eating noodles has actually brought me good luck in the past, but maybe it has. Good luck or not, it tastes good.
I’m a big noodle fan. When I was a child, ramen noodles were one of the first few things that I was allowed to cook all by myself. It was the quick meal or snack for anytime of the day or night. When I was dorming in college, I always had a personal stash of ramen. Oftentimes my dormmates would “borrow” a package of ramen when they hit those tough financial times, and the noodles were always a favorite snack during the late-night sessions of cramming for exams.
On most occasions, plain ramen is fine. Sometimes I’ll add an egg or dice up some leftover meat or throw in some green onion. Sometimes if it feels too hot for soup noodles, I’ll stir fry some yakisoba noodles and sprinkle the dashi into the mix. It all depends on what I have at the time and what I’m in the mood for.
And then there are those times when the craving for noodles goes beyond home-prepared, when only going out for a big bowl of noodles will satisfy the craving. Ask almost anyone in Hawai’i where’s the best place to get ramen, and you’re sure to get a number of answers. Everyone has their favorite place for noodles. I hear that it’s the same way in Japan. I always thought it would be fun to travel throughout the different prefectures of Japan, tasting all the different variations of ramen along the way.
For this year’s good luck noodles, I decided on the seafood soup noodles at my favorite nearby Chinese restaurant. Along with the noodles were succulent shrimps, squid, chunks of tender sea bass, won bok cabbage, green onion, fresh stalks of choi sum, shitaki mushrooms, crisp carrots, and Chinese peas all in a light yet flavorful soup base. Oh my, it was good. Hopefully it will bring some good luck as well.