Hi everyone, welcome to Pot Luck Food Talks. We're in the middle of somewhere between Basque Country and La Rioja. Have you been to La Rioja before? I've never been to La Rioja. I'm really excited. First time as well. And we're going to talk about the deep and diverse world of noodles. Noodles. Noodles. Noodles. Do you have a favorite type of noodle? Don't ask. You know the answer to that, Eric. Where do noodles come from? China, for sure. Yeah? Yeah, it has to be. This is a
bunch of Italians crying right now. No, they know this. They actually, they... They're in denial. They claim it was Americo Vespucci? No, Marco Polo. Marco Polo, the one that went to Asia and brought noodles to Italy. There is this creation around pasta that it has to do with China. But, yeah, I mean, like, it's such a complex elaboration that you don't see in other cultures except the ones that were influenced by China.
But, you know, taking a dough and stretching it up until you have, like, this fine string and multiplying it a hundred times and some cases drying it, some cases throwing it directly to boiling water. I mean, it's a very non -obvious way to treat wheat. Do you think so? I think it's actually like... I don't know if I would agree. I think it's a very common... I feel like you can find a kind of noodle in every culture. And obviously the question is when did it come
there? When did they start doing it and stuff? But in Mesoamerica, for example? Yeah, that's
true. Or Africa, you know? yeah and the ones in europe were introduced by asia yeah yeah from the silk road like all the way down yeah for sure for sure yeah but that set apart yes there are different styles of noodles and for example italians and let's say germans and catalans they have their own thing which is different from everything else it's interesting like if you look at the history of like a pasta I know like John Regelfeld does a very interesting talk on
pasta. John Regelfeld from the BCC. And I remember he was talking about like how pasta used to be eaten in the beginning where they used to make like big sheets of dough and like dry it out and then cut it. And this is like very, very different approach and how that then developed over the years until all these little like different
pasta shapes arrived. that we have today because i mean if you if we just look at italy the shapes of pasta are insane you know and then if you go to china i mean it's completely different thing china is like a world of its own and like the the type of noodles from like north which is like desert -y kind of like with like lots of muslim influence to like the south east you know like sichuan uh it doesn't really have one thing doesn't really have to do with the other
you can't generalize china as that Not at all, not at all. Same with Italy and, yeah, and even other regions of Europe. You will find, like, specific types of pasta, particular to every region. Or noodles. Let's say Spätzle, for example. It's pretty much its own thing. That's true. And it's this, I don't know, amorphous kind of noodles, you know, like... It's its very own technique. That's very true. Yeah. Should we talk about what the technique is? Yeah, well,
the traditional way... You have to mix it. Usually it was mixed by hand. Yes. And while mixing it, you have to say, du sau, du sau, du sau. No, that was just your experience. Do you want to tell the story that you witnessed? So the chef that we used to work for, Eric and I, he learned to cook in a very traditional German restaurant when he was young. And he had to make Spätzle
dough. by hand. So as Eric just mentioned, Spätzle dough traditionally gets beaten with a flat hand and stretched as you beat it to really, really stretch the gluten because it's like fairly liquid dough. You can't knead it because it's too sticky. And we at one point made Spätzle in this restaurant. We were all kind of like beating the dough, so to say. And then the chef came, he was like...
He started whispering at my ear. you have to say which means how would you translate that you you pig you pig but female pig and then he started doing it and he started just like yeah the result is really better if you say that wow you think so oh yeah for sure I think we should try this out with more than just Spätzle. There are like these mantras that you have to do. I can imagine like a sushi master making nigiris
while whispering to himself. Yeah, and I don't know, talking to the storm gods, move the waters of the sea or I don't know, something like that. But yeah, so Spätzle, you beat the dough. You let it rest and you put it on a wooden board, wet wooden board. scrape it flat because this
dough is basically like a paste. You have a pot of boiling water, salt it, lightly salt it, and then you have a scraper, you wet it, you flatten the dough out and then from the edge of the board you shave these like thin noodles into the boiling water. You cannot scrape them into the water with a knife or a spatula. Yes. So that you have like this. Little pizzas. That's the most traditional and old -school way today. Of course, you have like... I had that actually at home. My dad would
do that at home. Like these presses where you put the dough inside and then it goes out. I've met the granddaughter of the man who invented the press, actually. She's a friend of mine. What do you like Schmetzels with? What's your favorite thing to eat with Schmetzels? Lots of
things. I mean... episode earlier we were talking about game i was thinking exactly this i think it's like a really nice side dish for a game and for like a goulash and stews and goulash so good oh yeah yeah but also i mean you can't forget about cheese spetzle of course he's a spetzle austrian up delicacy with a certain with caramelized onions a certain kind of cheese and then gratinated absolute classic super delicious but also with like a chanterelle cream sauce
for example Like in mushrooms. Super tasty. End game. Absolutely. End game. Everything together. Do you have any favorite Chinese noodles? Yeah, I mean, definitely. I'll probably butcher the pronunciation, but I love the biang biang noodles. Ah, fuck. I was going to say exactly that. Yeah, I swear. I found this place in Barcelona where they do biang biang noodles. And I go there every single time I go to Barcelona because it's... It costs like, I don't know, like five bucks
for a big bowl of this. I would describe it like a XXXL tagliatelle, right? It's like this thick tagliatelle, like this long, like wide, plain kind of noodle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's
like stretched by hand. You make a certain dough, you kind of stretch it and you flip it and bang it against the... against the table as you stretch it and then often you rip the end and rip the whole noodle along the center to make a tw the noodle twice as long and then you often you get a bmw noodle it's just one long noodle in the bowl and use some laugamai on top of that and that's it i went to there's a new noodle place opening well it just opened in berlin it's called
mr noodle chang And it's supposedly a chain from China and they do hand -pulled noodles. It's super nice because you can choose your noodle thickness. I know you would like that. But you can have like really flat noodles, like really thinly stretched noodles with like just really simple traditional like beef broth, braised beef brisket, some sour fermented mustard greens and
chili oil. Ultra delicious. So comforting. I remember being... with john reggaefalk in a street market in malaysia and having a chinese hand pulled noodles just in front of me i have videos i i can't post them on this episode it was so cool the guy would it would take him like less than a minute like punk punk punk pulled to the water and then i remember john said something really interesting like that we in europe or in the west that we really underestimate the
power of or undervaluate the power of a simple nice stock oh yeah you know like just having like a good chicken broth and noodles and that's it that's pretty much it that's like an amazing meal that you have and i think that's way more appreciated in asia oh yeah especially in china oh yeah for sure i mean we do have it in germany as well and we like in europe but not close to what it is and actually there's an interesting dish from austria called fledler which is basically
a pancake you make pancakes you roll it up and you cut it into thin noodle strips and traditionally that is eaten in a clear beef or also maybe game consommé as noodles yeah it's basically yeah and it's super delicious it's really really because the the pancake the the porous texture it soaks up a little bit the broth and the texture of the noodle changes but like what you were saying about this broth i went the other day to a very famous far place in berlin berlin huge amount
of vietnamese people living in berlin since like a long long time ago and so there's really really good far places one of the most famous ones being monsieur wong and I had one of the most exceptional fosa the other day. It was like, and the power of the broth, crystal clear broth with like eyes of fat swimming on top and then loads of fucking herbs and spring onions on top and then the traditional
rice noodles. But the broth, I would wager there's few things that have an impact on you eating as a well -made broth, whether that's a dashi in Japan or like a clear, you know, consomme.
if it's well made and balanced you drink it you feel in your entire body you know like the history of four is super interesting because as you see it's a it's a beef broth and that's not as common in asia so you will find more like chicken or pork right yeah and the reason is because it was not meant to be for asians you know you had like this street food vendors in the south of vietnam that would sell this to the french it had just more demand and it was a best seller
if it was a beef broth instead of a pork or a chicken oh really yeah so they started to develop and then this um spices added to it you know like clove and i had the best fall in my life it was in malaysia as well a vietnamese restaurant there incredible it's one that is listed in the michelin guide we went there just for the fall and yeah you could feel the the spices go through this beef broth And with this rice noodles and also, like you said, herbs, citrus. I mean, we
have to go to Vietnam. Yeah. No, no. I have a plan for beginning of next year, actually, that I want to go to Vietnam because I'm dying to go. Pho is like such an interesting broth because... Without me, so you didn't tell me anything. Oh, we can talk about it. Okay. In private. Pho is a really interesting broth because you like, you basically like char the ginger and you char
the onions. and it also has like you say star anise and cinnamon really importantly cinnamon for me is like something i'd rarely put into like i would never think of putting cinnamon into a broth like me personally like unless it's like very gainy or like something but it works so well it's so delicious and clove same thing i would say the same thing about clove it's very traditional this thing that you put a clove into an onion or in some cases like 20 cloves into
an onion like something very french but i think when it's subtle And I think it's a key part of a good pho broth. It's a shared piece. Talking about noodles, and if we then go from China and Vietnam to Japan, obviously everybody always talks about ramen. But you know what I think people don't talk about enough? It's soba and udon. Everybody always talks about ramen this,
ramen that. But the soba culture, and especially the udon culture, that is like something that almost... only the locals keep for themselves it doesn't really go out that much it hasn't become like a international sensation like ramen has i had the best noodles in my life in kyoto yeah and uh it was kind of it was a soba place and it was the flagship place of like kind of like a restaurant group it was a huge mess because all of the you know the spending machines in
the noodle shops It was all in Japanese. And there was a queue. So we didn't have time to use it. We felt completely pressured. There was like no... With the Google Translate, like, I don't know, just pick something. Just press the button. Just pay whatever. Exactly. And so I didn't have actually what I would have if I wouldn't push a random button. I had soba to dip it. The dipping sauce, the cold one? Yeah, exactly. It
was cold to dip it. and in this place the particular thing about it is that they would emulsify the broth so they every once in a while you would see someone with a tournament and it was like this almost pill pill broth for the soba wow incredible that's crazy one of the best bites i had in japan for sure i'll send you the address i think it's so underrated it's like the cold soba the people don't know soba are buckwheat noodles and there's different types of soba there's
soba that are made from a mix of buckwheat flour and wheat flour but the soba masters the real soba masters they make the sobas out of 100 buckwheat flour which is super difficult because buckwheat has almost no gluten right so making a cohesive noodle out of it is extremely difficult but obviously if you have it 100 buckwheat the flavor is much more intense i think there's like cold dipping sauce usually get condiments next to it like nori grated daikon sesame And wasabi, I think,
also. And then you have the tensuyu, the dipping sauce. And you mix that in, and you take a portion of your noodle, you put it in, and you slurp it. Extremely delicious. But then, something that blew my mind when I was in Japan, is that then you have this, like, dipping sauce with still the condiments. You finish your noodles. They bring you a little can of the cooking water from the noodles. Okay, never saw that. That
is insane. because they give you this like slightly salty starchy water which is almost a broth and you pour that into your sauce and then you drink it like it was a broth it's like buckwheat tea wow okay and that like blew my mind and i thought that was so cool and also this absolute appreciation for kind of using everything yeah also resourcefulness this is something that probably originated in poverty you know like 100 but then becomes an appreciation yeah yeah Udon also. Have you had
cool udon experiences? Oh yeah, for sure. For me, udon was limited to this kind of... but then you also have like squared udons, you know? Yeah, it's different styles, original styles. Completely different styles of different udons, yeah. I think that's Sanuki udon, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, but some are round, some are square, some are a little bit thicker, some are a little bit thinner. Yeah. I would say udon is like the ultimate
sort of like people food in Japan. honestly like the more you get into like real sort of japanese eating culture udon is really yeah like an everyday food it's super affordable it's like there's lots of different toppings and it's basically just a wheat noodle i've actually when i was in dubai with michael started making udon fresh in the restaurant so i was making udon like every like two or three days and we stopped buying udon all together udon is kind of funny because
it is a firm dough and it's kneaded extensively so that you get this texture. Traditionally, you make the dough and then you put it, you wrap it, you put it on the floor and you step on it
so that you knead it with your feet. So if you see udon factories, even like in cities where you have like a small udon restaurant that somebody took over and they still make the noodles in -house, they will take off their shoes, they'll have like a little area and they'll put the dough on the floor and knead it by stepping on it in a particular way. Then afterwards, you know, you roll it, you rest it, you roll it out, you cut it fairly thick, and you boil it for a really
long time. When I was doing it, it was about 12 minutes. Boil it, and then you wash it, you rinse it in cold water. And that gives you this, like, bouncy... Elastic, I would say. Yeah. There's this word, and I think it comes from Korean food, it's called kyukyu. This, like, texture, this,
like, bouncy, starchy texture. which is very appreciated by asians this chewiness right yeah this bouncy chewiness that you also have in rice cakes and stuff like that yeah super nice i was just going to talk about mention this korean rice cake that feel like rice gnocchi also super what's the name ebook or something like that oki is something like that yeah yeah something like that Yeah, I had one of those recently with tomato sauce and cheese. Oh, yeah? Yeah, and
for me it was crazy. I haven't got so deep into Korean food, but finding tomato sauce and cheese with Asian noodles was very counterintuitive for me. But apparently this is something in Korea. Yeah, I also feel like I really want to educate myself more on Korean food because that's another whole world. But for example, the whole Ramyeon
culture. which is totally different to ramen culture you know so like the similarities obviously uh i mean even the name everything goes back to china yeah yeah absolutely absolutely we haven't talked about italy we have not talked about italy enough but people talk enough about italy you know like you have to showcase other places of the world okay have you tried this um these are like sweet potato starch noodles that are also korean yes i love those that are like translucent
you know i love those they have them in japan as well they're for example a very quintessential part of sukiyaki i don't know if you've had sukiyaki rings a bell but i'm not sure it's almost like shabu shabu all right so like you have like different things cooked down in like a sauce and you have these like glass noodley starch noodley type noodles i think that isn't it starch called konjac I feel like that might be the name for it. Okay.
That you put in and braise. We used to have it for star food in Rio again a lot when I was working in Tokyo. Super, super nice. Again, like a super particular texture. This like braised starchy thing. I think you also have it in like other things like wooden and stuff like that. You know wooden? No. It's like this, like one pot stew of like chunky stuff. It's like also a Japanese comfort food where you have like whole eggs and like big chunks of tofu, big chunks of starch.
Just like, stewing in like a seasoned broth that you then kind of like take out as like ultimate comfort food, basically. Thai noodles don't get talked about a lot. Have you ever had a cow soy? No, and my knowledge is not so deep about Thai food. You've been to Thailand, right? I've not been to Thailand, but I've spent a lot of time cooking Thai food with Thai cooking experts. And I actually learned a lot. Cow soy is super amazing. Basically, it's like it's almost like
a Thai spaetzle. in a way that you make this like slurry this like dough you put it in the press and you press it into hot water and you make these like pressed noodles you you take them and you can deep fry them and they make this like big nest of like crispy noodles so often you have this like noodles i think it's a breakfast staple in thailand you have these noodles and like a spicy coconut curry with a big chunk of like crispy noodles on top it's
super delicious i mean you eat that for breakfast you're you're set you're ready to go you're you're with your foot on the gas pedal well something i can say about like italian pasta in general that can be learned from is you have this whole diversity of shapes and these shapes have like particular functionalities yeah absolutely and also for example like some are just lines that are just designed to catch more sauce or these shapes where the sauce goes inside so that it
explodes in your mouth when you bite. And it's part of it. Also, the way of cooking it, there is this mistake of washing the noodles that some uncooks do, adding hot water or even adding oil to the water. Who does that, though? It's pretty common. Really? Yeah, it's pretty common. And at the end, you're not allowing the pasta to... become sticky and get the sauce stick to it,
which is what you want, right? I think we've talked about it in home hacks that finishing your pasta in the sauce or even adding some pasta water to your sauce happens so often that I have to do that, especially when I'm in a restaurant, I cook pasta all the time. It's like 90 % of the time that I finish pasta in the sauce or at least add some pasta water to the sauce. I think what a lot of people also forget is like...
Pasta isn't pasta, like if you talk about Italy, if it's like, because you don't use the same recipe of a dough for, say, a tagliatelle or papardelle, right, that you use, for example, for a filled pasta. It's a completely different dough recipe, you know, whether you only use egg yolks or you use whole egg. Or no egg at all. Or no egg at all, exactly, if it's just a semolina, you know, flour and water dough.
uh which is also very common they have completely different functionalities like you say completely different attribute so i think in general you know with china it's very obvious we can't generalize it it's so vast it's like a whole universe in itself culinary also because it's like the birthplace of so many things you know the influence that china has had on so many things that have come out into the world is insane you know if you think about it is uh a culture that has existed
for like 4 000 years yeah it's crazy as the same it's not like i don't know romans became italians and you know no chinese have been chinese for the last four thousand years yeah yeah and like it's the same with italy you can't generalize italy and i love that i love looking at these sorts of things and realizing that food is like an ever like changing flow we like to think of like the time and place that we're in now and like Relatively recent traditions and saying
all this is from here and this is like that and it's always been like this I know it's a constant
exchange of cultures. You know, it's not people get so pressed about cultural appropriation when it comes to food but actually when you look at it and you take a few steps back everything is a constant osmosis of stuff yeah of an exchange of cultures you know the arabs coming to spain you know and like people say this is spanish you can't do this you can't do this any different way you know potatoes come from america exactly and it's like rice from asia you know like especially
when we talk about produce yeah and it's like chill out you know food and eating is the thing that we all have in common you know and we should celebrate the like the constant flow and evolvement and everything that is a tradition today was an innovation at some point somebody somebody did something crazy that was not okay to do you know and if it was good it survived during some generations until today yeah yeah and it started at one point but it doesn't mean that that's
the final stage it keeps evolving and evolving and evolving it'll keep doing that things that we find traditional today will keep evolving also And new impressions will come. New cultures will merge and mix. A big amount of immigrants. What about Nikkei cooking? Now a thing of itself. Just born out of immigrants coming to a country and making something out of it. What about New Nordic? Just like a group of visionaries decided to create a new cuisine out of scratch. And that's
insane, you know? And it's something that today is distinctive. Now it's a thing. You can say these are the features of New Nordic and you can identify it and, yeah, distinguish it from other regions. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, food and culture are inseparable. And just like culture doesn't stay the same, it keeps evolving, food will do the same. That's it for this week's episode of Putt Lock Food Talks.
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