Cold Noods And Hot Summers
i’ve learnt that the phrase
‘held in suspense’ is misleading, because in suspense you are anything but held: you are falling or frozen. Suspense is not romantic and it’s not comforting. It’s cold.
We began sitting on the pavement eating Balinese noodles next to Trafalgar Square. They burned the inside of my mouth, chilli-piqued and sloppy – but the booze numbed everything, and it made that moment feel hazy. As if Phoebe Waller-Bridge penned it. Like looking back at pictures caught on film and thinking, those were the days, when those were only the days that hurt.
The rest of the story? All suspense and no movement. I lived in memories of sandwiches eaten hungover on shop benches, coffees shared in silence, wine drunk straight from the bottle on the Central Line, fast food and fast feelings at midnight – always the nights, and never the mornings.
Food punctuates our memories (or at least it punctuates mine): the noodles on sidewalks, an ellipsis; the egg and bacon sandwich the next morning, a parenthesis; the repeating booze-fuelled, late-night meals, a series of question marks.
We remember suspense like we remember the heat of summers in our twenties. Nostalgic and romantic; swirling and buzzing; seemingly endless but ultimately short-lived.
In South Asian cooking, spices are tempered – which means they are roasted in hot oil to free their flavours. The process is all-encompassing for the senses: they crackle and pop, their smell is heightened, the oil burns and the taste intensifies. You temper these spices whole to maximise their entirety and release their essence, and this is what you taste. Their wholeness.
But that heat – that wholeness – can’t last forever.
Plato’s Cycle Of Opposites argues that every quality comes into being from its opposite. They depend on these opposites to exist. Living and dying; big and small; hot and cold.
So here’s to the noods we turn cold – because when the heat gets too much, we need a little balance.
Cat x
solitude noods.
While you don’t need the heat of a heartbreak to make these, it’s useful to think of this dish as restoring balance.
This recipe obviously makes one portion (see title), so you’ll need: noods (not nudes, but in this weather, both could be appropriate) – I like using udon or soba or rice noodles because they slurp real good, but go with whatever you can get (my motto for life and love).
Then about 2 tbsp tahini that’s been whisked with the juice of ½ lime, a little warm water to loosen and salt (set half of this aside); 1 tbsp white miso paste; 2 tsp soy sauce; 1 tbsp sesame oil; the juice of the other ½ lime; ½ tbsp honey; 1 tsp Asian chilli oil; 1 spring onion thinly sliced (I do mine at an angle); ¼ cucumber thinly sliced into half moons; toasted sesame seeds and peanuts.
Whisk half of the tahini mixture with the rest of the wet ingredients (basically everything but the spring onions, cucumbers, nuts and seeds) in a bowl, then place in the fridge. Bring a pan of water to the boil and drop in your noods. When they're soft and slippery, drain them in a sieve then run under cold water until they’ve dropped in temperature. Grab the bowl from the fridge, add the noodles and mix thoroughly with your hands. Add the spring onions, cukes and nuts. Finish with a sprinkle of sesame seeds and drizzle the rest of the tahini dressing on top.
Serve with an ice cold beer, remembering those hot, spicy summers of the past.
food stories.
- After watching him make cocktails on Instagram and this piece on cooking in a pandemic on The Atlantic, I'm looking for a Stanley Tucci substitute.
– All about breakfast being the most literary meal of the day, as per Dwight Garner's piece in The New York Times.
– And this was an interesting read on The New Yorker: A Case For Letting The Restaurant Industry Die.
a few leftovers.
– JOLENE IS BACK and I'm planning on recreating this butterbean dish
– I love Alex Delaney almost as much as he loves mushrooms
– Might have to get in on that Quality Chophouse delivery train
– Bon Appétit's Molly Baz making breakfast tacos is wonderful
– Craving this salsa v from Staying In The Book (pls buy, it's for charity)
– Weirdly obsessed with watching Tastemade videos, esp this one
– Three words: potato chip omelette (c/o New York Times Cooking)
– Getting all my salad inspo from LA's Botanica (like this fattoush vibe)
– Let's all agree that when this thing is over, we'll eat pasta in a meadow?
and finally.
For dessert? The nude after the noods. Leaving you with this thirst trap (thank god for @connellschain)
if you like what I'm putting down?
Tell your friends! Tell your family! Tell your lovers!