The Noodle Shop Cookbook

It is kind of a cliche, but when some Japanese businessmen dream of retiring, they dream of opening a little soba noodle shop, a place with a cypress wood counter, beautiful ceramic bowls filled with gray or white noodles decorated with fishcakes and tempura and a grateful set of regulars, something like Cheers, but with noodles. In fact, someone I know in Tokyo confessed just such a pleasant vision to me one day over a glass of Kirin at just such a place. Noodles are more popular in Asia than even in the Western world; after all, Marco Polo brought the secret of long strands of dough back with him from his trip to Cathay. We think of Asians eating bowls of rice, but the default meal in many countries is a bowl of noodles swimming in broth. And the noodles aren't just wheat based; they can be strands of rice, mung beans or even "konnyaku" or shiritaki noodles, made from a gelatinous sort of tuber starch. So some of these noodles are low in carbohydrates--a gift to the dieter, and some are not wheat-based, a gift to the gluten-sensitive folks. This book is quite complete, going country by country. If you like wide Thai rice noodles such as Pad Thai, that's here. If you like delicate gray soba chilled, that's also here. Recipes are from countries as diverse as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam. The Phillipines (perhaps not strictly Asia--Oceania) are not included, which I thought was a shame, but that's a quibble. There are quite a few recipes I've never seen that looked great--the Indonesian noodles use some exotic sauces that are available fairly widely these days. What's my favorite? Chilled Japanese soba with wasabi or chilled hayashi (white thin noodles) with a strong broth for dipping. Spend an August in Japan and you will come to appreciate cold noodles. This is a very pretty book and one that can give the adventuresome cook easy recipes to make inexpensive but delicious quick meals.

This book is a household standby in the households of at least two third-generation Asian-Americans I know. The recipes are low-fat, flavorful, and authentic, somehow without being too exotic for most American palates. They're generally easy enough for the novice cook, and detailed sidebars tell you how to slice meat, chop onions, etc. "the Asian way". Compared to ethnic cookbooks, which have me scurrying around the city shelling out way too much money on frivolities like sundried tomatoes, the ingredients needed by this book are extremely reasonably priced (as long as you live somewhere on the American coastline).