The taste of spring
Click to viewI’m pretty sure I said this is a craft/hobby blog, but I think it’s really okay for me to sneak in a post or two about mundane little things once a while. Y/N?
The story goes like this: one lonely night while I was randomly surfing Japan-related news blogs, I came across this commercial whose product is endorsed by genius Afro-American Enka singer JERO. I watched it and absolutely had to try the product.
The product in question? Haru no Tokimeki udon.
At first glance, the pink furoshiki appeals to you.
I admit, I am a sucker for all things Japanese (except for the stuff lurking in the murky depths of Kabukicho), and would often go shopping on impulse for things I see in commercials. I even tried SoyJoy nutri-bars just because of their funny commercial.
The next day, I picked up the cup noodles from Meidi-ya, Singapore’s largest Japanese supermarket. The purchase damaged my wallet a little; at about S$5 per cup, this instant noodles is on the extravagant end of instant foods. Want to fill your stomach? Koka’s no-MSG cup noodles is a bang for buck. But you’ll find that S$5 for this cup noodles is worth it; it’s a seasonal product, limited to the spring season only (of course, in Singapore, we only have two seasons: wet and dry).
Even the lid is so exquisite.
For those who have not tried cup noodles, it’s very easy to prepare: open the lid to the fold line, pour some hot water, put the lid back on and wait for 3 minutes. It’s not exactly rocket science, unlike instant yakisoba, which is a hell to prepare if you can’t read Japanese (like me).
Surprise!
I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the cup. Flower-shaped pink and white yaki-fu! Fu is wheat gluten, yaki-fu is dry baked wheat gluten typically added to miso soup or sukiyaki. These little precious things absorb the broth, plumps up, and when you bite into one, it bursts with flavour in your mouth. Usually yaki-fu doesn’t have a distinctive taste (or tasteless for some. Ever tried soaking one in a cup of water?).
Besides the cute yaki-fu, the noodles is garnished with dried shrimps, spring onions, and yellow scoop-shaped fu. The yellow fu don’t really absorb a lot of soup like the pink-white ones do, but they have a mild egg flavour.
Actually, I’m not even sure if the yellow ones are fu. But I assume they are, because they have the same texture as the pink-white ones.
Some ham to compensate the lack of meat.
The cup noodles is actually quite delicious if you eat it on its own, but because I wasn’t satisfied with the lack of meat (excuse me, I hadn’t had cup noodles for about a year), I sliced up some cold-cut Japanese arabiki ham. The ham heightens the flavour of the soup by a fold. Yummy.
I would so die for this cup noodles. Very light and not oily (unlike Nissin’s cup ramen). Of course, the yaki-fu makes everything so interesting to eat. It’s my first time having fu in cup noodles. I might go and get some fu for soups in the future.
And you can’t possibly forget the shrimps. These little buggers, although small, are packed with so much flavour! They are also crunchy at first, when you bite into the shell, and then they get chewy. It really isn’t like eating the Chinese xia mi (dried shrimp).
The dry, fu-less version
The cup noodles is delicious all right, but sometimes I just don’t feel like having soup noodles, especially when the weather gets so hot and you just can’t stand the heat, instant dry noodles are the way to go. I also got the Haru no Tokimeki shio yakisoba for days like this.
The yakisoba version doesn’t have all the cute pink, white, yellow fu, but it has seasoned freeze-dried white cabbages that is guaranteed to send you to umami heaven. Even though it is shio yakisoba, it is a little bland for my taste, but there is nothing a dash of my father’s special soy sauce can’t fix.
Sigh. I want to make a trip to the supermarket again.
Mirrored from fried chicken beer.