They’ve been your comfort food, your midnight snack, your study nosh and your drunken feast. They saved you from starvation in foreign countries when you couldn’t recognise - or afford - anything else.
Everyone has their favourite brand, their favourite flavour. Chicken or Beef? Maggi or Mi Goreng? Microwave or boil? And most importantly, to drain or not to drain?
Choices aside, this iconic student food has done more than just tide you over till pay day. 100 million packets of them were sent as humanitarian aid during crises in North Korea, India and Russia. Fortified with additional vitamins and minerals, they provided a calorie dense, non perishable food source for thousands of refugees and people who had lost their homes.
In Thailand, instant noodles were used as an economic indicator during the East Asia Financial Crisis. Mama brand instant noodles were able to demonstrate through their increased sales that people could no longer afford to buy more expensive foods, and were turning to cheaper alternatives.
The BBC last year reported that the Chinese Communist Party had ‘slammed’ instant noodle producers after accusing them of contributing to inflation by illegally colluding to raise prices by up to 40%. The three producers were found to have met three times to fix prices, which the government said ‘damaged social stability’.
In a country which consumes 44 billion packets of them, more than half of the yearly total consumption of noodles, it’s a feasible claim. If only the ACCC would admit that Kevin Rudd has done the same by raising the price of RTD’s.
With over 85 billion servings of instant noodles now eaten worldwide every year, it is hard to believe that the Japanese food industry considered instant noodles to be a novelty when a Japanese company called Nissan Foods first launched them in the marketplace in 1958.
Forty-two years later, in 2000, instant noodles were voted as the most important Japanese invention of the century, in front of kareoke (2nd place) and CD’s (5th place). Momofuko Ando, the Taiwanese inventor employed by Nissan, also invented cup noodles, which are most popular in the UK sold under the name ‘Pot Noodle’.
Before being voted the most hated brand in the UK in 2004, Pot Noodle made headlines in 2002 by producing a limited edition ‘Edwina Curry’ flavour, after a female politician of the same name revealed she had a four year affair with former UK Prime Minister John Major. The company is renowned for their tongue in cheek advertisements, one of which, with the tagline “Have you got the Pot Noodle horn?” received 572 complaints. An earlier campaign which titled Pot Noodles ‘the slag of all snacks’ was banned.
So what makes instant noodles so popular? Undoubtedly it has a lot to do with the low cost, ease of preparation, and versatility of the product. Almost any flavour can be added to instant noodles, which have branched out from traditional varieties like chicken, nori and satay to more creative varieties like pizza, cheese, sausage roll and turkey and stuffing for the festive season.
In countries as diverse as Nigeria, Peru, Russia and Saudi Arabia the popularity of instant noodles is rising, and have been adapted into regional variations, suited to the local economy and environments. In the Philippines, instant noodles are often eaten for breakfast, served with garlic rice and dried fish. In Mexico, where a common name for instant noodles is ‘lazy soup’, chilli and lime is added.
In Australia, instant noodles have a reputation as a student food, a junk food and often nutritionally void. One packet supplies almost half of the average person’s daily recommended intake of salt, along with a quarter of the daily recommended intake of fat, but negligible contributions to essential vitamins and other minerals.
With these dietary credentials, it’s unsurprising that school tuckshops have replaced instant noodles with healthier alternatives. However, their ubiquity in supermarkets, Asian grocers, petrol stations and student accommodation indicate a continuing appreciation for instant noodles in Australia – backed up by all those packets in your bin.
inside your noodles : the instant noodle vox pop
Dave Gilbert pre-flavours and microwaves his noodles, which are preferably what he describes as a tasty Maggi Chicken flavour.
Meredith Gee swings between Mi Goreng and Maggi and has different cooking methods for each. She calls Mi Goren ‘ugly noodles’ on account of the egg pictured on the packet.
Alice Campbell is also a Mi Goreng fan, but in the past has admitted a fetish for adding curry powder or cream to Maggi noodles.
Demi Pnevmatikos eats her noodles out of a cup with what she calls a ‘splade’. We think she means ‘spork’.
Chris Luong thinks Fantastic noodles are, well, fantastic, especially in Pizza flavour, and likes to add leftovers to make them a bit more exciting.
Tyson Shine will only eat the soup of his noodles ‘if it involves home brand shredded cheese... oh yeah baby!’. He also likes to ‘leave them long so i can put it in my mouth and swallow about 90 per cent of the noodle before i pull it back up my throat and drop in my sisters bowl so i get hers too’. Sick.
Scott Cowen buys 5 packs of Home Brand instant noodles which have no individual packaging, thereby saving the environment.
Andrew Love is a fan of the noodle bowl style noodles and thinks Maggi have nothing on Asian brands with their little packets of sauces, powders, oils and vegies. Spicy Beef is his flavour of choice and he likes to stick with the instant theme of the noodles by adding things like frozen peas, chilli sauce and peanuts that you don’t have to fuck about with too much.
Danna Cooke would really prefer that none of us ate instant noodles because they are made with palm oil, the production of which she says is going to cause the extinction of orang-utans in the wild within 10 years. She says she can no longer eat instant noodles because after her daughter alerted to this fact all she can taste is orang-utan.
John Fulbrook remembers when No Frills brand instant noodles were 17 cents a pack and recommends eating all the raw bits that come off the main clump.
Claire Knight keeps a stash of instant noodles in her pigeonhole at Radio Adelaide and suggests adding steamed carrots, zucchini, brocolli or capsicum along with a little soy sauce.
Emma Durdin’s favourite instant noodle recipe involves sweet chilli sauce and grated cheese and apparently tastes best at midnight. She made her boyfriend type the recipe out at length on Facebook, only to have me edit it down to this. Sorry.
Jonathan Brown eats his noodles raw after adding the flavour to the packet and shakin’ it round a bit (maybe that’s where Claire’s supplies have been disappearing to!)
Cass Selwood thinks one should never microwave their noodles and is a strict boiler. He prefers Ayam plain noodles but adds all sorts of exciting things like garlic, ginger and chilli along with mushrooms, tuna, soy, coriander and oyster sauce.
Leah Marrone says that she wasn’t allowed instant noodles because her parents didn’t think they were real food, and still thinks there is no excuse not to eat real pasta now either. She says if you want some recipes for cheap easy food so you don’t have to stoop to the level of instant noodles to email her.
Thursday, 31 July 2008
Wednesday, 2 July 2008
the case for filtered coffee
Ever been to a coffee shop and ordered your usual flat white, only to have your coffee companion reel off the most detailed, rigorous set of specifications for their cup? Milk type, temperature, caffeine content, height, weight, horoscope - a seemingly endless list of variables which would have any scientist in a spin. (Maybe that's why my sister doesn't drink coffee).
During uni a good friend of mine (you know who you are) worked for an upmarket coffee chain and became very discerning about the quality of coffee which he consumed. Outside of the store he worked in, any supplier to his caffeine levels would come under intense scrutiny as to the construction, temperature and appearance of his soy lattes.
My brief stint on hospitality (which lasted exactly until the moment I realized management were falsifying wage records in order to underpay us) provided more insight into the coffee snobbery which we seem to have developed. Many of the customers requested macchiatos, decaf skim cappuccinos (hint - skim milk rarely actually exists in hospitality... think about that) an extra strong double shot of espresso with a jug of warm soy on the side... christ, when did coffee get so complicated?
Espresso coffee, is, by its nature, conducive to such an array of variations. A few teaspoons of bitter black liquid is sure to have many a caffeine addict running for the milk jug and sugar bowl. But does it need to be this way? Should hospitality staff be subject to the whims of an indecisive, discerning public with their infinite variations of froth consistency?
Absolutely not. And the answer, my friend, lies in filter coffee. But first, a little story.
I was in London on the tail end of a European trip when, wandering around the famous Borough Market near London Bridge (which turned out to be nothing compared to our Central Market) we happened upon a warehouse which, with the addition of a few chunky pieces of funiture, a counter and a spiral staircase leading up to the 'office', suspended near the ceiling, had become a coffee house.
The Monmouth Coffee Company, which has three sites around London, specializes in single estate coffees, which they roast themselves in London. In their Borough Market store, where we whiled away a rainy afternoon waiting for a family friend to turn up, we whiled away an afternoon drinking cup after cup of the splendid stuff.
No doubt it had something to do with the quality of the coffee, but more exciting - and unique - was that instead of using a machine, they had simply set up a row of single cup, cone shaped porcelain filters (the kind that fit over the top of a cup) to which they added the coffee and poured the hot water through, producing the most pure and fresh coffee you could imagine.
A small table to the side of the counter provided raw sugar and warm milk for those who required such additions. Little platforms around the edge of the warehouse looked over a huge communal wooden table, which was spread with a tempting platter of fresh baguettes, butter and jam, which you could help yourself to.
The coffee was incredible. Now, at home, I have ditched the so called convenience of the coffee machine and dug out an old plastic cone filter from the back of my pantry. It takes me less than two minutes to boil the kettle, grind a big spoon of coffee beans up and whack a paper filter in. The coffee is incredible, lacks the bitter flavour my machine produces, is hot, perfectly measured, and bloody amazing.
So why is it that Adelaide has been overrun by espresso machines at the expense of filter coffee? I could hazard a guess and say that it's just what has become trendy over the years, or that the system is more lucrative for the coffee companies (as espresso machines are supplied along with the coffee by many companies) but I don't really know why filter coffee is so rare in Adelaide. But there IS one company which, through the years, has provided filter coffee – and until recently, only filter coffee – to its customers.
Even more impressively, has just announced that it will use solely Rainforest Alliance certified coffee, which is environmentally sustainable and gives a fair price to farmers. This is a hugely significant step in Australia, where large coffee companies are more renowned for their links to fundamentalist Christian groups than protecting the environment and supporting fair trade. Hopefully, their investment will pay off big time, both in terms of revenue, which will reinforce the change, and in awareness on the part of consumers who will demand sustainable and fair trade products across the board.
But I digress. A month after conducting my initial investigations into the case for filter coffee, I remain committed to it on the grounds of sheer convenience, aroma, flavour and, as has recently occurred to me, calorific value. Espresso coffee is comprised of about one tablespoon (20mL) of coffee to as much as ten times that (200mL) in a standard cup. Filter coffee is pretty much the exact opposite, using much more water than milk to achieve the same overall volume. And in our rapidly expanding communities, who wants to be wasting precious calories on an inferior cup of coffee?
My closing statement on the matter is that filter coffee is, in general, going to be cheaper (a plastic filter cone will cost you $2-4 while an espresso machines from $150-$2000), more flavourful (and it is impossible to ‘burn’ the coffee, and better for you. However, for now, it seems that filter coffee will continue to be relegated to home settings and the types who frequent the Golden Arches.
Unless filter coffee regains trendiness in the community at large, it is unlikely to elbow espresso machines from their polished perches in every restaurant. So that’s why I’m calling on you to get the word out on the streets of Adelaide. Ask for filter coffee at your local cafe. Demand it in restaurants. Buy it at McDonalds. Yes, really. Together, we can bring back filter coffee.
During uni a good friend of mine (you know who you are) worked for an upmarket coffee chain and became very discerning about the quality of coffee which he consumed. Outside of the store he worked in, any supplier to his caffeine levels would come under intense scrutiny as to the construction, temperature and appearance of his soy lattes.
My brief stint on hospitality (which lasted exactly until the moment I realized management were falsifying wage records in order to underpay us) provided more insight into the coffee snobbery which we seem to have developed. Many of the customers requested macchiatos, decaf skim cappuccinos (hint - skim milk rarely actually exists in hospitality... think about that) an extra strong double shot of espresso with a jug of warm soy on the side... christ, when did coffee get so complicated?
Espresso coffee, is, by its nature, conducive to such an array of variations. A few teaspoons of bitter black liquid is sure to have many a caffeine addict running for the milk jug and sugar bowl. But does it need to be this way? Should hospitality staff be subject to the whims of an indecisive, discerning public with their infinite variations of froth consistency?
Absolutely not. And the answer, my friend, lies in filter coffee. But first, a little story.
I was in London on the tail end of a European trip when, wandering around the famous Borough Market near London Bridge (which turned out to be nothing compared to our Central Market) we happened upon a warehouse which, with the addition of a few chunky pieces of funiture, a counter and a spiral staircase leading up to the 'office', suspended near the ceiling, had become a coffee house.
The Monmouth Coffee Company, which has three sites around London, specializes in single estate coffees, which they roast themselves in London. In their Borough Market store, where we whiled away a rainy afternoon waiting for a family friend to turn up, we whiled away an afternoon drinking cup after cup of the splendid stuff.
No doubt it had something to do with the quality of the coffee, but more exciting - and unique - was that instead of using a machine, they had simply set up a row of single cup, cone shaped porcelain filters (the kind that fit over the top of a cup) to which they added the coffee and poured the hot water through, producing the most pure and fresh coffee you could imagine.
A small table to the side of the counter provided raw sugar and warm milk for those who required such additions. Little platforms around the edge of the warehouse looked over a huge communal wooden table, which was spread with a tempting platter of fresh baguettes, butter and jam, which you could help yourself to.
The coffee was incredible. Now, at home, I have ditched the so called convenience of the coffee machine and dug out an old plastic cone filter from the back of my pantry. It takes me less than two minutes to boil the kettle, grind a big spoon of coffee beans up and whack a paper filter in. The coffee is incredible, lacks the bitter flavour my machine produces, is hot, perfectly measured, and bloody amazing.
So why is it that Adelaide has been overrun by espresso machines at the expense of filter coffee? I could hazard a guess and say that it's just what has become trendy over the years, or that the system is more lucrative for the coffee companies (as espresso machines are supplied along with the coffee by many companies) but I don't really know why filter coffee is so rare in Adelaide. But there IS one company which, through the years, has provided filter coffee – and until recently, only filter coffee – to its customers.
Even more impressively, has just announced that it will use solely Rainforest Alliance certified coffee, which is environmentally sustainable and gives a fair price to farmers. This is a hugely significant step in Australia, where large coffee companies are more renowned for their links to fundamentalist Christian groups than protecting the environment and supporting fair trade. Hopefully, their investment will pay off big time, both in terms of revenue, which will reinforce the change, and in awareness on the part of consumers who will demand sustainable and fair trade products across the board.
But I digress. A month after conducting my initial investigations into the case for filter coffee, I remain committed to it on the grounds of sheer convenience, aroma, flavour and, as has recently occurred to me, calorific value. Espresso coffee is comprised of about one tablespoon (20mL) of coffee to as much as ten times that (200mL) in a standard cup. Filter coffee is pretty much the exact opposite, using much more water than milk to achieve the same overall volume. And in our rapidly expanding communities, who wants to be wasting precious calories on an inferior cup of coffee?
My closing statement on the matter is that filter coffee is, in general, going to be cheaper (a plastic filter cone will cost you $2-4 while an espresso machines from $150-$2000), more flavourful (and it is impossible to ‘burn’ the coffee, and better for you. However, for now, it seems that filter coffee will continue to be relegated to home settings and the types who frequent the Golden Arches.
Unless filter coffee regains trendiness in the community at large, it is unlikely to elbow espresso machines from their polished perches in every restaurant. So that’s why I’m calling on you to get the word out on the streets of Adelaide. Ask for filter coffee at your local cafe. Demand it in restaurants. Buy it at McDonalds. Yes, really. Together, we can bring back filter coffee.
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