Poor Man’s Noodles - the return

It’s strange how you return to comfort foods, even when you are not uncomfortable, even when you are smug, self righteous and on top of the world. In actual fact I’m none of these (aspirational) things, more hungry than anything. I first discovered the concept of Poor Man’s noodles on some blank afternoon idly watching the second disc that accompanied the feature Spirited Away, one of the few second discs I‘ve ever watched. The director Hayao Miyazaki shows how he treats the animation team to an evening meal following a long session of scribbling and pencilling the characters. He has an enormous vat of bubbling instant noodles into which he adds smoked mackerel and about a dozen raw eggs. Then he ladles the slurpy gloop into small white bowls and distributes it around the workforce who quickly devour it with chopsticks, wide smiles and an some eager satisfaction. Maybe it’s a Japanese custom for the boss to cook dinner now and again and serve his staff with mock Eastern humility. Any way I immediately thought; “eggs, mackerel and noodles, how can such a concoction fail?” Indeed, once I’d gathered the ingredients and tried it out I was not disappointed, albeit some might see it as an acquired taste and the consistency and pale colouring as a little extreme. You have to break through the colour thing though and just enjoy the warm and filling feeling (?). This recipe is not to be confused with some noodle based aberration that omits the fish and adds cheese and butter, not the real thing and you will die bitterly disappointed. So the PMN has returned to my recipe cannon, thinking now of opening a fast food joint based on them. Might not succeed here but in a world of spirits and monsters…

Selected media moments

Tales from Earthsea. Somewhere on the Skybox ex-Film 4.
“When you dance I can really love” Neil Young.
“Cinnamon Girl” Neil Young.
“Silence of the Trams” See it on UTube.
Scotland on Sunday - various topical articles.
Candide on Wikipedia - climbing the cultural mountain.
Channel Four News - Channel 4 presumably.
Learning about Annualism.
Annualing about Learningism.