Time-Tested Recipes By Rick Nelson
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
Noodles are hot.
Whether they're made with eggs, wheat, rice, mung beans or buckwheat, noodles and noodle dishes are big and getting bigger. Noodle restaurants are popping up like uncommitted voters, and an abundance of Asian markets is allowing home cooks everywhere to incorporate a wide variety of Asian noodles into their kitchens, too.
As Americans embrace Asian cuisine--much in the same way we've incorporated Italian foods into our everyday eating lives over the past two decades--we are eating more noodles. Why? Besides being the next new thing--which is no small consideration in our trend-obsessed society--noodles are also inexpensive, nutritious, delicious and easy to make.
Just ask Bruce Cost. He may not enjoy the celebrity of telechefs Emeril Lagasse or Julia Child, but the 54-year-old author and restaurateur is steering our perceptions of Asian food away from the sweet-and-sour chicken and chow mein, one dish at a time.
The native New Yorker's affection for all things Asian started when he was a serious home cook in the 1960s and 1970s. He eventually moved on to teaching, catering and food writing before opening several ground-breaking Asian restaurants in the San Francisco area in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Monsoon, a luxurious and adventurous four-star enterprise.
In the mid-1990s, Cost headed to the Midwest at the behest of Lettuce Entertain You, the Chicago restaurant conglomerate, to create a stylish, authentic, moderately priced and easily clone-able dining concept
He is perhaps best known as a cookbook author. His first effort, Ginger East to West, a collection of Asian recipes and technical-how-to's, was published in 1984. Asian Ingredients, an authoritative guide to the foods of China, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, followed in 1988 and Big Bowl Noodles and Rice, recipes culled from the restaurant, came out late last year. A revised Asian Ingredients was released last month.
Flip through Big Bowl or graze through a Big Bowl restaurant menu, and the allure of Cost's bowl foods can be summed up in a single word: Simplicity.
"This is ages-old comfort food," said Cost. "These ingredients are tried and true over centuries. "Cost maintains that a meal in a bowl can be good for you and taste great. Honest.
"What I fight for are the flavors that people would encounter in Asia," said Cost. "I'm not creating anything new here. All Chinese food is built on a longtime medicinal model. I like the idea that it's healthy, it's nutritious, but it's also pretty full-flavored. Sometimes there is a feeling in the West that you have to give this up or sacrifice that or wipe something out of your diet. But Asian food is all inclusive."
And easy to make. The Big Bowl cookbook has more than three dozen noodle recipes alone. "These recipes are pretty accessible," said Cost. For those lacking the inclination to cook at home, Cost offers a few tips for dining out. His sure-fire sign of an Asian restaurant worth checking out is in the oil. Peanut oil, that is.
"Oil is so important, and using the wrong cooking oil--vegetable oil, for example--eliminates a lot of restaurants," said Cost. "You need good stocks, too. And look for distinct things. Fresh fish, or something roasted; those are always good signs."
A red flag for authenticity is a profusion of onions and bell peppers. "Neither are found in China," said Cost. "They have scallions, garlic, chives and many other members of the onion family in China, but not those."
Recipes:
Peanut Sauce for Cool Noodles
Big Bowl Fall-Winter Chicken
Shanghai Noodles With Pork and Napa Cabbage
Thai Chicken Noodles With Garlic and Peanuts
