Alternate Vision

I'm eating some pretty delish masala noodles that I bought at, just imagine, the local Summit food store here in the Santa Cruz mountains. It's not much different than your average cutely packaged ethnic food that says 'ready to eat' on it, the concept of which has gained huge popularity in the West. For those that haven't witnessed, I'm talking 'ready to eat' samosas next to Thai green curry next to sushi next to pão de queijo. My experience with such instant meals has been limited mostly because I've always found them to be lacking in taste and freshness. But this noodles is a clear exception. It brought back memories of eating homemade masala noodles, either Maggi or Indomie, while watching Papa Ajasco on TV. For my fellow Indian brethren who are wondering how I could dare put Maggi and ANY other noodle on the same pedestal, I'll have you warned. Indomie will easily give Maggi and other sundry ramen noodles a serious run for the money. Consider yourself warned.

Inspired by the taste of this clearly exceptional 'ready to eat' masala noodles bought at, just imagine, a food store in the Californian mountains, I figured it's worth giving it a culinary shot in my kitchen. And so while trying to find a half-decent recipe on the net, I stumbled upon this masterpiece of a blogpost on noodles in Indian cuisine, an interesting read by any standard. Without steeling the author's thunder I will leave you with a quote from the blog, which is originally an excerpt from Madhur Jaffrey's Flavors of India.

If they [pilgrims] are passing the village of Vartal, where little babes swing from cloth hammocks, they may pick up some flat, whole wheat noodles drying in coils on outdoor cots. Anthropologists today believe that noodles probably originated not in China or Italy but wherever there was wheat. This, they feel, points mainly to the Tigris-Euphrates Valley in the Middle East and to the Indus Valley now mostly in Pakistan but extending into Northern Gujarat as well.

As towns dating back to the 2nd millenium BC have been discovered here (with evidence of both wheat & sugar cane), it is likely that the wheat noodles in Vartal are completely indigenous, going back perhaps 4000 years. [author's note: article about 4,000 year old noodles found in China]

The village preparation is very simple. Wheat dough is rolled out very thin and cut into 3 mm (1/8") thick strips. These are wrapped into small coils and dried in the sun. At the harvest festival of Holi, the coils are thrown into boiling water, drained and then eaten with melted ghee and sugar. The use of noodles is widespread in Gujarat.