No new bites, yay!
This morning was a quick school session of math, with Téa dividing 3-digit numbers with 2 digit numbers… I’m telling you, it looks so very different from how we learned to do it!
Joe cooked a macaroni chicken tofu soup for our early lunch today, before we set out to go visit the Cup Noodle museum! On our way there, we found this that we’d never played with before: (of course I have no idea what it says!)
I also found Waldo along our way to the museum!
We made it to the CupNoodle museum! This place is very Japanese in the way that they have an adorable mascot that they like putting on everything, and then sell it to you.
Our first stop was the shop, to register for our workshop later in the afternoon, and suddenly we had eight tickets in our hands. Four for the museum, and four for our workshop. We had no idea what was going on, we spent at least the first hour very confused about our tickets. In any case, we entered the museum and had a look around:
We followed the stream of people to the end of the first floor, where all the activity seemed to be concentrated. We had to purchase our blank cups at – you guessed it – CupNoodle cup vending machines! (Why did I not take a picture? We were too confused and did not know what was expected, required and included at this point!) Cups in hand, we were directed to a table to decorate our cups.
After the cups were well decorated, we lined up for a good 20 minutes to get to where the magic happened. At the front of the line, we handed our cups over to the staff, who removed the clear lid and invited us to crank a lever on the outside of the plexiglass to place the noodles into the cup – upside down! The next step was when a staff member would fill our soup base and toppings. We had four soup bases to choose from: CupNoodle original, Seafood, ChiliTomato and Curry. In addition, we could choose four toppings from the following options: spring onions, green beans, garlic chips, ground beef, umami roasted pork, shrimp, imitation crab, fish cakes, corn, scrabled eggs, chili flakes and cheese. All four of our highly personal CupNoodles are very different, although three out of four of us chose the fish cakes – they are flat and look like the CupNoodle mascot!
The CupNoodles were then sealed, shrink wrapped and ready to be picked up at the end of the line. There were air balloon pockets to pack your CupNoodles in for a protected journey home, although not recommended on airplanes due to air pressure, it would actually crush the noodle cup… But the girls wanted to carry theirs around like they saw all the other kids do, so we air ballooned theirs for them.
In the museum part, we found another vending machine! This one was very much a Do Not Touch type of vending machine, but I’m sure I can petition my Vancouver employer to get one of these for the breakroom. Wouldn’t that be amazing?
The entrance to the museum had a wall full of old versions of CupNoodles and other products from this particular Nissin factory. They also had a section labelled “Now on sale” for the products that could be bought in stores in Japan at the moment. Unfortunately, everything else in the museum was only in English. Actually, the movie had English subtitles, but we would have run out of phone batteries if we were to run around with Google Translate open to read every single statement made on the walls in the museum.
THEN – it was finally time to check out what our other four tickets, the ones with the time stamp and numbers on them, were actually for. We were led upstairs to an enormous classroom, where they were busy setting up for our class.
We were told to put on our bandanas (which were a gift from the museum to all class participants) and aprons, and go wash our hands. Don’t we all look lovely?
We then got to be very hands on involved with every step in making Chicken Ramen, apart from the steaming and deep frying of the noodles. We started by mixing the flour with the water/oil/salt mixture, and at this point the sesame oil hit my nostrils and said YOU ARE STARVING! You have to ever so gently just stir the liquid into the flour, no squeezing of the components yet. Then, squeeze. (The right order is important.) Once you’ve squeezed, and all the flour has married all the liquid and you’re left with a lump, you get to take your dough around the bench to the rollers. Téa and I were one team, and Joe and Maylin another. Téa cranked that roller arm so hard, the dough had to go through 10 times before they considered it smooth enough to fold all sorts of intricate ways and roll again. And again. And again! Once it is smooth and rectangular enough, it goes in a bag and sits to rest on a bench for 10 minutes while you decorate your Chicken Ramen (or Chikin Ramen as they usually write) bag for later.
(Throughout the actual making of the noodles, my hands were either in gloves or touching food, so of course I have no pictures of these stages.) Once rested, we could roll and re-roll our dough again, and each time it went through, she squeezed the roller settings a bit more, until the dough was actually paper thin. She came along with an instrument to measure the thickness, on both sides of the 10cm wide dough, before she would let us run it through the cutters and cut with actual scissors to an approximate length.
The next step was to fluff the noodles up a bit, to separate any lumps, and then weigh out 100gr per portion. Each portion went into a numbered steaming tray, and taken away to steam, the first cooking step in the process. We went back to designing and decorating our bags. When the noodles had been steamed, our numbered basket was brought back to us, and we now had to separate the strands again, with the help of some sesame oil. Then, the staff member added one tiny scoop of secret sauce, which we were told to mix in for exactly 10 seconds, no more. At this point, we gathered all the noodles into a neat circle and lifted it over into numbered round fryer baskets.
When the noodles were whisked away from us this time, we were all done being hands on. We got to watch at the window as they deep fried the baskets of noodles, table by table, so we could each come take a picture of our very own noodles at the window.
After the frying, we were putting the final touches on our bags, and then they brought out the final product. Carefully matching each round of ready noodle with a person and a number and a decorated bag. We they packaged the noodles for us, and emptied out the loose crumbs from the container into our hand to taste. THIS WAS THE BEST CRUMB OF NOODLES I HAVE EVER HAD! Once sealed, they gave us our personal noodles as well as a complimentary package of professionally made noodles (maybe to do a side by side comparison?), and we bagged them up with our bandanas and headed home.
We were starving throughout the entire cooking class, and we ran past the convenience store at the station, so we were still starving on the train. But I saw mountains in the distance, and that made me happy, so please enjoy my hurried, in between buildings, picture of the Minoh Hills.
We managed a mouthful of snacks at our quick change of subways in Umeda, Joe and I shared a pair of tiny ham and cheese buns, while the girls shared a two-pack of maple syrup pancakes. The dinner restaurant was still over 30 minutes away, and who knows when we’d actually eat!
We met my nephew Kristian outside the restaurant, and introduced him to Sushiro, the third and yet not tested by us, conveyor belt sushi restaurant. The girls had udon noodles and fries, while us grown ups had lots of raw fish, and a couple of cooked elements. We caught up on what Kristian had seen and done since we saw him last, and planned our day for tomorrow.
Tomorrow is a BIG day, with us leaving the house at 7am, and the weather is promising a chilly day. I’m really glad we got the girls something warm to wear!