Lou Hughesele

NoodiMag Volume 9

Welcome to NoodiMag, the container for all my noodling on noodles, pastas, and all related topics.

Pasta Shapes Consumed: Farfalle; Pad Thai Noodles; Rice Rotini; Rigatoni; Square Ravioli (with pinking); Miniature Shells; Miniature Penne Rigate; Campanelle; Bang Tiao Noodles; Lasagne (ruffled edges); Bastisar (Moose Shape);

Total Pasta Shapes To Date: 27

It’s been a while. According to my own self-set publishing schedule, I basically skipped a volume and then some. I apologize. I know each and every one of my loyal readers has been “banging on the bars of their enclosures,” as they say. In the interest of giving you a NoodiMag sooner than even later, this issue takes on the structure of… let’s call it a grain bowl. We’re making dinner past 9pm, baby, and mildly nutritious slop is the only thing on the menu. 

Folks, writing about noodles and pastas with regularity is actually kind of hard. I am now entering my sixth month of this. This is my eighth go around. (Five-months-long readers will recall that there is an unpublished original NoodiMag that counts as Volume 1.) 

I have a list of potential topics that grows longer all the time, but so many of them require a level of research that I don’t really have time or energy for, especially because I have another project I’m researching and have other Wikipedia rabbit holes to go down and do research for other people for work and also… sometimes I do stuff besides research and write and eat noodles. The rest of my ideas aren’t really fully formed, just, like, “Maruchan came out with a product called ‘SaucyNoods’ and that’s really funny.” I guess when I finally read the book I have from the library about the history of instant noodles, I might have more to say about SaucyNoods. Or maybe if NoodiMag somehow takes off in a big way, SaucyNoods will be what I call special content for the subscriber level. That would be funny. (Please, dear readers, do not let it come to this.) 

Anyways, I continue to do this as an act of self-discipline, as a commitment to a creative practice, and as a delightful way to learn about the world and connect with my friends. Sometimes I miss my self-set deadlines, as with this past month, but I’ve continued to follow through while letting it stay just-for-fun. I suppose what I’m saying here is something I said in Volume 4, months ago: this is an exercise in pacing myself. Now that the hyperfixation has waned, how will I sustain the project? I suppose in the same way I sustain my body: sometimes I just sort of phone it in; put grainproteinveggie in a bowl with sauce and say it’s a meal, call on a friend or a professional to fill in, just sort of snack until I’m full because fed is best. I’m also sustained by my ulterior motive of getting my friends to do their weird little projects, too; every time someone tells me that NoodiMag makes them want to write their weird little essays, I get that much more dedicated to doing this long-term. 

Okay, that’s enough peeking behind the curtain. Let’s talk noods. I read A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce: The Unbelievable True Story of the World’s Most Beloved Dish to try to understand why spaghetti became THE pasta. It did not answer that question, but I did learn about the oldest way of eating pasta in Italian cooking. Before the tomatoes and garlic and basil and peppers and soft cheeses, one would simply boil their dried noodles and dress them with butter or lard, parmesan or pecorino or a similar hard Italian cheese, and any spices or herbs one has handy. My friends, I’ve been doing this for the last couple of weeks and it is incredible. I’m not even using very good butter or cheese, but, man, it turns out beautifully. 

I also love that it comes from a Medieval belief in needing to balance wet and dry. You see, noodles are dry, literally, so one boils them, but then they are wet, and so they need to be balanced with more dry in the form of hard cheese, but maybe you get it a little too dry so you have to wet it up again… and on and on. I love it! Every time a new ingredient is introduced you have to balance it again!! Just a fucking see-saw of wet and dry! Anyways, thinking about this concept, which did manage to bring us a bunch of delicious and balanced food that have persisted through the ages, has affected how I think about cooking more generally. Now I’m considering the dry and wet of it all when I put my slop together, and it DOES come out tastier when I try to balance it. Incredible. These types of frameworks often sound silly at first, but in my opinion it’s only because of the way that modern (masculine, capitalist, white supremacist) science and medicine have trained our brains. There is usually some kernel of truth to it that Western scientists will “discover” if given enough time. 

Also, every time I eat my pasta this way, I get the song “Plain Plate of Noodles” from John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch in my head, and I try to remember if John Mulaney actually did anything fully morally reprehensible, or if he maybe was a run-of-the-mill shitty husband and we’re collectively just displeased but not outraged, and I don’t look it up because I’m busy eating a plain plate of noodles with a little bit of butter, like in the song. 

In other personal pasta news, last week I had my first homemade lasagna of the year (what!) courtesy of ML. 

I’m also pleased to report that campanelle is my favorite new pasta shape I’ve tried this year. Its name means bellflower. 🙂 It’s as though one cut a short lasagne noodle in half longways and then rolled it up a little bit. Great bite, great texture, holds onto sauce well. I love little ruffles on my pasta!!!!

I also had my first novelty pasta of the year. It was BASTISAR, the elks shape from IKEA, also courtesy of ML. I can’t quite wrap my head around it. I definitely ate it, and can eat it again. Call this one a developing story. 

I have at least seven additional shapes in the pantry waiting to be tried, all gifts. What if I never have to buy pasta for myself again? That could be so funny. 

For now, I’m just waiting impatiently for summer, when the tomatoes and basil will be fresh and ripe and I’ll be able to make pasta salads in giant batches and eat them for days. I can’t put into words yet how fucking excited I am. I hope the coming of this magnificent season will reinvigorate NoodiMag, but I hope that, in the meantime, whatever this is will carry you though.

Thanks for reading! Maybe next time will be a lot better.