Everybody loves Reimen

It's the middle of summer, which means reimen / soumen time. If you've never heard these words before, reimen is cold ramen and soumen is very thin cold noodles (about half the thickness of ramen). You prepare the two different noodle the same way.

1. Boil water
2. Put noodles in for 3 minutes while stirring.
3. Flip the noodles into a strainer filled with icecubes and run cold water over it for a minute.

Reimen is traditionally prepared somewhat like a Cobb Salad. The very cold noodles are placed in a bowl and adorned with cold ham, sliced tamagoyaki (Japanese style eggs - made like an omelet but with soy sauce), sliced cucumber, and whatever else.　Be sure to pick up some tsuyu (soy/dashi sauce) from the local asian market. Be careful - some tsuyu are different strengths.



This is regular strength. If the container says ３倍 or ４倍, you'll have to split it 1/3 tsuyu 2/3 water or 1/4 tsuyu 3/4 water. The end result looks like this:



Soumen is much easier - all you need to do is put the tsuyu in a cup, dip the soumen in the cup and enjoy. Make sure you add some wasabi or mustard to the tsuyu if you like it spicy.



If you drive way out in the country in Japan, some place will have nagashi-soumen, or flowing soumen. They basically take a large bamboo plant, split it, and run soumen through it while you stand at the end and catch it with your chopsticks. The country bumpkins that do this usually charge an arm and a leg for this, but if you've been hiking in the mountains you won't be able to resist.