back in thay

The Thai noodles at L2O have a story. Tai, one of kitchen staff, came to me one day, and said that he is going to make some cold noodles out of a liquid that he will set in a tube. I said OK. He got all the equipment he needed. A few days ahead he choose tomato water as the liquid and started the process.

The process is not complicated but needs some explanation. You simmer the tomato water, hydrate the gellan gum (a hydrocoloid that will set when it cools down but doesn't melt with heat). When the gellan is activated, you place the pot over a double boiler to keep it hot. You pull the liquid into a syringe, push the liquid into the a plastic tube (about 1/16-inch in diameter), and drop the tube into an ice bath. You charge a canister with CO2, connect an adapter to the tube (Tai found it at Home Depot), then pressurize the tube to push the noodle out.

The first try did not work, the noodle got stuck in the tube. The fix was to add a touch of grape seed oil in the tube before pushing the liquid with the syringe. Also, warming up the filled tubes quickly in simmering water allowed the pressure of the CO2 to push the noodle. The noodles were there, but they were flavorless and very bridle. We started discussing the options to improve. We decided to change the hydrocoloid to a mixture of agar and carrageen to get more elasticity and less brittleness.

In our team, all the employees participate in the preparation of family meal once a week. And I remembered Tai doing a Vietnamese meal with a wonderful Thai dressing that went with a cold salad. I told Tai that we should use those kind flavors for the noodle. The Thai dressing combines chopped garlic, Thai chili, sugar, fish sauce, lime juice and water. It is spicy, pungent and fresh. It took us a few more tries to get to the final result, but the noodles are now on the menu when the soft shell are available.