Golden Smell Food Porn

Got yer attention? There’s a reasonable explanation for the title of this post.

Alison and I have lately been on an Asian food kick, many of our favorites being noodle dishes. Familiar egg noodles and Italian style pasta are NOT the equivalent to Asian noodles, even those made out of wheat flour. Wheat flour Asian noodles are made with flour and water alone, OR with wheat flour plus an alkaline agent that turns the noodle dough a distinctive yellow color that can sometimes mimic the color of egg pasta as described by Harold McGee in his excellent and informative occasional food chemistry piece in the New York Times. Not only does the alkaline agent color the pasta, but it also helps bind the dough together for a distinctly springy noodle, often found in a quality ramen noodle soup.

Before I learned (from the McGee article and accompanying recipe) how to make a proper alkaline noodle without the bother of mail ordering food-grade caustic substances, Alison and I would always shop Asian groceries whenever we visited Boston and New York to obtain the commercial equivalent. Our favorite brand of alkaline noodle is made under the “Golden Smell” label — an amusing maladroit translation no doubt. However, since the McGee article, I’ve been making alkaline noodles whenever we feel the need. I made my last batch for New Year’s Eve, leaving them thick before cutting them in our pasta maker’s linguine setting to achieve a square noodle that keeps some tooth.

For Christmas this year I got a REAL digital camera, i.e. a camera with a refined lens and a sophisticated CMOS sensor that allows for an infinite number of manual adjustments. (Our first digital camera was a very reliable Kodak EasyShare that is now more than 5 years old and works best using the ‘standard’ resolution of 800 x 600 pixels. Since then I’ve also used my Droid mobile phone as a digital camera to some success, but with it’s own obvious limitations.)

So there’s a pan of beautiful Golden Smell-like bunches of alkaline noodles hanging out on our kitchen table waiting to be boiled, and I’ve got my new camera in hand. Would Would Marcus Do? He’d document. So I will document, but now I have the power not only to illustrate a pan of alkaline noodle bunches, but to try one of the features of my new camera, namely that ultra-shallow depth of field effect that turns food photos into food porn. What do you think?