Shanghai Cold Noodles

With a true-crime twist

When Alex and I crossed the border into our now home-state of Massachusetts last week, I asked her how it felt to officially become a ‘Masshole’, the term affectionately appropriated by certain locals as an ill-humored badge of honor, myself included. (If you’ve ever spent an afternoon navigating Boston traffic, you’ll know it’s not completely without merit.) She said that’s not possible. That she was born in New Hampshire, as if the association is assumed at birth. When she declined to let the twelve-year-old girl pet Nala at a rest stop soon thereafter, she admitted it felt a bit like ‘Masshole energy’.

Our first stop in the Bay State was Tree House Brewing, a nationally acclaimed brewery on a sprawling, seventy-acre campus in the country town of Charlton. The town happily appeared on our final afternoon’s route, prompting the short detour. Tree House is a non-distributing brewery, meaning that if you’d like to experience the top-rated, New England IPA in the country, it requires a pilgrimage to one of its four outposts. Standing in line with my fellow zealots at what looked like LaGuardia on a holiday weekend, I meticulously scanned the menu, silently debating my order. The beer was undoubtedly very good, but when the bartender pointedly asked if I was a cop, it may have soured my final review.

Massachusetts has a storied history of modern brewing — think Samuel Adams, Harpoon, Cisco. Like elsewhere in the country, craft brewing has taken root across the state, with two breweries consistently garnering national attention, Tree House and Trillium. Tree House began in the small town of Charlton, where as Trillium Brewing is headquartered in Canton, a Boston suburb about fifteen miles southwest of the city, and coincidentally my hometown. It’s also where Alex and I are spending the next six weeks at my parent’s house, prior to moving into our Boston apartment. When Trillium moved to Canton in 2013, I joked that it finally put Canton on the map. While that’s not entirely true, it did make coming home for the holidays a bit more exciting.

While much remains the same about Canton, so much has changed since I left for college nearly twenty years ago. Driving through downtown, the shapes and corners all look familiar, but it is a much different Canton than the one I remember. New housing developments, fancy restaurants, shopping centers, coffee shops and bakeries. The industrial dumpsite, which apparently housed Paul Revere’s copper rolling mill, has been meticulously restored into a museum, bar, and restaurant. The historic Canton Junction train station now boasts a hip, local coffee shop. The sheer breadth of development in town is equal parts exciting and jarring. If anyone outside of the Greater Boston area has heard of Canton, however, it’s likely not the new Top Golf that’s caught their attention.

For the past year now, Canton has been mired in national attention due to the gripping and wildly divisive trial of Karen Read, whose boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, was found dead in the snow in front of a Canton home two and half years ago. Driving to the grocery store last week, I pointed out to Alex a small group of supporters holding ‘Free Karen Read’ signs on the side of the road. Members of the FKR camp, including her defense team, claim that she has been framed through a far-reaching and elaborate cover-up by local and city police. The facts of the case are admittedly unusual — so much so that the FBI and federal investigators have become involved — likely fueling the ongoing fascination among true-crime sleuths far and wide. In what feels like a microcosm of our national turmoil, the town appears bitterly divided, culminating in a hung jury and mistrial earlier this week.

Massholes, housing booms, and true-crime sleuths aside, it’s great to be home.

Shanghai Cold (Masshole) Noodles

The Woks of Life, Page 111

You can’t mistake summer in New England. Although, having just driven coast to coast, there are few places right now to escape the blistering heat it seems. Enough with the spicy, fried food already! Give me something cool. A giant bowl of ice cream? Cold noodles, perhaps.

We’ve previously tackled the fewest-ingredient challenge (which turned out to be surprisingly involved to produce), but these cold noodles are absolutely the simplest recipe to-date. Thirty minutes or less, Scout’s honor. After assembling and sampling her noodle bowl, Alex proclaimed that it’s her favorite newsletter recipe in a long time — a resounding endorsement from this New Hampshire-born Bostonian.

Makes 2 servings

Soy sauce base

• 1/2 teaspoon sugar

• 3 tablespoons hot water

• 1 1/2 tablespoons light soy sauce

Vinegar sauce base

• 1/2 teaspoon sugar

• 4 teaspoons rice vinegar

Sesame sauce base

• 3 tablespoons Chinese sesame paste (or creamy peanut butter)

• 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

• 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

• 4 to 6 tablespoons hot water

Noodles

• 8 ounces thin wheat noodles

• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

• 1 scallion, white and green parts finely chopped

• Noodle toppings of your choice (e.g. onion, cilantro, cucumber, egg)

Step 1. Make the three sauce bases. Make the soy sauce base by dissolving the sugar in the hot water. Then stir in the light soy sauce. Make the vinegar sauce base by dissolving the sugar in the rice vinegar. For the sesame sauce base, mix the sesame paste, toasted sesame oil, and sea salt. Then gradually add the hot water, 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing well after each addition until the sauce drips off a spoon in a smooth stream.

Step 2. Cook the noodles until cooked through but still al dente. Drain and rinse with cold water before transferring immediately to a large plate. Toss the noodles with the sesame oil using chopsticks or two forks, lifting them off the plate to cool them down quickly. The finished noodles should be room temperature.

Step 3. Assemble and serve. Divide the noodles into two bowls and allow each person to top with the three sauce bases to taste. Garnish with scallions and any other toppings of your choosing. Enjoy.