As Chinese New Year is being celebrated today across the world, we're taking another look at Immedium Publishing's fantastic "Asian Hall of Fame" series with another brilliant book chronicling the history of something that we probably take for granted, invented by innovative folk in the far east.
"The Discovery of Ramen" by Phil Amara, Oliver Chin and Juan Calle is another fast-paced whizz through history with a charming historical host and his two young friends.
You may remember us reviewing "The Discovery of Fireworks and Gunpowder" in the same range of books - now Dao, Ethan and Emma are on the trail of something tasty. Ethan's tummy is rumbling but before he can discover where the delicious smells are coming from in a local Ramen cafe, they're whisked off through history to meet amazing innovators who brought this tasty dish to the world, made in so many different ways but always with tasty noodles at the heart of the dish.
Dao details how wheat-based noodles were first combined with tasty broth and sold in street stalls, and how one amazing fellah Momofuku Ando - who was born all the way back in 1910 - revolutionised the creation of instant packet noodles, flash fried, dried and later made with hot water into the dish we know and love today.
Cup noodles followed, making the whole process even more convenient. Today, nearly 100 billion servings of noodles are wolfed down by hungry folk like us every single year! Wow!
This is a fantastically illustrated and brilliantly storified dive into the history of noodles and we definitely know what we'll be having for dinner tonight!!
Sum this book up in a sentence: Another fantastic title from Immedium chronicling the history of something we largely take for granted, delicious ramen!
"The Discovery of Ramen" by Phil Amara, Oliver Chin and Juan Calle is out now, published by Immedium Publishing (kindly supplied for review in digital form).