Working around Rice Noodles

Since when I decided to avoid wheat, I started experimenting with rice noodles.

What is great about them? They do not need to "cook" just soak in warm water and since they do not leek much starch, they do not clump together if soaked in a tight environment (see glue like pasta in this same condition) you can directly soak them in their sauce!

Recently the guys from the blog Ideas in Food (aka Chef Aki Kamozawa and Chef Alexander Talbot) have translated this soaking method also to wheat pasta.
Their point of view is that, when you cook pasta you are just re-hydrating it and swelling the starch granules. Now, the hydration part does not need heat so it is possible to soak dried wheat pasta in a cold solution (for some hours actually) before cooking its starches (once soaked the cooking will take a matter of few minutes).
From here, the great new versatility of the pasta medium.

Here there are a couple of my experiments (one has already been posted extensively):

- Rice noodles in clove scented oriental soup with chicken, fava beans and peas (read past post);

- Rice noodles in a tamarind chicken broth with caramelized pork belly, flat green beans and ginger;

- Rice noodles in clove-pepper scented orange broth with caramelized pork belly bits;


- Milk & black pepper soaked rice noodles carbonara.


Which is your favorite?