Noodle

Noodlesare a type of food made fromunleavened doughwhich is either rolled flat and cut, stretched, or extruded, into long strips or strings. Noodles are astaple foodin many cultures and made into a variety of shapes. The most common noodles are those derived from eitherChinese cuisineorItalian cuisine.Chinese noodlesare known by a variety of different names, while Italian noodles are known aspasta.
While long, thin strips may be the most common, many varieties of noodles are cut into waves, helices, tubes, strings, or shells, or folded over, or cut into other shapes. Noodles are usually cooked in boiling water, sometimes with cooking oil or salt added. They can also be steamed, pan-fried, deep-fried, or baked. Noodles are often served with an accompanying sauce or in a soup, the latter being known asnoodle soup. Noodles can be refrigerated for short-term storage or dried and stored for future use.
The word for noodles in English was borrowed in the 18th century from theGermanwordNudel(German:[ˈnuːdl̩]).The German word likely came fromKnodelorNutel, and referred to any dumpling, though mostly of wheat.
Colloquial uses for noodle to refer to someone's head, or to a "dummy" are unrelated, and likely came from the older English wordnoddle.
The earliest written record of noodles is found in a book dated to theEastern Hanperiod (25–220 CE).Noodles made from wheat dough became a prominent food for the people of theHan dynasty.The oldest evidence of noodles was from 4,000 years ago in China.In 2005, a team of archaeologists reported finding an earthenware bowl that contained 4,000-year-old noodles at theLajia archaeological site.These noodles were said to resemblelamian, a type of Chinese noodle.Analyzing the huskphytolithsandstarchgrains present in the sediment associated with the noodles, they were identified as millet belonging toPanicum miliaceumandSetaria italica.However, other researchers cast doubt that Lajia's noodles were made from specifically millet: it is difficult to make pure millet noodles, it is unclear whether the analyzed residue were directly derived from Lajia's noodles themselves, starch morphology after cooking shows distinctive alterations that does not fit with Lajia's noodles, and it is uncertain whether the starch-like grains from Laijia's noodles are starch as they show some non-starch characteristics.
The general consensus among food historians is that pasta originated somewhere in the Mediterranean region:a homogenous mixture of flour and water calleditrionwas described by 2nd-century Greek physicianGalen,among 3rd to 5th-century Jewsitriumwas described by theJerusalem Talmudanditriyya(Arabic cognate of the Greek word), referred to string-like shapes made ofsemolinaand dried before cooking - as defined by the 9th-century physician and lexicographerIsho bar Ali.
There are over 1,200 types of noodles commonly consumed in China today.They vary widely according to the region of production, ingredients, shape or width, and manner of preparation. Due to the vast diversity of Chinese noodles, there is no single Chinese word equivalent to the Western concept of "noodles," nor is the notion of "noodles" as a unified food category recognized withinChinese cuisine.
InStandard Mandarin,miàn(simplified Chinese: 面; traditional Chinese: 麵) means "dough" but can be used to refer to noodles made from wheat flour and grains such as millet, sorghum, and oats. Whilefěn(粉) means "powder" but can be used to refer to noodles made from other starches, particularly rice flour andmung beanstarch.
Wheat noodles in Japan (udon) were adapted from aChineserecipe as early as the 9th century. Innovations continued, such as noodles made withbuckwheat(naengmyeon) were developed in theJoseonDynasty ofKorea(1392–1897).Ramennoodles, based on southern Chinese noodle dishes fromGuangzhoubut named after the northern Chineselamian, became common in Japan by 1900.
Kesmeor erişte noodles were eaten byTurkic peoplesby the 13th century.
Ash reshteh(noodles in thick soup with herbs) is one of the most popular dishes in some middle eastern countries such as Iran.
In the 1st centuryBCE,Horacewrote of fried sheets of dough calledlagana.However, the cooking method does not correspond to the current definition of either a fresh or drypastaproduct.
The first concrete information onpastaproducts inItalydates back to theEtruscan civilization, theTestaroli. The first noodles will only appear much later, in the 10th or 11th centuries,and there is a popular legend aboutMarco Polobringing the first pasta back from China. Modern historians do not give much credibility to the story and rather believe the first noodles were imported earlier from the Arabs, in a form calledrishta.Pasta has taken on avariety of shapes, often based on regional specializations.
InGermany, documents dating from 1725 mentionSpätzle.Medievalillustrations are believed to place this noodle at an even earlier date.
Armenian variety of noodle,Arishta, is prepared from wheat, water and salt. It is thick and is usually eaten withmatzoon, clarified butter and garlic.
The Latinized worditriumreferred to a kind of boiled dough.Arabs adapted noodles for long journeys in the fifth century, the first written record of drypasta.Muhammad al-Idrisiwrote in 1154 thatitriyyawas manufactured and exported fromNorman Sicily.Itriyawas also known by thePersian Jewsduring early Persian rule (when they spokeAramaic) and during Islamic rule.  It referred to a small soup noodle, of Greek origin, prepared by twisting bits of kneaded dough into shape, resembling Italianorzo.
Zacierkiis a type of noodle found inPolish Jewish cuisine.It was part of the rations distributed toJewish victimsin theŁódź Ghettoby theNazis.
(Out of the "major ghettos", Łódź was the most affected by hunger, starvation and malnutrition-related deaths.)
The diary of a young Jewish girl from Łódź recounts a fight she had with her father over a spoonful ofzacierkitaken from the family's meager supply of 200 grams a week.