My co-workers and I were talking about pastas and I mentioned that I saw what I thought was a pasta being prepared which was quite dramatic.
It was a TV shot and I remember that a small bit of this pasta was placed into a large pot with a small amount of boiling water (or maybe hot oil, I really don’t know). It immediatly and dramatically flaired up and resembled a large tumble weed in the pot.
This stiff mass of pasta (?) was then quickley removed from the pot.
What is this stuff? Where do I find it and what types of dishes is it used for?
Bubba
Were you watching a show on Chinese cuisine? It was probably strands of, I guess you could call it pasta, made from rice flour. When immersed in hot oil, they expand dramatically and become very brittle. They are broken into clumps and a finished stir-fry in spooned on top. It becomes soggy after a bit, so eat quickly if you want the crunch. You can easily buy the noodles at any market that caters to Asians.
Are you possibly talking about prawn crackers? These come as small, hard, paper-thin squares. If you drop them in hot oil they instantly swell up to about 10 times the size, and become crispy puffs that melt in the mouth. (I think they are made from rice starch.)
There are other things that are similar, poppadoms for example.
I think guiltguy may have hit on it. Though pawn crackers sound interesting too. I’ll look for these items in the Asian cuisine stores. No wonder I couldn’t find this stuff with the pastas.
When you go to the Asian grocery, look for bean threads or cellophane noodles. Sometimes you can find them in the Asian section of a regular grocery store also.