. . with Udon type noodles.

I use a lot more water than specified, and add a good bunch of whatever I have in the freezer: shrimp, clams, mussels, sea cucumber, shrimp, periwinkles, squid, cuttlefish, etc.

I also crush in about 5 Chilean Aji Charapita. This is the only chili plant that has been really successful on my lot. It did nothing for the first year, since then it has produced around 300 chilis per year. They're smaller than a pea, but very hot.
One year I lost half my crop because some bird came and ate all the ripe ones. Birds are dinosaurs and don't have the chili heat nerve receptor mammals have.

The Koreans use a lot of red chilis, but they don't know about really HOT chilis. Some think chilis were brought to Korea by Portuguese mercenaries aiding China in fighting the Japanese. Not sure that's true, the Portuguese were guilty of spreading HOT! chilis worldwide, they would have laughed at Korean chilis.

The Koreans pretty much ignored chilis for 100 years or so, until they found that if chilis were included in Kimchi it needed less expensive salt. Yes, salt was very expensive worldwide until Portugal set up huge seawater salt pans. Until then, in Europe, most salt came from the Polish and Armenian salt mines. The producers didn't sell it cheap, and the middlemen got a really good cut from the trade. Not sure where they were getting it in Asia.

The Spanish got chilis from Mexico and Central America, took them home and set about breeding mild chilis. The Portuguese got theirs from Brazil, where the very hottest chilis originated, and Portuguese sailors infested the world with them.

To India they took chilis and vinegar. Within a few years hot chilis were growing all over India, but vinegar stayed in Goa.

Where Portuguese vinegar made an impression was in Japan. Sushi bars have two kinds of Mackerel sushi: Japanese Mackerel and Spanish Mackerel. The Japanese Mackerel is actually made with Norwegian mackerel (if they can get it) and vinegar pickled in the manner they learned from Portuguese sailors. Spanish mackerel is a Pacific mackerel served raw and unprocessed. Of course, I enjoy both. My favorite sushis are Mackerel and Uni (reproductive parts of sea urchins with a raw quail egg).

A fun item from back when the Wall Street Journal was a newspaper rather than a Murdock propaganda rag for the 1%. A WSJ journalist visited a seafood processing plant in New England. There they had found that California was making a lot of cash from exporting Uni - so they decided to set up a processing line to get in on that trade.

At one point the journo and his host were on the shucking floor. The host picked up some Uni and asked the journalist, "Would you like to try some?". The journalist, being a good California boy, said, "Sure", took a piece and popped it in his mouth. One of the ladies on the shucking line stood up, pointed, and shrieked "HE'S EATING IT!!!".

But, what do they know about sushi in New England. America's Test Kitchen (Massachusetts) did a comparison of sushi rice. Their top choice was Botan (a calrose variety) and their bottom rank was Kokuho Rose. In California Kokuho Rose is considered #1, and all the Korean markets** are piled with it. In California Botan is considered unsuitable for sushi. I think we know more about sushi here in the Capital of the Pacific Rim than they do in Massachusetts.

** In California, nearly all the sushi restaurants are owned and operated by Koreans, and Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles is mostly owned by Koreans now. If you want real ingredients for real Japanese cuisine, you get it from Korean markets, they have it all, while Japanese markets here sell mostly packaged junk food to make Japanese tourists feel at home.