Ramen. Learning to prepare a hot cup of noodles is practically a college entrance requirement. Yet proper ramen, udon, soba, and all the various Japanese noodle dishes involves so much more. Early on in my cooking career, I experimented quite a lot with asian cuisine before finally settling firmly into the mediterranean region. With the polar vortex in full swing in Chicago, however, I decided it might not hurt to whip up a hot bowl of soup to stave off the chill. A few quick purchases from my quasi local asian market and I was ready to go
Prep
Mirin (a sweet rice cooking wine)
Tamari (my personal favorite brand) Soy Sauce
Sesame Oil
Rainbow Chard
1 bunch Scallions
Dried Shiitake Mushrooms
If you are sitting around the house, this can be an all day affair, as you allow the dried Shiitake mushrooms to slowly absorb room tempurature water and release flavor in your nascent broth. I would periodically pull out the mushrooms and cut them into smaller and smaller pieces, squeezing excess water out of them. If you dont have that kind of time however, you can just boil the heck out of them for 20-30 minutes with a bouillon cube of your choice and achieve roughly the same effect.
When actually ready to start cooking (i.e. after 30 minutes of boiling mushroom broth or 3-4 hours of steeping it) Smash about 6-8 cloves of garlic with the flat side of a knife to release the sticky deliciousness, and toss it into your broth. Keep the broth on a constant medium heat once you start, as the more it reduces, the more concentrated your ultimate flavor will be in the end.
With the flame on, about 1 hour int the cooking process, I tossed in the roots of the green onions, the stems of the rainbow chard, about 2tbsp of soy sauce, 1 tbsp of mirin and 1/4 teaspoon sesame oil, along with just a tiny squeeze of lemon because I’m greek and am thus contractually obligated to include lemon in all my food. Keep your chard leaves and chopped green onion to the side for now, and just let the broth keep simmering on a low to medium heat for at least a total of 2-3 hours or when reduced to at most half of what you started with.
In a separate pot, about 10 minutes before you ready to eat, boil water and drop in your udon noodles which cook for 4 minutes tops. Ramen and Udon are cooked separately from the broth, and placed in the bowl, then the broth is poured over. As a finishing garnish, sprinkle the top of each broth and noodle filled bowl with a handful of chopped chard and green onion. For added protein, I found a roll of pink fishcake (a mix of haddock and other whitefish that is pre-cooked and tossed into the broth about 2-3 minutes before serving. Then enjoy your warming broth
I realize the instructions here are rather sparse, but it’s soup, and more importantly, one of the earliest recipes I created on my own by experimenting with tastes and flavors I remembered from eating in other places. A quiz for my palate, as it were. So I encourage you to treat any good recipe like a science experiment…write down your results, and feel free to tweak them until you have created exactly the result you are looking for and you cant help but end up with…
A Great Ingestion!
The Great Ingestion 