Cooking up Ramen
On my ongoing quest to eat some decent ramen, I just had to go synthesize my own ramen recipe.
As the previous post showed, I made some dashi for the soup broth. It was quick and easy. I’m not sure if it turned out alright. Perhaps I should’ve used a smaller piece of the kombu because it tasted more like the seaweed and on occasion the fish that is the bonito flakes. Overall it was stronger than I expected. What can I do to cut this down?
Next up came the poached egg. I poached the recipe from the Momofuku book. Basically, you poach the eggs in shell by stewing them in a 145 degree water bath for 45 minutes. Easy-peasy.
Usually, in the restaurants around here, they serve chicken katsu with your bowl of ramen. I wanted originally to have tofu, but I changed my mind once I went grocery shopping this afternoon. I picked up some chicken cutlets, flour, and panko. My cupboards are now filled with junk. Need to cook more. With the chicken, it’s your usual frying. First, I flatted out three pieces of chicken. I don’t have a mallet, so I mashed it down with the heel of my hand. Next the chicken went into the pan. I need to put more oil in because after the second piece went in, there was hardly any oil for the last piece which didn’t get the beautiful golden brown fried color. Once done with the chicken, I set it aside and concentrated on the soup.
I took the dashi I had made in the morning and boiled it. Before the noodles go in I added a teaspoon of light soy sauce — I’m calling this shoyu ramen. I added the noodles, cheap store bought package noodles, into the boiling broth. I let it boil for a bit, but then took it off the flame and let sit for a couple minutes.
Sounds just like I was doing package ramen!
Of course, I then put it all together. The ramen soup gets scooped into a bowl. I crack a poached egg into it. Then to finish it off, a dash of more soy sauce, some wakame seaweed, and some pepper.
How’d it turn out? Okay. I guess I need to figure out the dashi. Next I have to find some good ramen noodles.
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Looks good. I think the world market sells ramen noodles.