Ramen Isn't Just for Poor College Kids

Please indulge me as I share another non-quilt post.

Know what I shouldn't remember but do? Eating ramen for the first time. Ramen. Why? Probably because it's a taste sensation! I was six years old, and we had virtually no money. It was a year or so after my parents divorced and our neighbor was babysitting me while my mom worked. She gave me a bowl of ramen, and I slurped down every bit of that savory, salty broth and gobbled up the noodles. Those delicious noodles! It's still one of my favorite taste memories.

I'm ravenous when I eat ramen. Here we have an interpretive live-action retelling of me (Audrey 2) eating a bowl of ramen (Rick Moranis).

Though I don't eat it as often, I do occasionally buy the packages of the "de-fried-rated" noodles (they're delicious because they're fried, you know?). If you've never looked at the fat content, DON'T! One package is also allegedly two servings. Pfft! I've been known to eat a package dry while I cook another. Oink. I buy them at the local Asian market, because they have a lot more variety of instant noodles and several that are vegetarian.

Today I set out on a brief culinary excursion, into the world of homemade miso ramen. I've wanted to do it for some time now (think years), but I put it off for no reason other than there were Oreos to distract me. So after a quick trip to the grocery store, I used Peaceful Cuisine's YouTube tutorial as a foundation and got to work when I walked in the door after work.

It all came together surprisingly quickly, maybe an hour from start to finish. The only ingredient that isn't readily available at the regular ol' grocery store is kansui. It's an alkaline solution used to give the noodles their characteristic toothiness and pale yellow color. Baking soda can also be used, but from what I've read it yields a slightly different noodle. Other than that, it's a standard pasta dough. I threw it together, ran it through the pasta press a few times and then through the thin noodle cutter and voila!

Noodles! After cutting them, I tossed them with just a bit of starch to keep them from sticking and lightly gripped them between my fingertips and palms a few times to give them a little texture. Then I made a simple miso broth with some shiitake mushrooms, bean sprouts, thinly sliced green onions and a little toasted sesame seed oil. Dinner was on!

It was delicious! I love miso and am trying to make it a point to use it more often. It's a good way to add flavor to dishes (and sodium too, so not too much), and I'm finding more and more recipes that use it to add some umami to vegetarian dishes.

So now that I've made and devoured dinner, I feel like I should do nothing the rest of the night. That's precisely what I'll do!