Ramen and Rice

My son has, mostly through watching anime, become enamoured of cooking and eating Japanese food. The First Reader isn’t big on the flavor profile (tends toward fishy, he says) but he loves Korean food, and I’ve learned to cook some dishes for him. I’ve always been a rice snob, I was born to it. 

Before I digress, though. The recipe for ramen eggs! 

Soy Marinated Eggs

Place 1 c water in bottom of InstantPot, then put in your egg rack (or something to keep the eggs from touching the liner, where they can burn). 

• 6 eggs
• 1/3 c soy sauce
• 1/3 c water
• 3 tbsp Mirin (Rice wine, can also use rice wine vinegar if you don’t have this)

Cook the eggs under pressure for 3-4 minutes. Use the shorter time if you want your eggs gooey in the center. Quickly release pressure, and put the eggs into an ice bath to quench and stop lingering cooking. 

Peel the eggs, and place into the marinade. Cover and let sit for a few hours. The longer, the darker the egg will be and more flavor it picks up! 

I’d give you a recipe for ramen, here, but I can’t. I don’t use one. I make the broth up to taste, and then cook the noodles in it, before adding all the tasty bits as I serve. Those depend on what’s in the pantry and fridge, so it is different every time. The broth for ramen should be a nice stock, unctuous, heavily spiced with ginger and garlic and chilies. A bit of sesame oil in the pan, quickly fry up the ginger and garlic pastes, maybe a bit of lemongrass if you have that on hand. A small spoonful of chili-garlic paste. Pour in chicken stock, if you have it. If not, 4-6 cups of water (2 cup per person) and hondashi pellets to taste, adding a little, stirring, tasting, adding…. fish sauce, soy sauce, little pinch of sugar, salt, whatever. 

Basil leaves are fantastic in this, and a basil flower looks pretty added at the end. Shreds of carrot, green onion, a sliver of serrano pepper. Sauteed pork in teriyaki, sliced thinly, for more protein than just the egg. Kimchi, if you’re me. 

Serve in a ramen bowl if you have one. If not, you want a big, deep bowl to hold all of it. I was lucky enough recently to find ramen bowls at the thrift. I almost left them there, as I only saw two, but when I saw the third I snagged them all up. The Little Man doesn’t realize yet they are part of his Hope Chest, along with one of my dutch ovens, and a skillet-yet-to-be-found (we will reseason it together when we find a good one while out junking, so he knows how). As I showed him, they are great for ramen, yes, but also curries with that lid serving as a rice dish, or bulgogi, or whatever I’m making up that has an Asian flair. Pretty and practical, just what I like in the kitchen! 

The other thing I scooped up on that trip (was a good day!) was a rice cooker. Rice cookers are an essential part of my kitchen. In theory I can cook rice in the InstantPot, but I haven’t yet made that work for me. I was using a smaller Aroma rice cooker, having gone through 4 cookers since I was a young bride in 1997. I use them hard. The cooker I had was on it’s last leg. I’d picked it up junking around (why, yes, I do that a lot) and the liner had lost most of it’s nonstick. The ‘new’ one was pristine. Looked like it might have been used once. And it came with all the accessories neatly tucked into it. Score! I can use this not only for rice, but slow cooking. 

The best thing is, I can put a curry, say, in the InstantPot, prep rice in it’s own cooker, and have a meal ready with minimal fuss and bother. The ramen and sushi I did for the Sunday dinner was a little more trouble, but not a lot, and was more than enough for the two of us. If the First Reader had been here, I’d likely have made it a little differently, but he wasn’t, so we went all fishy with it. Was good! 

So what are your odd little kitchen appliances and tools you love? I have more than I can conveniently fit into the apartment, so I’ve pared back. Still, these two appliances were the ones that came with me when I thought we’d be living in a hotel room for a while. You can do so much with them. The ramen bowls are multi-taskers and attractive enough to display, plus cheap enough to indulge myself in them, not to mention knowing they will be passed on to my son when he sets up housekeeping on his own in the years to come. 

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