Ramen! - Stir Monday
Apologies to everyone that thought Stir Friday would be better, I was too tired and craving Owl’s Nest too much on Friday to make stir fry. (Ask me again at the end of the year how I feel about Owl’s Nest; I live fifty feet away from it and eat there nearly every day.)
So soup was starting to get boring, and it just didn’t feel like a soupy kind of day. It was too bright and happy and joyful, and after first rain and a slight chill I was done with soup. Fried noodles were in order!
My mother used to make these for us all the time, and somehow hers always ended up a little more al dente and a lot less slightly burnt, but I gave it a go and I thought it quite pretty. Then again, I have a tendency to think all my food, especially food that I’ve made, is pretty, so I might not be the most reliable source.
PICTURES OF FOOD ARE SO PRETTY.
Fun fact: there are more fruits than vegetables in this picture. Onions, spinach, ground ginger, and carrots are all vegetables, but squash, sweet peppers, tomatoes, and beans are all fruits. Think about it: beans are seedpods. Fruits are the seed-bearing parts of a plant. Ergo, dried beans are dried fruit. Mind = blown.
So I boiled the ramen in 1 cup of water with the flavour packet. The directions say boil in two cups, but that’s for soup broth and I was being awesome and making my own recipe (sort of). In another pan, set to high heat, pour some olive oil and sauté the onions, then because you’re lazy like me take a vegetable peeler to the carrot instead of actually cutting it. At this point you should let it all cook awhile to soften up and caramelize the onions.
Note that this is being cooked Chinese style, in which everything is cooked in the same pan and absorbs the flavours of everything else, instead of Korean style, where you cook things separately so each spoonful is a riot of flavours. My mother would probably have a heart attack, but I was hungry and lazy so everything tastes like everything else and it was actually pretty good.
Me being me, I was impatient and cooked things in the wrong order. I also didn’t chop everything beforehand, which was a bit of an issue with the beans, because they require de-stemming and de-ending before they can be chopped into stir-fry-sized pieces. So after the onions came the sweet peppers, then squash (yellow and a green variety of summer squash), then the carrots, then some more oil, then ginger, then tomatoes, then the beans, then a third of a glass of water to boil the vegetables / fruits, which was then poured out when I got impatient and realized I was making stir mush instead of stir fry.
It may be slightly mushy, but damn if it isn’t pretty. The lone spinach leaf was an accident, it missed the wilting train and is wilting on top of everything else.
At the same time, the noodles, which I was TOTALLY keeping an eye on, starting to boil down all their water and stick to the bottom of the pan. Scrape the noodles from the bottom of the pan, add a bit more water (or just keep an eye on it and when there’s still a bit of water left) and put the spinach leaves on top. Do not stir them in, just let them sit there in the warm pot on top of the warm noodles and they will steam / wilt to a perfect green colour that’s also soft enough to stir into your finished yumminess.
When your plant bits have cooked to your satisfaction, add ginger, salt, and pepper to taste (remember you don’t need much salt at all, since there’s already so much in ramen). Mix the noodles and spinach into the planty goodness so that there’s an even distribution of noodles in plant bits, gloat, and serve. Try not to get locked out of your room and run barefoot to the housing office, it’s never any fun, even when there’s stir fry waiting for you at the end of your terrible cold run.
Next week: Booze and ramen? Trust me, it works. Though you should be over 21 if you’re doing this.
