Really Rapid Ramen

In television programmes from my youth, American or Americanised, there was a universal truth that all sickness could be cured with a serving of hot steaming noodle soup. It was anthologised as the warming cure to all life’s ailments, from the bitterness of winter, the broth to mop up when your brow needed mopping, flavour to knock a flu out of your system served up in heaving, simmering bowls. Slick with umami, delicately spiced, long, stringy pasta absorbing all the goodness and returning back to the water it’s sheer starchiness.

Despite having clear memories of the soup, the smell, the feeling it gave your stomach, I don’t actually remember ever consuming it much as a child. But as an adult, I can’t think of anything more comforting. Pho, ramen, laksa: to me, it doesn’t matter what the flavour profile is, the etymology of the dish, the type of noodle used – if it’s slurpable, I want in on it. If I’m in a rush, hungover, drunk – any of these states, I always tend to pick up the corner shop sodium packet variant that goes for 3 hyper coloured portions for £1. But, in an attempt to see in the new year as a more wholesome person when it comes to body fuel, I’ve bid to make everything for the month from scratch where possible. And I’ve just about nailed how to pull together a plant based, pallet punching noodle soup, taking a big amount of admiration and inspiration from the miso laden ramen dishes plated up in Bone Daddies or Shoryu – two excellent chains in correlation to quality and value Japanese cooking. I’m aware that just two blog posts below this I talk about the cracking flavours in a quickly pulled together Thai green curry broth – but I’m about to one up that soupy goodness.

Ingredients 

1 Green Chilli
4 cloves of garlic
Thumb size piece of ginger
3 x onions of choice
1 tbsp of oil
1 tsp of turmeric
1 tsp of ground cumin
1 tsp of ground coriander
1 tsp of garlic granules
1 tsp of chilli powder
1 litre of vegetable stock
2 tbsp of soy sauce
3 tbsp of miso paste
1 can of coconut milk
1 packet of soba noodles
1 packet of pak choi
1-2 handfuls of spinach and/or kale
250-500g of good quality mushrooms (shittake, enoki or closed cup)
1/2 a lime
1 handful of chopped fresh coriander
1 tsp of sesame seeds
1 chopped up spring onion
Several lashings of Sriracha

1. I hate cutting stuff up. You do too. Roughly chop your green chilli, seeds in if you’re a spice girl, crush 4 gloves of garlic and a thumb of ginger through your mincer, and slice up an onion as well. I like to use a mixture of onions here if my cupboard allows for it, which it usually does – so don’t be afraid to throw yellow onion in with your shallots and spring onions. As much crunch as you can bare.
2. Fry this all up with a little oil in a thick based, big old vat of a pan for 3 or 4 minutes before adding turmeric, coriander and cumin into the mix. Like garlic flavours? Add some granules here as well. Love heat like me? Chilli powder goes in. Mix up and fry for another minute or so. Get those flavours SINGING.
3. We want more tang, in fact I demand it, so let’s add the umami. A litre of vegetable stock to loosen up all that sticky, spicy base, plus your soy sauce and miso paste. Throw in a can of coconut milk for good measure and let it all bubble away for a while.
   
4. Grab a pack of soba noodles, heat them for 5 minutes in a boiling pan, then drain and refresh in cold water. Leave on the side.
5. Throw in your spring greens. I like to add pak choi, left over spinach at the back of my fridge, and loose-leaf kale if I have any knocking around. Much like my onion hoarding, I tend to have a lot of a leftover greenery begging for a broth like this. Then I add the mushroom section – my total preference here is shitake as it works so well with absorbing the key flavours whilst thickening the broth – but if you’ve got some enoki and closed cup just waiting to grab the lime light, add those in as well and let it all simmer away for 3 minutes or so.
6. I personally am an advocate for citrus in all my Asian cooking, so I stab up half of a lime and squeeze it liberally over the bubbling broth, alongside a handful of freshly chopped coriander, before adding in my cold noodles until they’ve heated through. Then it’s off the boil, and ready for more seasoning.
7. You want to be eating with your eyes, so how we dress our dish is really important here. The yellow thick broth in itself looks wicked contrasted next to the bright greens of the pak choi, but once you’ve served up the broth and noodles into individual bowls, I like to sprinkle over sesame seeds in abundance – followed by some chopped red chilli if I’m serving to hot heads like myself. If I have leftover spring onion, that tends to bring some more textures to the dish that will add more excitement to the serving. I squeeze sriracha over as well because I’m an animal, but this can be left on the table for your guests to abstain or partake as they wish.
8. Eat up. Slurp it. Suck it. Chew the noodles. Have a whole leaf of pak choi slip down your throat unexpectedly. Crunch away at the onion selection you’ve carefully selected. I’m addicted to the broth that houses this all, so I tend to find myself ladelling some extra into my bowl once I’ve finished it off. It feels decadent and filling without knocking you out, and you’ll need to blow your nose once you’re done with it. The best part? It really does take 20 minutes start to finish if you prep yourself well.

On Under the Weather Cooking

There’s very little you can rely on in life. It’s vastly unpredictable, which is both a blessing and a curse in itself. There are a few things, however, that are a certain.

You can be sure that when we creep from September into October that the air will change. The stiffness of the always slightly simmering summer heat evaporates and a fresh briskness takes a hold of the atmosphere. Somehow, the leaves all evolve into their crunchy matter overnight, dusting the sides of the pavement. And everyone, yes everyone, gets slightly sick. What can start as a slight sting in your temple and scratch in your throat can turn into full melodramatic curtains-shut, scarf-on-in-bed Lemsip induced hysteria.

I am currently nursing a head cold that has been threatening to rear its, well, head, for several days. I refused to let it take sanctuary on Sunday and proceeded to go out the house with wet hair, adding fuel to the already fluey fire. Monday has come around and I feel useless, a sad sack huddled under my duvet, trying to work out what I have in the cupboard to cure this cold.

I’ve always found in a time of streaming noses and aching bones that broths and soups are the only thing that will do. I know this isn’t exactly a revolutionary concept, but the heat and steam that comes off a thick and comforting soup is almost enough to make you forget that your head feels like it’s being smashed between two cymbals. I’m an advocate for spice, adding hot sauce to hot sauce, and find nothing else quite hits my senses like a dose of scotch bonnet chillies – though any will do when you’re in a pinch.

A bad cold can knock all the flavour receptors out of your pallet, so I like to add a hefty dose of all the cold bashing features on my spice rack to try and knock some sense back into them. A rich, coconutty, spicy thai soup is often my go to in this instance, and I’m hoping its creaminess will offer me temporary comfort in my hour of need.

When you’re feeling rough, the last thing you want to do is spend ages prepping something. Whilst it’s true that the best curry pastes are made from scratch, in order to unlock a freshness to the bite of your dish, a jar of green curry paste saves yourself a lot of time that is better spent on the sofa watching bad straight to Netflix movies. I always love the crunch of onion in my food, so I start by frying it up in some olive oil, until the onions start to go soft and translucent.

Next, I utilise the most useful utensil known to man and mince 2 gloves of garlic over the pan. I love garlics pungent smell, and the heat that comes when it’s cooked is sure to add a depth to the dish that will awaken the dull thud in my head. I let it simmer away for a couple of minutes until golden brown, adding a handful of finely diced chilli to infuse the onion.

Once the smells begin to swell from the pan, I add two healthy dollops of thai green curry paste and coat all the ingredients until it’s sticky and fragrant, for around 2 minutes before chucking in a can of coconut milk. I prefer to user lighter to bring down the sat fat levels, but am totally aware that sometimes the creaminess of full fat cannot be replaced, and I do not judge you either way.

Then, I add the nutrient section of the dish. I know that some people claim you cannot beat fresh vegetables, and that frozen ones are processed and blah blah blah. Of course, fresh is best. But fresh, in my experience, is often more expensive and needs to be eaten quickly. The problem with seasonal sickness is that it’s hard to predict, and the chances you have all the vegetables you need in the fridge ready to be chucked in are slim. I always keep a great big bag of frozen vegetables in the freezer for this very reason – you can add them to anything to pack out those essential vitamins and minerals for the road to recovery. I do, always have, fresh spinach in the fridge however, which is my one non frozen ingredient here – but packed with vitamin D that one craves in these cold months. Vitamin D is a valuable nutrient for staving off season affective disorder and depression as well, so your doing both mind and body a favour. I chuck a couple of generous handfuls of both the spinach and the frozen vegetables into the pan, and bring to the boil before leaving to gently simmer for 5-10 minutes.

Once everything is bubbling away nicely, and the frozen vegetables are tender, it’s time to add the next layer of seasoning to add the kick you to get your sinuses working. I like to add a healthy slug of hot sauce in at this point. My poison is Scotch Bonnet sauce or Sriricha, but anything that packs the fire will do. I turn the heat off and squeeze over as much fresh lime as I have in the fridge; sometimes it’s a quarter which will do, but it’s best when I can throw two or three whole limes in. Then, I sprinkle over basil and coriander. Again, yes fresh is best, but let’s be realistic with what you’ve got –I always rely heavily on the pre-chopped dried herbs for this segment. I tend to sprinkle with more chopped chillies and some spring onion if I have it in to add that final blow your head off touch.

Any Thai fan worth their, well, salt, will tell you that this recipe is calling for some salty goodness, traditionally found in the form of fish sauce, and 2 healthy slugs of this will definitely get you there. However, if you’re opting for a vegetarian or vegan dish, which I do these days, I simply replace the fish sauce with a good quality soy sauce and season with some extra salt if I don’t feel the umami coming through in the soupy broth.

Now we’re all seasoned, you’re ready to serve up. The leftovers will keep in the fridge for a couple of days, or can easily be frozen. Enjoy with a glass of water the size of your head and a big old pot of lemon and ginger tea. Have several tissues on standby. Cry because there is nothing to watch and everything really hurts.