Pork Ramen Noodle Soup

I don't think I know any college students who don't have at least one or two packages of ramen noodles in their cupboards.  But the seasoning packets, in my opinion. are too boring!!  So I decided to spice things up and make the soup more satisfying by adding two kinds of pork, vegetables, and a real broth--not some salty, nasty seasoning packet!  This is ramen, a little closer to the real stuff you would get at a Japanese restaurant.

Pork Ramen Noodle Soup

1/2 block dried ramen noodles
1/2 cooked, frozen corn cob, thawed (or use roughly 1/4 c. bagged frozen corn)
1/2 carrot, pealed
1 oz. pork belly
1 oz. char sui pork
1 spring onion
1 c. turkey stock (or use chicken stock)
2 tsp. shaoxing rice wine
2 tsp. soy sauce

Cook the ramen according to package directions.  Drain and rinse with cold water.  Set aside.

Cut the pork belly into 1/2 in. cubes.  Heat a pot over medium heat and add the pork belly.  Do not add oil.  Cook 3-4 minutes until the meat has cooked through.

Dice the carrot into 1/4 in. pieces and add to the pot.  Stir into the pork belly pieces and cook 1-2 minutes.  The carrot should brown slightly.

Mix the turkey stock, rice wine, and soy sauce.  Add to the pot and bring to a boil.  Simmer 2 minutes to cook the carrot.

Using a sharp knife, cut the corn kernels from the cob.  Slice the char sui into 1/8 in. slices.  Add the corn and char sui to the soup.  Simmer 2-3 minutes, until the pork is well heated through.

Slice the spring onion into 1/2 in. pieces on the diagonal, and add to the soup.  Simmer 1 more minute.

To serve, put the noodles in the bottom of a serving bowl and spoon the soup over top.

Teriyaki Chicken & Vegetables with Diakon Rice and Sweet Egg

Whooo!!  I'm back!  Sorry for all the delay.  Two posts this time because of my forgetfulness.  I'm actually posting these from the Pratt library because I'm looking up stuff about bookbinding for my portfolio, but that's another story.  What I can say is that they somehow still have the A/C on (goodness knows why), and it's blowing just about right at me and I'm cold.  *teeth chattering*  I can't feel my fingers, so if there are typos here, I'm blaming it all on that.

More chicken teriyaki??  Yes.  It's delicious.  Just because I'm posting my eating habits to the world doesn't mean I can't make something over again.  This wasn't my best version of diakon rice.  I think I should soak the diakon in the soy sauce instead of just pour it over top.  The diakon flavor was a little stronger than I would have liked.  The chicken and veggies in the teriyaki sauce is heavenly.

Teriyaki Chicken & Vegetables with Diakon Rice and Sweet Egg

Ingredients:

1/3 c. rice (rinse if white rice)
1/2 c. water
1/2 in. diakon, pealed
1 Tbsp. bonito flakes
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 chicken thigh
2 dried shiitake mushrooms, reconstituted
2 spears asparagus, blanched
for teriyaki sauce: 
     1 Tbsp. soy sauce
     1 Tbsp. sake
     1 Tbsp. mirin
     2 tsp. water
     1 tsp. brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 tsp. brown sugar
pinch of salt
6 snowpeas, trimmed
sesame seeds (optional, to serve)

Put the rice in a pot with a tight-fitting lid and cover with the measured water.  Boil until the liquid has been absorbed.  Remove from heat, but leave the lid on for an additional 10 minutes.

Using kitchen shears, cut the bone out of the chicken thigh and snip the meat into bite-sized pieces.  Heat a large pan over medium-high heat and add the chicken pieces.  (note:  if your chicken has skin on, do not add any vegetable oil.  If your chicken is skinless, add a little oil.)  Saute 5-6 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.  Remove the chicken from the pan temporarily.

Beat the sugar and salt into the egg and add to the pan.  Using slicing motions with a spatula, cook the egg until it forms little pieces.  Remove from the pan.

Add the chicken back to the pan.  Slice the mushrooms into 1/2 in. slices and cut the asparagus spears into thirds.  Add the mushrooms and asparagus the the pan.  Cook 2-3 minutes, or until the vegetables are cooked.

Mix the ingredients for the teriyaki sauce or use 1/4 c. pre-made teriyaki sauce.  Add to the pan.  It should get fairly frothy.  Cook and stir occasionally until the sauce has cooked down and coated the chicken and vegetables in a glaze.  Be careful not to let it burn.  Remove from heat.

Chop the diakon into 1/2 in. cubes.  Lift the lid from the rice and gently fluff with a spatula.  Add the diakon pieces, bonito flakes, and soy sauce to the rice and fold in.

To serve, put the diakon rice in a rice bowl.  Put the egg and snow peas together in another small bowl, and put the teriyaki chicken and vegetables on a small plate.  Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Pork & Vegetables with Rice Noodles

I just grabbed the first foil-wrapped thing out of the freezer, and it turned out to be ground pork.  (Just a note, you should wrap your meats with aluminum foil for the freezer, and NOT plastic wrap.  Plastic wrap doesn't get as good of a seal and your stuff has a much, much, much higher potential of getting freezer burned.  Plus, foil can be labeled and dated on the outside with a sharpie marker for easy reference.)  At any rate, I wasn't sure how this would turn out (so what else is new?), but I got the basic idea of ground pork, mushroom, and spring onion with an oyster sauce from one of my other cookbooks, so I thought I'd give it a shot.  Mind you, I didn't do this from the cookbook.  I left the book in the other room and made it up as I went along.  It came out quite delicious, so I encourage you to try it.  If you don't have rice noodles, though, you can just use rice.  It tastes just about the same, it's just one's the grains and the other has been pounded into submission and extruded into noodle-ishness.

Pork & Vegetables with Rice Noodles

Ingredients:

2-3 oz. rice stick noodles (or just make some rice)
1/4 lb. ground pork
3 dried shiitake mushrooms
2 large handfuls of baby spinach
2 spring onions
4 tsp. oyster suace
1 tsp. fish sauce
1 tsp. soy sauce
sesame seeds (optional, to serve)

Place the mushrooms in a small bowl and cover with boiling water.  Let stand until reconstituted, then squeeze out the excess liquid and chop into roughly 1/4 in. pieces.  Set aside.

Boil water in a pot and add the rice noodles.  Cook according to package directions and drain, but don't rinse.  Set aside.

Heat a dry large skillet over medium-high heat and add the ground pork.  Using a spatula or wooden spoon, stir the pork with slicing motions to break the pork up into little pieces.  Continue to cook until the pork is all cooked and browned.

Mince the spring onions into little pieces.  Add the spring onions and mushroom to the pan and stir into the pork.  Cook an additional 1-2 minutes, or until the mushrooms are cooked.

Rinse the spinach and add to the pan.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the spinach has wilted.  (I know it looks like a lot of spinach, but it won't be when it wilts down.)

Mix the oyster sauce, fish sauce, and soy sauce together.  Add to the pan.  Stir into the mixture and cook 1-2 more minutes until the mixture is well coated and the sauce is heated through. 

To serve, lay down a bed of the rice noodles on a serving plate and add the pork mixture over top.  Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Lup Cheong & Vegetable Stir Fry

Well, I don't have a whole lot to say about this one.  It wasn't my worst, but it wasn't my best, either.  I realize I've been kind of failing at this lately, but I'm going to try to do my best to get back on schedule.  I've been really exhausted lately, which is decreasing my energy and appetite--and probably not in a good way.  I'll do my best to get back on top of things, but in the meantime this is what's happening.

Lup Cheong & Vegetable Stir Fry

1 lup cheong
1 carrot, pealed
handful of blanched/frozen broccoli
handful of blanched/frozen green beans
2 blanched/frozen asparagus spears
1/4 satsuma-imo
scant 1/4 c. turkey stock (or chicken stock)
1 tsp. shaoxing rice wine
yasai fumi furikake (optional, to serve)

Chop the satsuma-imo into roughly 1/2 in. cubes.  Boil water in a pot and add the sweet potato cubes.  Boil 6-8 minutes until the potato pieces can be easily pierced with a fork.  Drain and set aside.

Chop the carrot into 1/4 in. slices on the diagonal, the green beans in half, the asparagus into 2 in. pieces, and the broccoli into bite-sized pieces. 

Mix the turkey stock and rice wine in the pot and bring to a boil.  Add the carrot, broccoli, green beans, and asparagus.  Simmer 4-5 minutes, or until the frozen vegetables have thawed and heated through, and the carrot is slightly tender.  Add the sweet potato and simmer 1-2 more minutes.

Sprinkle with yasai fumi furikake and serve.

Green Noodle Bowl

So, Emily.  Did you have any idea what you were doing when you made this last night?  No.  Will you ever make this recipe again?  NO.  Yeah... let's just say that I thought it would sort of work, but it was an epic fail.  My deepest apologies for anyone who is appalled at the way I butchered these delicious matcha somen noodles.  For real, too.  I'm not trying to make a joke.

Green Noodle Bowl

Ingredients:

3 oz. matcha green tea somen noodles
2 dried shiitake mushrooms
1 c. water
1/2 tsp. dashi granules
1/2 tsp. soy sauce
1/2 tsp. mirin
1/2 tsp. sake
handful of baby spinach
8 snowpeas, trimmed
sesame seeds

Boil water in a pot, then add the somen noodles.  Cook for 1-2 minutes, until soft.  Drain, but do not rinse.

Put the mushrooms in a small bowl, then cover them with boiling water.  When reconstituted, squeeze the excess liquid from the mushrooms and cut them into 1/2 in. slices.

Pour the measured water in the pot and bring to a boil.  Add the dashi granules, soy sauce, mirin, and sake.  Stir until the dashi granules dissolve.

Add the spinach and mushrooms and cook until the leaves have wilted.  Add the noodles and snowpeas (sliced in half on the diagonal) and cook 1 minute more.  Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.

Pork & Pepper Noodle Soup

Why all the soups?  Well, soup is just one of those things that's super easy to make.  Generally, only one pot is needed to cook the entire thing, and you're basically just adding ingredients in steps to a hot broth, which makes it so simple.  I don't know what it's like in your part of the world, but here in New York, it's getting chilly (and, I might add, my dorm room--probably like many others--is quite drafty).  A hot bowl of soup is welcome when it's cold out. 

What a surprise, I didn't thaw out meat again, so I pulled something out of the freezer that would thaw easily enough:  pork belly pieces.  When I bought it, it was already cut up into manageable pieces, so a hot pot was all that was needed to thaw and cook them.  Pork belly is fatty, though, so I'll just say off the bat that this isn't a calorie-conscious meal.  But yesterday (when I made this) I had only a bowl of instant oatmeal for breakfast, and then didn't eat again until nearly 11:00pm.  In other words, I hadn't eaten in over 12 hours (an I'm hypoglycemic, mind you) and I'm pretty sure I could have done with the calories, so I didn't mind.  After I made this soup, it sort of reminded me of fall leaves from the yellow and red peppers, the amber color of the broth, the tan of the noodles, and the little contrast of green from the spring onion.  It was pretty, in my mind.  I guess it fit the season?  Whether or not you agree, it's delicious!

Side note:  This is officially the last of my shanghai noodles, so if you're annoyed with the frequency that I've been using them, rejoice.  I probably won't get them for a little while until I can get back over to Chinatown.  I've been so incredibly busy that I haven't been able to go.

Pork & Pepper Noodle Soup

Ingredients:

2 oz. shanghai noodles
1 oz. pork belly
2 small sweet peppers (one red, one yellow; or use 1/4 each of bell pepper), seeded
2 spring onions
1 1/2 c. turkey stock (or use chicken stock)
1 tsp. tom yum paste
sesame seeds (optional, to serve)

Boil water in a pot and add the noodles.  Boil 5-6 minutes until they are plump and tender.  Drain well and rinse with cold water.  Using kitchen shears, snip the noodles into roughly 3 in. lengths.

Cut the pork belly into 1/2 in. cubes.  Heat the pot over medium heat and add the pork belly.  Do not add any oil!  Saute the pork belly for 4-5 minutes, or until thawed (if frozen) and golden brown.  (At this point, if you feel there is too much oil in the bottom of the pot, you can remove the pork and drain off the fat.  Then put the pork pieces back in the pot.)

Add the tom yum paste and saute until fragrant.  Pour the turkey stock over the pork and tom yum paste.  Bring to a boil.

Slice the peppers into 1/4 in. strips and cut the spring onions into 1 in. lengths.  Add the peppers only to the pot and boil for 4-5 minutes, or until the peppers are tender.  They'll still have a little crunch to them, but if you like your peppers softer, just boil longer.  Add the spring onions and boil 1-2 minutes more. 

To serve, put the noodles in the bottom of a serving bowl and spoon the soup over top.  Sprinkle with sesame seeds, if desired.

Lup Cheong Noodle Soup

Mashing up kabocha in soup?  It's a little funky in texture in the soup, but it still tastes pretty good.  Why?  Well.... OK, so my kabocha had a tiny bit of mold on the skin.  I'm just one of those people who will eat off the floor (as in if I just drop a piece of popcorn on the floor or something), and the rest of it looked fine, so I just rinsed it pretty good and cut off the rind.  (I call it strengthening my immune system.)  Usually you don't peal kabocha, but what the hey.  I'm also trying to use up these shanghai noodles because I don't know how much longer they'll last, so this is a bit of a clean-out-the-refrigerator soup.  (The satsuma-imo was juuuuust starting to get mold, too.  Call me gross, but that's how I roll.)

Lup Cheong Noodle Soup

Ingredients:

3-4 oz. kabocha, pealed and seeded
2 oz. shanghai noodles
1/2 satsuma-imo
1 c. turkey stock (or use chicken stock)
3 dried shiitake mushrooms
2 tsp. shaoxing rice wine
2 tsp. soy sauce

Boil water in a pot.  Add the shanghai noodles and boil for 3-4 minutes, or until plump and soft.  Drain and rinse with cold water.  Using kitchen shears, snip the noodles into roughly 3 in. lengths.

Put the shiitake mushrooms in a small bowl and cover with boiling water.  When reconstituted, squeeze out the excess liquid and slice into 1/2 in. slices.  Set aside.

Dice the kabocha into very small pieces (say around 1/4 in. cubes--they don't have to be perfect because you're going to mash it up anyway) and boil for 6-8 minutes, or until the squash is very soft.  Drain well.  Then, using a fork, mash the cooked kabocha into a paste.  Set aside.

Chop the satsuma-imo into roughly 1 cm cubes.  In a pot, bring the turkey stock, rice wine, and soy sauce to a boil.  Add the satsuma-imo and boil for 6-8 minutes, or until a fork easily pierces the satsuma-imo pieces.

Slice the lup cheong into 1/4 in. pieces on the diagonal.  Add the lup cheong and mushrooms to the soup and simmer for another 2-3 minutes, until the lup cheong has cooked/heated through.  Stir in the mashed kabocha and simmer for 1 more minute to heat through.

To serve, put the noodles in a serving bowl, then spoon the soup over top.