Today we had ramen noodles with two eggs and some veggie parts:
Tuscan kale stems, Shiitake stems, and garlic
I sauteed the veggies in a little peanut oil before adding them to the soup. During the last minute of cooking, I stirred in the two eggs, beaten.
Here’s the fairly good-looking result.
Sadly, it’s not as good as it looks. Shiitake stems I’ve used in stir-fries with heavy sauce, and the sauce covers the bitterness of the stems. Not so with ramen soup. Other mushroom stems are fine, but Shiitakes are too bitter. Next time, they’ll join the compost pile, and I’ll use some of the dried oyster mushrooms from the freezer instead.
Other than that, the soup was okay, although I wish I’d chopped the kale finer. It was hot soup on a cold winter afternoon, and we ate all of it.
I plan on doing more ramen soup experiments. Usually when I think of vegetable soup, I think of an afternoon’s undertaking making a whole stockpotful. This is a nice way to have a bowl or two of vegetable soup with some random vegetable pieces.
thoughtful consumption 
I love making gussied Ramen!! SO inexpensive and so tasty!
There’s an organic brand called Koyo that’s pretty rad. Literally, the ingredient list for the noodles is “organic heirloom wheat flour and sea salt”. The ingredient list for the broth mix is great, too – simple ingredients that you can identify as whole foods. They have 4 kinds available at Sevananda, but there are a lot of flavors. There are also some made with soba noodles instead of plain wheat noodles! You can also buy them by the case on Amazon.
Look for these labels…
http://www.koyonaturalfoods.com/productlist.aspx?catid=Ramen
I almost always add some real, congealed stock to my Ramen, either in addition to or instead of the sauce packet. I find this helps with covering up the ickier veggie flavors, as well as adding more nutritive value.
Things I *highly* recommend doing in gussied Ramen:
-stir in Pesto at the end.
-stir in Asian Pesto at the end. (Asian pesto is something I developed from my time @ P.F. Chang’s – Instead of just Basil in the pesto, put in equal parts of thai basil, mint, and cilantro. To. Die. For.)
-stir in oven roasted tomato pesto at the end. (best thing EVER in the dead of winter. I mean, you slow-roast tomatoes for the winter, right? If you don’t, then start in 2011.
-Add the chicken, duck, beef, etc. bits from making stock as the protein. I usually use my chicken neck meat for this.
-Cook the noodles, drain them, use some of the water to braise kale in before returning noodles to pan.
-If you can find baby shiitakes (which are omg so good!), those are amazing sautéed and tossed in whole. They’re even better if you tempura fry them and dump them on the top…
-Trader Joe’s has fish bits & pieces – end cuts that can’t go into a larger package as a filet. Pan fry these, stack on the top of the noodles
-serve with a side of bean sprouts, lime, pepper, cilantro, and thai basil pho-style. Put extra extra broth in the noodles!
-sautée the veggies in duck fat and serve with duck meat.
😀
These are great ideas, Jenna – thanks!
I’m out of noodles, so I’ll try Koyo next.
And now I’m totally craving something – anything – sauteed in duck fat! Must be because it’s so cold here right now.
… just putting some gussied ramen in my belly. Used Koyo asian vegetable flavor, and when I threw in the noodles and broth packet, I also threw in an entire bunch of spinach and a cooked leftover crepinette. This crepinette was from the Spotted Trotter, and contains local organic pork, local organic rabbit, hazelnuts, and Madeira soaked figs, all wrapped in caul fat.
I served it with pan-seared brussels sprouts leaves. I’m dying right now of happy.
I saw Koyo ramen at the Ponce Whole Foods, and it was only $0.99. Cheapest price I’ve found it, but they only had 2 flavors. However, you can order cases through your store manager, and get a 10% case discount, and I’ll bet they let you order whatever flavor you want. I’m going to try. At 12 units per case at $1 each, that’s $12, minus 10%, so $10.80. They don’t go bad and are good to have on hand, so that’s how I’ll be buying.
I’m dying for some duck fat, too.
A guy at the Peachtree Farmer’s Market is taking duck pre-orders – His farm is in Carroll county. He said he’ll probably ask $18/bird, which is $8 less than I was paying in CA. When ou consider that 8oz of Duck fat at WF is $8, and I usually get 2 cups out of a whole duck, that means you get great duck fat, and the meat is $2, essentially. I like that math! 😀
The guy will be emailing me about the preorders – do you want me to forward that email to you, so you can order, too?
let me know at gallaure at yahoo dot com
Sounds mahvelous. I’ll be near Whole Foods at Ponce Friday and will stop in for some Koyo action.
Thanks for the tip, but no ducks for me this year. I’ve got a couple of chickens and a bunch of beef in the freezer to get through first.
And happy National Cupcake Day!
Thanks!
Since the ducks were eggs last week, I don’t think they’ll be ready by the end of the year… 😉
I’m expecting February, maybe…
OoooOOOooooh. I see. Thanks for the tip. 🙂
[…] so yummy, and the cold never happened. If you’re interested in other ramen soup ideas, check out Gussied-up ramen – especially Jenna’s comment chock-full of great […]