Street food. Vegetarian Ramen. Some handy tricks.

South or southwest 5 to 7, decreasing 4 for a time.

Slight or moderate, occasionally rough at first.

Rain or thundery showers.

Good, occasionally poor.

Have you ever eaten any kind of Asian soup on a street market? Either in Asia or in the UK during a festival? The vendor takes a bowl, opens a myriad of lids which cover ingredients, you point, he adds to your bowl and in the end he tops it all with a soup. You eat with bliss and think: I could eat one of those each day for the rest of my life.

Until you realise that, unless you live permanently in Asia or next door to Chinatown, you will be the one who braises the pork, poaches the chicken, steams the prawns, blanches the sprouts, cooks the noodles, fries the tofu, chops the vegetables, prepares the broth and does the washing up. All for one person. For one meal. So you are not going to do it. Until the day you really crave something like this. By the end of the preparations you are so exhausted that you could not care less if its good or not. Its food. And lots.

I have cut it up in manageable chunks for you. The broth I made for 4, since you can divide it in 4 portions and freeze them until you need them.

The spice paste sits happily for a few days around, the bamboo bathes in the brine, the tofu chills for a few days more in the freezer and a hardboiled egg is a hardboiled egg. Can be done, if you eat it in the meantime, tomorrow again.

So, with a bit of planning and doing some things while you cook other things, you always have the base for a ramen soup around. Whenever your craving hits you.

Dont be imitated by the amount of steps, you will realise that, until the last day, there is actually little work to do. And even on eating day it is not more challenging than another dish.

BROTH (serves 4)

1 large sheet dried kombu (kelp)

1 litre water

3 dried shiitakes, ground finely in a food processor

1 (5cm) piece ginger, peeled and sliced into thin sticks

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons mirin

1 tablespoon coconut oil

1 small onion, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

2 tablespoons of miso

400ml vegetable broth

3 cloves garlic, minced

In large bowl, combine the boiling water and the dried, ground mushrooms and the kelp and let soak 15 minutes.

In a large pot, heat the coconut oil over medium heat. Add the onion and carrot, sauté 2 minutes.

Add the miso, soya sauce, mirin, mushroom/kelp mixture (including the water), veggie broth, garlic, and ginger to your veggies and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for at least 20 minutes.

Strain the broth over a bowl to remove the solids and discard them.  Strain the broth again, this time through a muslin or through a coffee filter. Return to pan over medium heat and bring to a boil for another 10 minutes.  Overall you ought to end up with 1litre of nice brownish fluid. Remove from heat.

Don’t add salt or more soya sauce at this stage!

Once it is cool, it can be stored in the fridge or filled into portion sized freezer bags. It should give 4 portions.

The day before you want to eat the soup:

Take one bag out of the freezer and let it defrost in the fridge (put the bag into a mug, it might leak).

Make the 

SPICE PASTE (serves one, but could be a bit too much, depending how much you reduced your stock. Dont worry, use the leftover the next day over grilled chicken or grilled aubergines)

1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted

1 tablespoon of soy sauce or tamari

1 tablespoon mirin

2 teaspoons of chilli oil

1 tablespoon sesame paste (tahini)

1 cm piece of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

the greens from 1 spring onion, thinly sliced

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth (you might need to add a small amount of water for such a small amount of ingredients to get smooth)

Store in a lidded dish, but not in the fridge.

TOFU:

cut off half about 150gr of firm tofu from your normal block and slice this piece into slices the thickness of medium sliced toast bread (about 1 cm). Pat dry, put onto a piece of clingfilm and freeze. Uncovered. This will firm it up and result into a nice crunchy outer skin.

BAMBOO SHOOTS:

You can either open a tin of sliced bamboo shoots or get 4 shoots in brine (they are normally sold in packs of four, if you get one, even better). Drain and wash that slightly sour horrible brining liquid off. Slice unless they are already sliced. Add into a Tupperware and fill this with water and a generous pinch of salt. Cover and store in the fridge.

DUCK EGG (or hen)= unless you are vegan then skip that part

Hardboil.

Eating day has finally arrived. Put the kettle on, Love: you need it.

BEAN SPROUTS : Handful of bean sprouts, blanched. The best way to do this is putting them in a pot, pour the water from the kettle and a pinch of salt over them and let them sit for two minutes. Put the kettle on again, drain and repeat the procedure. After 2 minutes drain them and put them in a pot of ice water. They ought to be soft but not limp.  Once they are cool, drain them and put into your serving bowl.

TOFU out of the freezer and into a pan with a hot tablespoon of sesame oil. Turn frequently until they are nicely golden brown and crunchy. Take them out of the pan but let the oil in, drain ond let cool on a kitchen paper and then add to the sprouts.

Drain a few slices ( about 6-8) of the BAMBOO SHOOTS and pat dry. Reheat pan with sesame oil. In they go, fry until dry-ish, and then add a teaspoon of soya sauce, mirin and a tiny pinch of dried chilli flakes. Reduce. Drain, and once cool, add into your bowl.

Reheat your BROTH in a pan and fill another pan with salted water. While the water is boiling up, assemble the rest. A good tablespoon of the SPICE PASTE over your mixture in the serving bowl, peel and quarter the EGG, put on top, cut the greens from a SPRING ONION into rings and top the eggs.

Now the pot with the salt water should be boiling and your broth hot. Add RAMEN NOODLES or other soup noodles (not rice noodles- I am thinking more into chow mein or similar noodles). Depending on the variety this can take from 3 to 8 minutes. Drain, put into your serving bowl and top with the BROTH. Bring to the table, stir and enjoy.

Verdict: Well, I have done it before in steps (for four) and it was bloody gorgeous and manageable. Today I made it all in one afternoon in order to scale it down. It was still gorgeous, but I was so exhausted that I did not care. It was food. Exactly what I needed. The washing up alone killed me (I don’t have a dishwasher).

The only thing I noticed was that it was not too salty. Heureka!

No, honestly, do try it. It is wonderful.

The spice paste was from a website I sadly don’t remember, the idea with the ground dried mushrooms from David Chang, incorporating kelp or other seaweed into soups from a demonstration on Irish dulse,

the brining of the bamboo shoots from a food vendor in Vietnam and the idea with freezing tofu from seriouseats and J. Kenji López-Alt`s take on Vegan chorizo, which I can’t wait to try out.