I love my ramen noodle!  It doesn’t get any easier than just throwing a bunch of stuff in a pot and add some noodles.  Here is what I did for this bowl, and I’ll share my deep dark secret with you on how I flavor the broth.

Evie’s Ramen #131

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch of soba noodles
• a handful of enoki mushrooms, cleaned
• 3 baby napa cabbage
• 1 medium carrot
• a few slices of Asian BBQ
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp beef broth
• 1 tsp veal demi glaze
• cilantro for ganish

Directions:

1. Cut your carrots into pretty flower shapes!  Very optional, you can just slice them, but I had some extra time and making carrot flowers is fun.  I first cut my carrot into a 2 inch section, make sure the bottom and top are flat as can be so the carrot sits up completely straight.  Then I cut V-shaped sections all the way down the length of the carrot.  This might take a little practice to perfect.  After you’ve cut about 5 or 6 Vs all around the perimeter, making sure they are evenly spaced, turn the carrot sideways and cut them into slices.
2. Boil 3 cups of water, add the beef broth and veal demi glaze.  This is my secret ingredient as of lately, it’s super flavorful in any broth!  I purchased mine pre-packaged but you can also make your own, it just takes about oh 50000 hours.
3. Meanwhile in another pot, boil 4 cups of water, this is your blanching water.  Add the carrots, baby napa, and mushrooms.  Blanch everything for about 2 minutes or however long to get your desired texture (you might like a crunchier vegetable for example).    Drain and set aside.
4. Poach an egg using the blanching water, or if you prefer poaching it in a pan you can do that as well.
5. To the beef broth, add the BBQ, they only need about a minute to warm up.   Fish the BBQ out and set aside.  We cook the BBQ in the flavored broth as opposed to the blanching water because we want to keep the meaty flavor.  If you don’t have any Asian BBQ, you can substitute fried thick-sliced bacon.
6. Add the soba noodles to the beef broth.  Follow the directions on your package, but typically the thin kind takes about 2-3 minutes to cook.
7. Assemble all your ingredients!  First using a pasta spoon, grab all the noodles out of the broth and place in a bowl.  Then arrange the vegetables, egg, and meat over top.  Last, pour the broth over everything but make sure it doesn’t drown, then garnish with cilantro.  We pour the broth last to warm the vegetables up again if they got cold, and add a little flavor to them before eating.

And there you have it, another pretty bowl of ramen.  I think if there was a most-ramen-eaten-by-a-single-person award category, I would probably win it.

Evie’s Leftover Turkey “Fried” Rice

Ingredients: (Yields a pot of rice, enough for leftovers to bring to lunch the next day and share with coworkers)

• 2 cup of jasmine rice *
• 4 cups of turkey stock
• 3 eggs, scrambled beforehand
• 1 cup of mixed veggies from your fridge, diced small
• 1/3 cup soy sauce (more or less to taste, I rarely ever use exact measurements, so boring)
• 1.5 cups of leftover turkey, diced

*Use the cups provided by your rice cooker and the water line from the pot.  The rice to water ratio should be 1:2.  Very important for this recipe if you are going to double the recipe, do not use the maximum allowed cuppage for your rice cooker, make sure you leave some room for the extra stuff that goes into fried rice.

Directions:

	Measure out your rice and wash it in the pot – add water, stir with your hand, drain the water, repeat a few times.  This removes any impurities from the rice, and it tastes better.
	Next add the turkey stock to the rice.  I used 2 cups of rice, and filled my rice cooker pot to the line marked “2″, because you see, I used 2 cups of rice.
	Add the turkey cubes to your rice mixture.  Notice the water level rose to 2.5, this is why I say don’t make the max for your rice cooker.  I’m not exactly sure what would happen if you did, but I’m pretty sure it will lead to the zombie apocalypse in some way.  Make sure you have a board with a nail through it.  Cook your rice according to the rice cooker instructions, usually this involves hitting a button that says “cook my rice” and it goes.  Really, do you have a rice cooker yet? You want one now don’t you?
	Go sit on the couch for a bit and have a glass of wine while your awesome rice cooker is doing all the work.  When it beeps to alert you that there’s 10 minutes left in the cooking process, prepare your cup of veggies.  Now if you’re just using frozen peas and carrots, you can probably skip this step.  I used fresh baby bok choy because that’s what I had in the fridge this week (and yes I have a lot of it!)  If you are using a veggie that requires a bit of softening, I would suggest doing a quick sautee.   Also scramble your eggs at this time before the rice is fully done.
	This is what your rice will look like after it’s done cooking.  It’ll be very fragrant and smells of turkey stock.
	Add your eggs, veggies and soy sauce to the rice.  Stir everything thoroughly.  Let everything sit in the rice cooker for another 10 minutes on warm (especially if you are adding frozen vegetables).  My eggs aren’t pictured because I was being economical and using the same pan I sauteed the veggies in!
	After warming, you are ready to serve your fried rice!  nomnomnom.

First I hope you saved your turkey bones and made a turkey stock. If you didn’t, tsk tsk. It’s the best part of cooking a whole turkey and it takes about 2 seconds to make, and your house smells wonderful for the whole day.

Turkey Stock

Ingredients:

• Your leftover turkey bones
• 1 or 2 onions, quartered
• 1 or 2 stalks of celery, roughly chopped
• 1 or 2 carrots, roughly chopped
• 1 or 2 leeks, washed clean and roughly chopped
• Any leftover aromatics such as rosemary, thyme, sage, whatever works. Throw it in!
• Enough water to submerge everything

If you don’t have any of the above ingredients, no biggie, stock isn’t a precise thing.

Directions:

1. Put all your ingredients in a pot, bring to a boil. Then down to a simmer and cover, leave it on the stove for 4 hours or so.
2. If the water level is too low, add a little more water.  Taste at the end, if the flavor is too strong, add more water.  If it’s too weak, let it boil off some more.
3. Strain the stock. Store in a large Tupperware container.  I usually end up with about 6-8 cups from 1 turkey.

Now that’s over with, you can use the turkey stock for many things.  I’ve used it to cook my ramen, recipe to follow.  I also used it in a turkey fried rice which I will post later this week.  I make ramen, A LOT.  Probably too much but it’s one of my comfort foods and it’s super easy to make.  Now this isn’t the dried noodles with some flavor packets labeled “oriental flavor” and sold for 30 cents.  This is all fresh ingredients, fresh vegetables are very important when making good ramen.

Evie’s Turkey Ramen with Baby Napa Cabbage and Mushrooms

Ingredients (this yields 1 serving):

• 2 cups Turkey Stock
• 1/2 cup Leftover turkey meat
• 2 roughly chopped Baby Bok Choy*
• 3 mushrooms, sliced
• fried onions**
• Sesame oil
• Salt***
• 1 bunch of Asian Noodles (Angel hair pasta is an acceptable substitute but requires longer cooking time)

* You don’t need to use bok choy here if you don’t have any on hand.  Any vegetables that you like will do.  Find what’s in your fridge, chop it up and stick it in.  (heh heh heh)
**You can get fried onions from the asian stores.  You can probably use the american kind too, but I find the asian ones have better flavor and less batter.
***If you brined your turkey like I told you to, you might not have to salt the turkey, your stock should be salty enough from the bird

Directions:

1. Heat up the turkey stock in a medium pot.  Bring to a boil.
2. Add the vegetables and leftover turkey, boil for 3 minutes.
3. Add the asian noodles, boil for another 2 minutes.  Add salt to taste.
4. Put everything in a bowl.  Sprinkle with fried onions and drizzle with seasame oil.

EASY HUH.   I told you so.

Microwaving Fish Rules

1. If your fish costs more than $20/lb, if you microwave it I will come and kill you in your sleep.
2. It has to be thin to cook all the way through without making parts of it extra chewey.  The best kind is a flat white fish.
3. It’s best to do this with a liquidy sauce.

Some people say that microwaved lobster tastes better than steamed lobster, so why not fish?

She uses the Lee Kum Kee brand soy sauce for seafood, which is basically a mix of asian flavors great for seafood (such as cooking wine, soy sauce, etc).  I didn’t have any on hand so I’ve used equal parts soy sauce and fish sauce and cooking wine with a dash of seasame oil and one ginger slice.  I experimented with a small slab of sea bass, and thus came to rule #1 and rule #2.  Rule #2 because the sea bass was too thick and I ended up overcooking parts of it to get it completely done.  And then rule #1 because I was so pissed I used such an expensive fish.  I have tried this with thin white fish and it’s pretty much delicious.  I am going to experiment later with microwaving a slab of salmon in a seasame soy sweet glaze and see how it turns out.

Ingredients:

• A 1/2 lb slab of white fish, thin, bone in, bone out, whatever works.
• 1 tbsp Soy Sauce
• 1 tbsp Fish Sauce (if you don’t like fish sauce, you can just use straight soy)
• 1 tbsp Cooking Wine (this eliminates some of the fishy flavors)
• 1 slice of ginger
• dash of sesame oil

Directions:

1. Use a glass bowl with a flat bottom that the fish can sit in.  Put the slice of ginger at the bottom of the fish.  Combine all ingredients and cover with saran wrap.
2. Microwave for 4 minutes.  Be careful when taking it out, it’ll be hot.  Eat fish.

I garnished with some sauteed baby bok choy and mushrooms.  Don’t forget, use a thinner fish!!