Homemade Ramen with a Julienne Medley

Ramen is a traditional Japanese noodle soup usually made with a rich dashi base broth and handmade noodles. It is very nutritious unlike its cousins the instant noodles, an instant version of ramen that has taken the student world by storm as the cheaper alternative to full meals. I used to think that all ramen comes in packet filled with rectangular or round disc of dehydrated noodles, seasoning and dehydrated pieces of vegetables and flavors that range from Indomees to tomyam to kimchi to duck. Boy was I wrong.

It all started when I watched this movie called Tampopo, a satirical Japanese comedy by Juzo Itami. The movie revolves around the art of making the perfect ramen and the appreciation of food. The show is quirky with random scenes from several different characters - the only thing that binds these random scenes together is the food theme. I must warn you that this is not a show for the minors as there are some scenes where food is incorporated with sex to define the ever thin line of pleasure that both these activities give ;)

My favorite instant noodle of all time!

Back to making ramen, it was after watching Tampopo that I craved ramen noodles and decided to make my own ultimate ramen! It is very similar to making the Chinese la mian actually instead of stretching my noodles, I ran them through my pasta machine.

A good bowl of ramen is in the broth and the noodles.

For my broth, I labouriously boiled four chicken carcasses with a head of garlic, 1 cup of bonito flakes and a knob of ginger for close to 3 hours. But first, parboil your chicken carcass for 5 minutes first - this is key to getting a very clear broth with no grayish froth while you are boiling your broth. After 3 hours, sieve the carcass garlic and bonito flakes out. This will be your broth base.
For my noodles, I used 1 cup of all purpose flour,1 teaspoon salt, 1 egg and 2 tbsp of water. Knead until the dough becomes tough and satiny smooth. This is perhap the most labourious of all throughout the recipe but you will be rewarded with bouncy noodles at the end if you do this. I kneaded my dough for 10-15 mins nonstop. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes before rolling it out thinly. I just ran it through my pasta machine and then cut them with my finest pasta roller on the same machine. Douse a lot of flour on the freshly cut pasta so they don't clump up together.

To cook and assemble, I heat up a large pot of water, salted, and wait until it boils. While waiting for the water to boil, I took 2 tbsp of miso paste and added it into the broth pot - I stir to dissolve the miso and then season with some soy sauce. The broth is now ready to be used.

Now that the water is boiling I tossed in my fresh noodles. It takes only 2 minutes to cook, once they start floating on the surface you can take them out into a serving bowl. Ladle the hot broth onto your soup and garnish with your favorite ingredients. I made some julienne red peppers, green beans, green onions/scallions and vegetarian mock meat as my topping but feel free to use beef, pork, chicken or seafood.

To eat, you must slurp the noodles loudly and drink every last drop of broth!

There is no one way of making ramen as the variety of broth base is endless! But the noodle itself is always flour, salt, water, eggs or kansui.

What's your favorite instant ramen? :)