Survival Sunday 252: Parmesan Spaghetti Ramen

In Which This Is My Last Noodle of 2019!

Well, here we are, two days out from the end of the decade. It's been a wild year, guys!

I figured we'd round out the year with the last of our East-Meets-West noodles - a spicy Parmesan pasta! This came from another one of our Umai Crates, and we had very high hopes for it, since the last few Italian-inspired bowls had been so freakin good. This was a pretty standard setup, too, which was good, because I was already tired from putting together Christmas gifts and we made this a couple of weeks ago!

As you can see, it warns you that it's spicy, but it's also welcoming and cute.
Very Japanese.

It's a 3-minute bowl, so I pulled out the packets and poured in the hot water and let it sit for the full three minutes.

Which was just enough. If you like your pasta very soft, go for 3:30.

Since we're al dente people, it was time to drain the pasta and add the flavor packets! I was at a loss at first as to what the green packet could have been, but that's because I don't read instructions very well, lol.

On the left is the tasty spicy tomato sauce in the red packet.
The green packet on the right was the Parmesan cheese!

A word from the wise: Don't fiddle with your lid too much before you drain the water, because it will detach too much, and then you'll be constantly fighting to keep the noodles in your bowl without scalding your fingers.

Overall, I'd say it was worth it, though!

Almost finished! Look how quickly that cheese started melting into the noodles!
Seriously, there was about 50% more of that before I picked up the camera!

A closeup so you can see just how good this looked...
Or you would see that if the color balance wasn't bad on my phone...

I should probably mention that we had this with some leftovers from a really great Christmas party we'd gone too earlier that week (the day before, in fact!)

Since there was a fair amount of food in the leftovers box, we picked out some of the choicest sausages and added those to our spicy Spaghetti Ramen experience!

10/10 do recommend!

In the end, the sauce was just tomato-y enough to get the tomato-ness of it, but not so much so that it overpowered the meat, noodles, and spiciness! Actually, I was unimpressed with the spice-factor at first, but it was a sneaky spice that crept up on you the more you ate it. I really like this bowl, and I thought that, while there could always have been more cheese, what we got was really nice and went well with everything.

Overall, I'd have to say that this particular fusion was not only successful, but it's something I'd buy regularly if it was available locally! Really nice.

That'll about do it for me, today, guys.
Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Survival Sunday 233: Taiwan Mix Soba Sauce

An Umai Crate Adventure

I love exploring Asian cuisine via Umai Crate - they do not sponsor this blog by any means (though I wouldn't say no if they offered...). Every month, a new giant yellow box on my doorstep. Every month, oodles of noodles from Japan (though I've gotten plenty of Korean and Chinese dishes as well). Every month, deliciousness.

The meal I prepped for this blog was Taiwanese with a Japanese spin. I believe it was from the August 2019 crate. These noodles were served cold - which is always fun! Some time, I'd love to find a way to film the process of making cold noodles, because it's a blast, and I think you'd probably enjoy watching me flail around without a colander.

We didn't use the middle packet for this venture, figuring that a Yuzu sauce would be
a bit much on top of the already thick and rich Taiwanese sauce in the first bag.

I believe this is the very first time we've received meat in our Umai Crate, too, so this was an extra neat adventure!

This packet felt heavy and chunky, which sounds very unappealing, I know,
but it was actually pretty neat. Again, I don't think we've ever gotten anything
like this before in previous crates!

They're not soba, not really, but we love these Chinese noodles.
They're thick, salty, and really awesome hot or cold.

The first step in prepping most noodle dishes is, of course, to boil water. In this case, I boiled the water in a saucepan on a stovetop, but sometimes you can get away with a kettle. Here in the US, our power doesn't work the way it does in other countries, so it's actually faster to boil water on the stovetop in a teakettle than it is to get an electric kettle. I know that's not the case in the rest of the world, but like with our ridiculous Imperial measurements, we're too stubborn to get with it.

Here we see the water juuuuuust starting to simmer.

 After you get the water to a boil, add your noodles. I try to fan them out when I can, but... it's not always so easy to do that. If your noodles won't drop into a nice fan, just grab your cooking chopsticks (or, you know, a pasta spoon or whatever you're planning to stir with) and start moving those noodz around. You don't want them stuck to the bottom of the pan! Boy is that a pain to wash up after...

If you can find these Chinese Noodles, you're probably going to be a bit startled at just how... odd the water looks when you're done boiling them and making them soft.

The water in question.

The water from mine became this weird, thick, yellowish slurry that I assume was the result of different proteins cooking out of the noodles or something. Definitely dispose of this with the water running so it doesn't coat your pipes. You also want to start draining your noodles as soon as you feel like they're done enough (that's a subjective thing, dude - some like 'em stiff, others like 'em squishy).

For me, the process is a bit weird, since I don't use a colander. Instead, I just plop the noodles into a bowl and immediately begin rinsing them with cold water. This process is pretty simple, but it's also made complicated by the slipperiness of the noodz. Basically, I fill the bowl with cold water, swish the noodles around, and then carefully drain the water, repeating the process until the noodles are all cool to the touch. Then I gently squeeze the remaining water from the clump of noodles and dump the bowl out. Finally, I return the noodles to the bowl and let them relax, sometimes spreading them around with chopsticks if they're getting sticky.

Cold noodles in a bowl. This is where things really get started, flavor-wise.

Now that your noodles are situated in their environment, you want to get started adding flavor. Sometimes this means a broth or soup that you pour over the top or save off to the side. Sometimes you're adding veggies or meat at this stage. In this case, we had the Taiwanese Soba sauce.

This was a beautiful sauce in real life. It was shiny
and reddish brown with chunks of minced meat throughout.

I don't know if I could ever do the sweet, savory flavor of this sauce justice. Something like a barbecue flavor was balanced with a gentle soy undertone with just enough saltiness and spiciness to really keep you eating. This meal barely made it to the table and it was incredibly tasty. I could probably eat this five nights a week in the summer and be happy every single time.

So that's all from me today. Have any of you tried this or something like it? Let me know in the comments!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 227: Oden, But Not The God

You may have noticed at this point that Z and I are absolute fiends for Asian food. Noodles, hot pots, sushi, Pad Thai, Korean BBQ... we love to eat. We also love to make our own recipes, somewhat. Last week, we went shopping together to gather the ingredients for an Oden Hot Pot from our Umai Crate. Here's how it went:

We got some hard boiled eggs, some smoked sausage...

some endive and daikon...

Some extra firm tofu, and...

The Oden broth mix!

We only vaguely followed the recipe provided in the crate...

First things first, we washed ourselves, our ingredients, and our cookware, then we began to cut things up. And by we, I mean Z, because Z is the best prep cook ever.

Here we see the endive and daikon cut together!

These are nice big cubes of tofu. Z did a great job!

The oden broth

That's how it looked inside the pouch! It smelled great, too!

Next, I put some water in the pot (I kinda couldn't figure out if they really meant only 1 cup of water per pouch, or if we'd want more so I added 2 cups or so). I got that up to a light simmer and added the daikon and endive to (eventually) boil. We wanted everything to go along with each other, so we started our veggies early. In the future, I'll probably add the endive with the meats & tofu, but here I added it early.

Veggies in a hot tub!

Next, we needed to get our proteins together to chuck into the pot - summer sausage and tofu may not sound like a fantastic combo, but they were amazing together!

These were nice, hefty chunks of sausage!

Once everything was prepped, I dumped it into the pot with the water, sprinkled in the Oden packets and let it simmer away!

I wasn't sure how all of this would work, but I was hopeful as I hunted down a lid.

The lid I grabbed was... maybe a size too big.
It worked, though, and the condensation only hit the burner a few times!

I hope this video A) works, and B) illustrates just how cool this was!

Wait... guys... is that... is that a FILTHY CASUAL YOUTUBE CHANNEL?!

YOU KNOW IT! I finally bit the bullet, since the upload was taking a million years on the blog, so I set up a YouTube for it! Now, there may not always be new videos, since I'm not a YouTuber, really, I'm a blogger, but I might throw a video or two up on there every so often ;)

But how did this food come out?

I mean, look at it!
It's beautiful!

I would change very little about this - all of the veggies and meats went together beautifully, the eggs maybe got a little overdone, so maybe I'd actually hard boil the eggs in the broth rather than place pre-boiled ones on top, the tofu was perfect, the daikon was boiled down to a really soft, turnip-like texture that I really dug, and everything was wonderful. I'd maybe add a little more water, since the broth was super salty, and I think it'd taste great with something bitter and something very sweet - like umeboshi and a nice sweet carrot or some sweet corn... and maybe I'd add those konjac noodles, too, for a weird, almost crunchy texture, but overall...

I loved this and would 100% make it again.

If you have proteins, veggies, and broth (of any kind), you, too, can make one heck of a meal! Just keep in mind the order of operations for optimal ingredient cooking: Crunchy but needs to get softer goes first, then soft but needs to heat through, then crunchy but needs to stay crunchy, and finally garnishes! You can add spices as you go, but the basic rule of thumb for that is to consider whether or not you want it to dissolve. If it needs to dissolve into the liquid (like a bouillon or a curry powder or salt) then it goes in early. If it's okay as-is or if you might add more at the table, it can go in later (like pepper or something like that).

Now Go Enjoy Something!
FC