#soy egg

So good!

We went on holiday, I bought back a tomago pan and a burning desire to make Japanese foods

Possibly my favourite thing was all the eggs in convenience stores. Tomago in a vacuum packed block, and marinated eggs. Somehow in the shell pre salted eggs as well.

I made a soy marinaded egg very successfully

So easy and so delicious!

Someone replied to my insta saying I should try mayak eggs. Which is very similar but with sugar and aromatic veg

I wanna try one with sriracha as well

ohhhh soy and eggsssss, nothing better than soy-soaked eggs.....

i'm shocked how easy it is to make this shit. you just mix soy with all sorts of shit (like onions and garlic and leeks. sugar and a bit of cooking alcohol is recommended but not required. add water to save on soy sauce) then boil some eggs and then soak them in the mixture for at least a day.

Aye yai yai it’s been a long time since I posted something. I will blame that on a hectic (but fun!) work schedule and several packed weekends in a row.

So I’m going to duck into my TARDIS (I wish) and write about the ramen I cooked up a few weeks back! I felt bad putting “homemade” in the title because as you’ll see I didn’t totally make it from scratch..but oh well.

I decided to make ramen because the weekend before, I had gone up to my aunt and uncle’s farm, Longhaul, for their biannual “Workation.” I weeded, chatted, and got some quality time with the family. I promise this is connected to the ramen...but first, a picture of my baby cousin on the farm.

So cute amirite?!!?

Anyway...the ramen! So a big group comes out to these workations and part of the deal is my aunt and uncle feed everyone in return for their hard manual labor. This time, they had an abundance of grilled chicken leftover, and my aunt asked if I wanted to take it home. Um, yes. I never turn down free food. (She also gave me a pan of cornbread, the subject of a future post....suspense!)

With my glut of chicken, I decided to tackle a recipe form Lucky Peach’s “101 Easy Asian Recipes” I had had my eye on: rotisserie chicken ramen. I’d always wanted to make my own ramen but always been daunted, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Chopping scallions, watching TV, dirty dishes in the sink...what else is new. Sidenote: I came back to Girls this season after a couple years away. It was so good.

The recipe is pretty straightforward: you make a broth from the leftover chicken and you add soy sauce eggs and other ramen toppings of your choice. Fresh (not dried) packaged ramen noodles make it, well, ramen.

It was really good! Not anything transcendent, I feel like that would have taken a lot more time and ingredients. But very good!

                                             RECIPE

Rotisserie chicken ramen, adapted from Lucky Peach’s “101 Easy Asian Recipes.” Serves 4. 

1 rotisserie chicken, whole or leftover (thank you Jocelyn!)

4 scallions

1 piece (1″) fresh ginger, thinly sliced

1 small carrot (optional) (I did a few)

1 dried shiitake mushroom

3 slices of bacon

12 c water

4 portions ramen noodles, preferably fresh

8 t soy sauce

2 cooked eggs (for garnish, I made soy eggs, recipe to follow)

1. If you’re using a leftover chicken, pick off any remaining big chunks of meat. If you’re using a whole chicken, save the drumsticks, slice off the breast meat, and pick off any other big pieces. This will go in the ramen when it’s done.

2. Break up the chicken carcass and put it in a stockpot. Chop up the scallions, adding the dark green parts to the pot and reserving the white/light green for garnish. Add the ginger, carrot, shiitake, bacon, and water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat “from a rolling boil to a rollicking simmer” (love that wording) and skim off any froth that collects on the surface during the first 10 minutes of simmering. (The cookbook author SWEARS this is super important for the taste of the broth and I indulged him.)

3. Cook until the liquid is reduced by about one-third, about 2 hours. Strain the broth. (MAKE SURE to have another pot or bowl under your strainer! You don’t want all that hard work literally going down the drain.) Save the shiitake to slice and garnish, but toss the rest. You have what you need from it. 

4. To serve, bring the broth and the chicken meat to a simmer and cook the ramen noodles according to the package. (Probably some form of “boil for X minutes.”) Drain the noodles very well and portion them out. Top with broth, scallions, chicken meat, shiitake, egg, and whatever else you want. My boyfriend added sambal olek, cuz he likes da spice. 

Note: I ate this for lunch by portioning out everything the night before into a big, wide-mouthed mason jar and bringing it into work to be microwaved. It was really tasty. 

Soy eggs, adapted from Lucky Peach’s “101 Easy Asian Recipes.” Makes 6 eggs.

3 T soy sauce

2 T rice vinegar

1 T brown sugar

1 T water

1/4 t chili flakes

1 point star anise (optional)

1/4 t black peppercorns

6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled

Combine all ingredients except eggs into a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. Add the eggs, making sure they have some room to roll around. Swirl the eggs gently so they’re covered with the sauce until they’re tan and infused with the soy, about 5 minutes. Remove and let cool.