runny egg yolks

Shoyu Ramen

Shoyu Ramen

I am lazy again today, it’s after all still covid-19 season and I don’t particularly like the smell of my face mask (even though it is a good face mask), and so here I am, writing this blog post for a recipe that I think is pretty much a no-brainer.

If there is something that I love about Ramen Noodles, it would be the simple basic types of Japanese Ramen with a basic Shoyu base. Shoyu sounds like Teochew – Si Yew – which basically means “sauce”? I am not entirely sure because I am not Teochew, I am just surrounded by that culture which I lived and grew up in. Anyway, the “yu” in Shoyu means “oil” and we know oil is pressed from grains, fruits, etc.

So Shoyu watered down to my kitchen means the Lee Kum Kee Premium Light Soya Sauce that is sitting in my condiments pantry. To be honest, it tastes the same, and it’s probably is the same. Just that it is not Japanese sounding. And for the Ramen noodles, it just means my Nongshim Korean Instant Noodles that I have in my cabinet. I usually stock these for those lazy days of not wanting to go out for my meals.

I ransacked my vegetable compartment in the refrigerator, and saw one carrot, a punnet of mushrooms and some white cabbage. And the reason became clear that I must have Shoyu Ramen for lunch.

Recipe

Ingredients

Nongshim Instant Ramen – 1 packet – (I usually boil the noodles once through to get rid of the yellow preservative)

Carrot, Mushroom, White Cabbage – some of each item will do – (cooking for one person can be easy)

Lee Kum Kee Premium Light Soya Sauce – just enough in a bowl of hot water will do

Method

  1. Carve a small portion of carrot, and carve out flowers or some rough shape. I like doing that so that it doesn’t look like boring round carrot slices – which is usually the case.
  2. Slice the mushrooms – just one will do. Chop thin slices of the White Cabbage, just enough for one portion.
  3. In boiling water, cook the vegetables for about a minute or so, then take them out and place in cold water.
  4. Cook the instant noodles, and then it is ready, just place it in a bowl of hot water – with the soya sauce already added – and then decorate the noodles with the blanched vegetables.
  5. Optional: I added a hard boiled egg using my Runny Egg Yolk recipe. Kind of messed up the egg yolk part, it is supposed to be runny instead of cooked through. Oh well.

Bon Appetit!

Kopi and Soft Boiled Eggs (Musing)

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Kopi and Soft Boiled Eggs (Musing)

There is something quite whimsical about sitting at a coffee shop and eating soft boiled eggs with a cup of kopi. It’s almost as if time had come to a standstill and we were all still speaking dialects and stirring guttural sounds out of our throats, aiming and spitting and missing the spittoon. Ah, the good old days of acting like a gangster and flicking the singlet rapidly with finger and thumb in the sweltering heat of the afternoon sun. These days that same experience is now diluted with air-conditioning and perfectly boiled huge omega-infused eggs the size of buffalo testicles. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating, but you sort of get the idea. Eggs today are perfect; too perfect.

Even the old familiar smells of melted butter in the coffee seems to be missing as some coffee places have opted for fine arabica beans over local coffee powder suppliers. There are very few places that reminds me of the old-school charm of a coffee shop. Good thing I found a coffee place near my office that still offered some semblance of a by-gone era. Nothing like getting your fingers burnt while cracking open the soft-boiled eggs. Nothing like getting the timing correct for the eggs and seeing perfectly congealed egg whites and runny egg yolks. Or even getting them wrong is not such a bad thing. I usually start the timer function on my smart-phone and make sure that the buzzer goes off after 5 minutes. That is usually how much time it takes for eggs to form perfectly cloudy rounds of golden yellow goodness.

Some things are worth missing; some moments worth reminiscing.

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