Gourmet Top Ramen: Japan Would Be Proud.

          This week, the assignment given to us was something I actually do quite often: create a "gourmet" dish consisting of ramen noodles. We were given a minimum of $7 we could use to create this dish, and we were able to use food items that have been sitting in our fridges. I started off my meal by going to Winco, of course, to pick up a few things that I did not have. The first thing I threw in my cart were two packages of Sapporo Ichiban ramen noodles. Each package was 78 cents and the ramen is a tad better than the basic Maruchan. Next I picked up a bottle of Sriracha for $2.68, since my bottle was nearly done, and my roommate, along with myself, eats it with many meals. The rest of the materials I needed for this meal were in my fridge, such as vegetables from my garden and a couple different sauces I have acquired since summer. After gathering everything together onto, and around, my very tiny cutting board, I began to start the process.


  I started with slicing the vegetables, of course, and the aroma was wonderful. The carrots, sweet onions, and bell peppers were from my garden in Bonners, and they all were as fresh as one could get. While doing this, I thawed some Winco cheap, corn-fed pork cuts I had frozen in the freezer, and cut them into small chunks after they had sat in the hot pork water for a while. I heated up two pans on my range top, containing vegetable oil for the frying, and quickly chopped my veggies. I threw them in, along with the pork in another pan, and began to fry. A pot, water boiling, contained the ramen until it went from boulder hard to kitten soft in only 3 minutes. Added to the vegetables was a mighty mixture of Sriracha, Soy Sauce, and some szechuan, while the pork cooked in its own juices. Everything is cooked on its own now? Might as well toss it all together.
          In the end, it smelled and looked wonderful. My food testers were what worried me. Well, one of them. My roommate had gotten back this semester from spending a year in Japan, going to school and shifting all his thoughts towards how much better that country is than ours. So here I am, cooking Asian style noodles to my best friend who had recently become a man of everything Japanese. The other taster was my girlfriend, but her opinion nearly never matters because she believes everything I cook is great. I served the meal up on large plates, and brought them out to the table in our living room. We sat around it, ate, and chatted. The first thing to be said about it was that it was spicy, from both of them. Well, of course, I put enough Sriracha in there to set a baby on fire. Also, I really wanted to hit a hot and spicy type of flavor, while having the vegetables bring out their own flavors to compliment it. The spice was nice, but the peppers still popped, the carrots still tasted straight out of the garden, and the onions were so sweet, that the spice did not overpower the dish. Next, my roommate gives me props for making a good noodle dish from cheap ramen noodles rather than something like a high quality udon noodle. All in all, I received good feedback, all three of us finished the dish in one sitting, and we complimented the meal with the fine champagne of beer. I do meals like this quite often, and after this assignment, I will continue to. Will you? Is this how you will make your Top Ramen meals in the future?