{"id":33665,"date":"2018-12-19T09:08:20","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T14:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=33665"},"modified":"2022-01-09T16:43:22","modified_gmt":"2022-01-09T21:43:22","slug":"recipe-coconut-curry-garbage-ramen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2018\/12\/19\/recipe-coconut-curry-garbage-ramen\/","title":{"rendered":"Recipe: Coconut Curry Garbage Ramen"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

We went to see\u00a0Into the Spider-Verse<\/strong> and, you already know this because you’re all very smart people, but it’s fucking amazing. It’s the best Spider-Man movie, but only\u00a0gets<\/em> to be the best Spider-Man movie because of all the amazing Spider-Man movies (and comics, and cartoons, and games) before it. It’s great. It’s astonishing, spectacular, sensational, amazing. And not to mention really beautiful — one of the prettiest animated films I’ve seen in a very long time, experimental in a way that Pixar movies are not (and indie films often are).<\/p>\n

ANYWAY.<\/p>\n

That’s not the point of this post.<\/p>\n

The point of this post is, we got out of the movie Sunday night, it was later than I wanted it to be, and it was starting to snow and ice a little bit. The original plan was to go out and grab food somewhere but the collective decision was: “We better head home and find dinner there.”<\/p>\n

One problem, though —<\/p>\n

It was Sunday night.<\/p>\n

When I hadn’t gone grocery shopping.<\/p>\n

The fridge and pantry were a fucking skeleton stripped of all its precious nutrients, dry as a mouse cough, and so I had no idea what I was going to make for dinner.<\/p>\n

So, I went to my default:<\/p>\n

GARBAGE RAMEN, or, TRASHCAN RAMEN.<\/p>\n

Which is to say, I make a duly non-traditional version of ramen soup containing whatever shit I can scrounge up in my house at the time. Now! I do sometimes make a semi-proper ramen — miso, pork bones, tare, soft-boiled eggs, the whole fucking jim-jam. But garbage ramen is not this. Usually my garbage ramen is whatever broth I have conjured, plus whatever meat remnants I can find, and then at the end I add like, soy, ginger, garlic, splash of rice wine vinegar, mirin, maybe a tickle of sugar. But the recipe that proceeds is not that recipe.<\/p>\n

I made something different.<\/p>\n

And what I made was accidentally awesome.<\/p>\n

I have not yet tried to replicate it, but I am going to put the recipe\u00a0here<\/em>, for you to have, so you can try your hand at it, see if it comes out as good as it did — more to the point, far far better than I could have possibly expected.<\/p>\n

So, first, the broth.<\/p>\n

This I had already made ahead, as I do often.<\/p>\n

The broth is this:<\/p>\n

Bunch of shiitake mushroom stems (8-10, I think — just stems!)<\/p>\n

One carrot<\/p>\n

One celery rib<\/p>\n

Two hot cherry peppers<\/p>\n

Quarter onion, chopped<\/p>\n

Bundle of cilantro<\/p>\n

Splurp of minced garlic<\/p>\n

Sploop of minced ginger<\/p>\n

2 tbsp coriander seed<\/p>\n

2 tbsp cumin seed<\/p>\n

1 tbsp fennel seed<\/p>\n

1 tbsp mustard seed<\/p>\n

dash of turmeric<\/p>\n

a scattered smattering of black peppercorns<\/p>\n

probably don’t need much salt, if any<\/p>\n

3-4 cups of chicken broth<\/p>\n

And I cooked that bubblin’ brew for *mumble mumble* a couple-few hours. Then, strained out of all the stuck it in a container, and into the fridge it went.<\/p>\n

UNTIL THE HOUR OF TRASHCAN RAMEN WAS UPON US, as the prophecy foretold.<\/p>\n

Soup time.<\/p>\n

Get the broth boiling and into it ye shall placeth:<\/p>\n

Three carrots, choppity-chopped<\/p>\n

One celery rib, sliced into slicey bits for its crimes<\/p>\n

Half a green pepper, carved into nifty thin strips<\/p>\n

Quarter onion, diced<\/p>\n

The caps from the shiitake mushrooms (above), sliced<\/p>\n

one can of coconut milk<\/p>\n

Three tbsp fish sauce<\/p>\n

1 tbsp soy sauce<\/p>\n

pinch of sugar<\/p>\n

juice of one lime<\/p>\n

You don’t need long with this — five minutes starts to soften the vegetables but still lets them feel crisp and fresh, like my buttocks on a spring Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

*checks notes*<\/p>\n

*notes say: ‘stop mentioning your butt in recipes’*<\/p>\n

*nods sagely*<\/p>\n

Moving on.<\/p>\n

Now, the ramen noodles.<\/p>\n

I tend to use these noodles right here<\/a>, and they’re pretty good — nice texture and what-not. But in this case I only had your standard $0.19 packs of ramen, and I took three of them and those were the noodles I used because they’re oddly very satisfying. The trick is,\u00a0usually<\/em> when I make ramen, I make the noodles separate, in their own water, and then dole them out into the bowls of soup. In this case I was lazy and just tossed the NOODLE BRICKS into the soup and —<\/p>\n

You know, they soaked up a lot of the broth, which is not ideal, but also, made it weirdly satisfying in that it wasn’t entirely\u00a0soup\u00a0<\/em>anymore? And then for the piece de resistance, a thing I never do, I used the fucking chicken ramen flavor packet. I just sprinkled it in there. Just one. Not all three. I never use these things so I have a small library of those packets hanging around, and…<\/p>\n

Okay, listen, this isn’t\u00a0good<\/em> in the sense that it’s a refined meal. This is the furthest thing from fine dining. But it’s good\u00a0<\/em>in a weird, deeper, more satisfying way — deeply umami, rich and creamy, with the vibe of macaroni and cheese but… not macaroni and cheese, not at all. I need to try making it again, see if I can capture this curious meal for a second time.<\/p>\n

Lemme know if you try it.<\/p>\n

REPORT BACK, HOOMANS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We went to see\u00a0Into the Spider-Verse and, you already know this because you’re all very smart people, but it’s fucking amazing. It’s the best Spider-Man movie, but only\u00a0gets to be the best Spider-Man movie because of all the amazing Spider-Man movies (and comics, and cartoons, and games) before it. It’s great. It’s astonishing, spectacular, sensational, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-8KZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33665"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33673,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33665\/revisions\/33673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}