I have always love spicy food, but when I first tried recipes from the Sichuan province of China, featuring the Sichuan peppercorn, they took my spicy fetish to a whole ‘nother level. Mouth-numbing, tingly, floral explosions combined with super-hottt spicy chilies. What’s not to love?
Today I made Sichuan Ramen and it is a good example of how I live, working on many ongoing projects, which can come together in many different ways, into amazing final dishes. Ramen is made up of four basic components: the dashi (broth), the tare (sauce), the noodles, and the toppings. These can be combined in endless combinations to suit any taste and provide lots of variety. I might be canning homemade bone broths one week, fermenting vegetables and curing meats another, and finally watching them come together on a random Monday night, in one perfect bowl of Ramen.
Dashi – Broth
I have recently found a local source for Springer Mountain Farms chickens. They are American Humane Certified and raised up in these same Blue Ridge Mountains as I am raising up my family. I have raised and butchered my own Cornish Cross chickens in the past, but it is a lot of work, and I’d rather leave it to the experts. In my opinion, they put out the best chicken products aside from me doing it myself. For this Ramen dashi, I used just the carcass from one of these chickens, discarded from a hot chicken recipe I am working on (spoiler alert). I browned it slightly in my Instant Pot, along with a white onion sliced in half and a couple of slices of ginger, on the saute setting. I then filled the IP with water and cooked under pressure for 30 minutes to develop a nice broth. Finally, I removed the bones and veggies, poured the stock through a fine-mesh strainer, and seasoned with a little salt. You can cool it down in the refrigerator and remove any fat, if you like.
Tare – Sauce
The Tare, or seasoning sauce of the Ramen is where the Szechuan comes in. I combine oyster sauce with grated ginger, grated garlic, cayenne pepper, habanero powder, and toasted, ground Sichuan peppercorns. Instead of the traditional sake, mirin, or shaoxing wine, I used some of my homemade hard apple cider! this is what I mean by having many ongoing projects that come together in different ways. Last fall I made a bunch of homemade hard apple cider from some leftover apple juice that I gained as a byproduct of making applesauce. I don’t drink alcohol and no one in my house really does either, so it’s been sitting around for a while and I had a light bulb moment to use it in my cooking. My wife used it in her chicken piccata in stead of white wine a few nights ago and it was perfect. This may have influenced my light bulb moment.
Noodles!
The noodles I chose for this Ramen were buckwheat soba noodles. I was toying with the idea of using spaghetti squash as a noodle substitute, which I have done before with great success as a low-carb option. Any noodle will work in a pinch, but I’ve been trying to find the perfect noodle for some time that both satisfies the rest my family’s carb needs, and satisfies my need for healthy carb options. Soba noodles are a quick and easy healthy cheat. Another of my favorites are shirataki noodles, a zero carb “noodle” made from some yam or something.
Toppings
Another example of my projects that come together in serendipitous, fulfilling ways is my Char Shui pork belly. We butchered a pig a few months ago and ended up with a lot of pork belly which I had sliced into thick-cut bacon. What I didn’t know was that bacon has to be cured, and it was my first time attempting this at home. I covered the bacon in pink Himalayan sea salt for a few days and then cooked some up. It. Was. Not. Great. I guess there is no substitute for the other pink salt, sodium nitrite. So I mused to myself, maybe I should smoke it? I smoked some of the bacon as low and slow as I could. It kind of melted a little bit and when I cook some of it up again, it was not great. I had a stroke of genius while looking at some packets of store-bought Char Sui I had in my pantry. I took a bunch of the pork belly I had left and marinated it in the Char Sui seasoning (basically a mixture of sugar and red). What I ended up with after a quick broil was awesome. Char Sui, grilled to perfection, slightly blackened around the edges, is totally delicious. Our little Bash calls this candy chicken, and it is one of the few foods that he will eat without being threatened. This was the protein I chose for my Ramen.
A few more choice toppings I like are sweet corn, cilantro or basil, red onion or green onion, soy sauce, and hoisin. Also, a few days before I planned to make the Ramen, I prepared some soy-marinated eggs. I soft-boiled a dozen eggs (to perfection) and then marinated them in one part soy sauce, one part hard cider, and one part water. They marinated for two days.
To assemble the Ramen, I placed some tare in the bottom of the bowl, ladled in some chicken dashi, and placed a ball of soba noodles on top. I topped the Ramen with sweet whole kernel corn, the Char Sui pork, a sliced Ramen egg, cilantro, and in my case, a thinly slice spicy chili, the first from my garden this year. I hope yall like this post, and please reach out with any questions!
