1) I clean.
I recently tagged along with The Kitchn’s Spring Cure program, where everybody ‘tunes up’ their kitchen to beat the blahs. Last week was the fridge and pantry, this week was the drawers.
There’s something relieving about the whole purging and cleaning process.
2) I attempt at big-ass cooking projects that I would only think of doing when I feel stressed and extra masochistic.
In this particular case, I made chicken ramen from scratch. And by scratch I mean from removing the head from a chicken.
I know, extra masochistic, right?
I got the idea when I was really pissed at work one day, and was wandering around aimlessly in the Chinese market. Times like these, I like to lose myself in making something extra hard and time consuming, like braised ox tails and brown sauce. When I saw the whole chicken at the meat counter, I decided that I was going to make chicken pho from scratch. While the butcher packed my chicken for me, I called Dad and got the recipe for his remedial chicken pho that he makes for me every time I have a hangover or a cold. Everything is fine and dandy!
And then I get home and dump the chicken out on my cutting board to see this. AND ITS STARING AT ME, menacingly, if I may add. His head was tucked under his body in the display case, and I was not paying attention when the guy was packing it. I don’t know what to do with a head on chicken! So in usual panic fashion, I call Dad again.
“What?!” he answered. He’s not yelling, he’s just a Vietnamese man. His voice is easily augmented.
“DADDY! My chicken still has his head. What do I do?“
“Oh, that’s a good chicken!” He said, delightfully. I’m not sure how a head-on chicken constitutes as a good chicken, but I didn’t inquire further. “Just take your cleaver and chop it off! Close to the head, cause the good stuff comes from the neck.“
“Well what do I do with the head?!“
“Put it in a baggie and chuck it.”
So I did as I was told.
Somewhere between the panic and the French Revolution-style execution, I lost all interest in chicken pho and decided to make ramen. So I threw the chicken carcass into the pot with some aromatics and some dashi ingredients to start a batch of Chinese Broth, and go off to 2ch for some indie ramen recipes.
After some research, I learn that ramen comprises of tare (sauce) and broth. Broth is important too, but the tare makes most of the flavor profile. So off to tare production!
After two hours of bubbling the Chinese broth, I took out the mushy vegetables and ended up with this. Yummy broth and chicken fat. I skimmed off the chicken fat and put it in a smaller saucepan with soy sauce, mirin, sake, sesame oil, and turbinado sugar. I let it bubble away to half, and set that aside.
Then I made some toppings: meyer-lemon torihamu, menma (bamboo shoots), abura-negi (oiled onions), and eggs. I messed up the eggs; they were supposed to be soft boiled, but I got distracted and let it over cook.
The torihamu is easy. For 1 chicken breast, massage in 1 teaspoon of honey, 1 tsp of salt, some salt and pepper, and some lemon peel. Marinade for 8 hours.
Then take the chicken breast, put it in a pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes, pop on the lid, turn off the heat, and let it poach until the water cools. Remove from the water (save the soup!), then slice em up.
As for the menma, just stir fry sliced bamboo shoots with sesame oil and soy sauce. Ditto for the abura-negi, sans the soy sauce.
I then combined the torihamu soup with the chinese chicken broth and some fish dashi and simmered it until the flavors melded together.
Assembly! I ladeled in some tare into our bowls…
Boiled the noodles, slapped them into the bowl, poured soup over it, then slapped on some toppings…
And dinner was served at 9:30 PM that evening. After all that work, I only had enough for three bowls of ramen. But SO worth it.
I want to tweak with the recipe a little more before I post something final. Ramen has soooo much depth to it… No wonder Keizo (Go Ramen!) tossed his programmer job and ran off to Japan to study ramenism!
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looks yummy!!
if i got a chicken with its head still attached, i think i would spazz out and barf right then and there. I almost fell over when I got cut up chicken and saw the spine/vertebrae. waaaaaaaaay to real for me.
I admire your courage to face a chicken with it’s head on!! I know what you mean about having *those days* though…where you just feel like throwing yourself into a complicated recipe and forgetting the stress of the day! Looks delicious!
Damn, girl! I am nowhere near this productive when I’m stressin’!
Awesome job manhandling the chicken.
First of all I wasn’t prepared to see that chicken with its head still on…but like a trainwreck, I couldn’t look away! You are pretty brave for doing something like this from scratch…and I mean that! Bravo to you!
jenn, i agree, spines are a little too creepy. i mean, the chicken did gross me out a bit, but not as much as the quail that looked a little too much like ava…
mandy, thank you! cooking is so therapeutic, until you face the aftermath (the dishes)
cathy, thanks
well, you run. i don’t. hahaha!
bianca, thank you, thank you. i know, i really love the gross-out factor of this post.
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