On a rainy spring (?) day, I dream of noodles

It’s been rainy (there’d better be May flowers for all this April rain), and we’ve been eating instant noodles for the past few days. As I was slurping away the rich, salty soup, I wondered if this is what it felt like when a health-conscious American eats an occasional hamburger. At least I can tell myself, it’s just carb, and salt. And maybe some…seasoning, hopefully not all fake. This is the slightly fancier kind you can only find at Asian markets, and not just any market, a big Korean market (H-mart)! Even if Japan has the best real ramen, Korea wins in my book for making the most awesome instant ramyun.

Ever heard of Nongshim’s shinramyun? They have ALL kinds. We had – get this – “black” shinramyun with ox bone soup base. REALLY YUMMY, with a poached egg,

Chicken ramen (mì gà aka phở gà ripoff)

I’ve been sick the past week – it suuuuuuuuuuucks. In so many ways…but I’ll spare you the bitching. We’ve been making a lot of soup – soup is the perfect sick-person food, because you can just cook the broth, leave it there, languish away/mope on your bed for a few hours, and crawl to the pot when it’s ready. Yes, I was THAT pathetic.

Today it was an impromptu chicken ramen (mi ga). We roasted a whole chicken 2 weeks ago and STILL had leftover meat. We also saved the carcass & leg bones – it’s always a wonderful thing to find some bones of any kind in your freezer…yeah, I am aware that I sound like a serial killer (do they make soup from human bones in Dexter?)

The toppings were just a kind of mash-up of what I think fit in a “chicken broth context”. Straw mushroom is my favorite Vietnamese mushroom, and bok choy just makes (Chinese) sense. I love Japanese ramen, but have always wished there were more greens in it (although the pickled takenoko is wonderful, too). The broth is really a rip-off of Vietnamese pho Ga, but even after straining off all the scum/impurities, I still ended up with a milky broth that looks a lot like Japanese tonkotsu ramen. I think it’s the combination of bone marrow + the leftover meat &fat on the bone + 12+ hours of simmering. The result was a surprisingly good cross between Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese noodle soup. This broth is the basic pho Ga broth – my family usually adds dried squid and dried shrimp, and cilantro to make the distinctive pho Ga taste.

Ingredients

Chicken bones (the more the better) – we used one chicken’s bone for a small 3 quart pot.