A Noodle Canoodle

Long, chewy, slurpy, delicious noodles. Only in the past 5 years have I gained an affinity to noodles in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Vancouver is a great place to indulge in noods with such a wide variety of  asian cuisines you can try. This first photo is at Legendary Noodle, their house iced tea with chrysanthemum petals, dried dates, red goji berries, and a single round, brown longan fruit, hot and sour soup and stir fried noodles called Hit Me w/ Dao Xiao Mian. DEELISH! 

http://www.legendarynoodle.ca/

This is Papa Sawaf, he dines with me on the reg and lets me order for him every time. Our favourite Japanese Ramen joint is Motomachi Shokudo. Their Spicy Chicken Miso Ramen is something I crave at least once a week, and you ALWAYS have to get an egg on the side. They marinate their eggies in sugar and soy sauce and is definitely the highlight of the dish! Here is a recipe I found for the eggs so you can make them at home! 

Tasty eggies for ramen or over rice or a rainy day

4 eggs

pot of water enough to cover the eggs

bowl of ice water

Marinade:

1/2 cup soy sauce

1 cup water

1 slice of ginger

1 tbsp brown sugar 

Directions: 

1. bring the pot of water to a bare simmer. add in eggs and boil for 6 mins. immediately shock them into the bowl of icy water to prevent the eggs from cooking further. leave them in the iced water for 5 mins then peel.

2. combine the soy sauce, water, ginger & sugar and mix well to combine. pour marinade into a ziplock bag and place the eggs inside to marinate for 1-3 hrs in the fridge. do not soak them for too long as the whites will turn rubbery. serve cold.

This was my first attempt at homemade ramen, not too shabby, but still needs a little work.  The Myojo fresh ramen you can buy from asian supermarkets in the fridge section is great.  The noodles are chewy and the packaged broth mixes aren't powdered so they give you less of a sense that you are going to get preservative poisoning.  As for toppings I used corn, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, enoki mushrooms, nori and green onion, never forgetting a healthy dollop of chili oil at the end.

In Honour

In honour of the name, CHEESE PLEASE.  I was making cheese platters for no good reason but it being the weekend for a few months there, until I realized summer was coming.  Cheese plates immediately then turned into kale chips, tofu desserts and veggies with assorted dips. I'm sure my dairy addiction will rear it's tasty head in a few months when the weather starts to turn, but until then here are a few of my assorted platters which always involve my favourite, and not so secret, ingredient ... roasted garlic.

Starting it off light

Starting light, my new favourite snack has definitely been these delicious kale chips! Don't get me wrong, I love a good old fashioned bag of greasy potato chips loaded with some sort of nuclear power plant formed flavouring, but these are definitely a healthy alternative to that.

20 mins and you most likely have everything you need already in your cupboard.

EVOO
Salt ( Togarashi is a nice alt if you don't want to load up on sodium )
Kale ( Rinsed )

Bake for 15-20 mins at 375 F.

YUMMERS!

Allow me to re-introduce myself...

If you could put one thing in your mouth RIGHT NOW what would it be? Despite the numerous answers flooding your mind, most women would answer "cheese please", or at least most of the ones that I know. Stranded on a deserted island or home on a Friday night watching AMC, my go to snack of choice will always and forever be cheese.

I'm a born and bread Vancouverite that will be moving to Toronto by the end of the year, and I would love to share my food journey with you.