Vegan Gluten Free Ramen

Description

Ramen is a Japanese noodle soup. It originally consists of Chinese wheat noodles served in a meat or fish-based broth, often flavored with soy sauce or miso, and uses toppings such as sliced pork, nori and scallions. But today we have given it a vegan gluten free twist!

Nearly every region in Japan has its own variation of ramen. Making it a very versatile dish.

The word ramen is a Japanese transcription of the Chinese lamian (拉麵). Way back in 1910, the first ramen shop named RAIRAIKEN (ja:来々軒) opened at Asakusa, Tokyo, where the Japanese owner employed 12 Cantonese cooks from Yokohama’s Chinatown and served the ramen arranged for Japanese customers.

Until the 1950s, ramen was called shina soba (支那そば, literally “Chinese soba”) but today chūka soba (中華そば, also meaning “Chinese soba”) or just ramen (ラーメン) are more common, as the word “支那” (shina, meaning “China”) has acquired a pejorative connotation.

By 1900, restaurants serving Chinese cuisine from Canton and Shanghai offered a simple dish of noodles (cut rather than hand-pulled), a few toppings, and a broth flavored with salt and pork bones. Many Chinese living in Japan also pulled portable food stalls, selling ramen and gyōza dumplings to workers. By the mid-1900s, these stalls used a type of a musical horn called a charumera (チャルメラ, from the Portuguese charamela) to advertise their presence, a practice some vendors still retain via a loudspeaker and a looped recording. By the early Shōwa period, ramen had become a popular dish when eating out!

Now that we know where this delicious food comes from let’s get right to it!

Ingredients

• 2 cloves of garlic
• thumb-sized piece of ginger sliced, plus a few slices cut into fine matchsticks to serve (optional)
• 1½ tbsp of white miso paste
• 1 tbsp of tahini
• A mix of Chinese shiitake mushrooms and wild mushrooms
• 1l good-quality vegan stock
• 2 tbsps of gf soy sauce
• 200g of pre cooked tofu cubes (you get this in any good Asian food store)
• 1 tbsp of oil
• 100g (2 x nests) ramen or rice noodles
• 2 pak Choi quartered
• 2 scallions finely sliced, white and green parts kept separate
• 25g ready-to-eat bean sprouts
• 1 carrot peeled and cut into fine matchsticks
• For the topping when it’s ready to be served : sesame oil, sriracha, chopped coriander, crushed peanuts, crumbled sheets of nori or dried chilli’s

• I store bought the tofu and it looked like this:

Store bought Tofu cubes

Directions on cooking

• Chop or crush the garlic whatever way you prefer , then put it in a saucepan with the ginger, miso, tahini, scallion and carrots. Let it simmer for about 5 mins.
• Add 1 litre of stock and soy along with the mushrooms, bean sprouts and pak choi. Bring to a gentle simmer, cover and allow to cook.
• Meanwhile, cook the tofu. Toss it in a frying pan and fry for a few mins on each side, being careful as you turn it that it doesn’t fall apart.
• Cook the noodles. Drain and leave in the pan with a little cooking water so they don’t stick together.
• Divide the noodles between two deep bowls, ladle over the broth and veg. Top with the tofu, green parts of the spring onions and a drizzle of sesame oil, plus the other toppings, like the chilli, seaweed flakes and coriander.

Should look something like this 😍😍😍