Leftovers Like New: Crustacean Ramen

This is the first post in a series called Leftovers Like New, in which I explain my process for preparing leftover food in a way that doesn’t taste like leftovers. I take after my dad, who doesn’t like leftovers, but I also love to eat many different flavors in one meal (and I don’t like to leave the apartment), so oftentimes I will order enough food for two meals and plan on eating half later. I get pretty obsessive about re-cooking leftovers, to the point where L wonders what the point even is, when the amount of time I take to remake a leftover sometimes takes as much time as cooking a brand-new dish. The value, for me anyway, is in being able to taste what other chefs are doing while at the same time putting my own spin on dishes and adapting the flavor profile to suit my particular palate.

The other day I went to a delicious food and beer tasting event at Sobo Ramen with some friends. It was a hearty 5 course meal that yielded a full quart of extra ramen to take home as leftovers. If you order take out from Sobo Ramen, they will package up the noodles separately from the broth but because these were leftovers, we just crammed them all into one container. As soon as I got home, I separated solids (noodles, shrimp, and crawfish) from liquid to prevent the noodles from absorbing liquid (which would render them mushy).

I ended up eating the soup a few days later; it was pretty overcast and I was working from home, so this was the perfect meal to cozy up with. I was in the mood for eggs, so I added two eggs and also some fresh garlic greens to garnish. This time I fried the eggs, but you could also poach them. I usually bring the soup up to a boil, shut off the heat, and add a whole egg. Let it sit for a few minutes before breaking up the egg to achieve runny yolks. If you prefer, you could also scramble the eggs before adding it to the soup to give it a more egg-drop soup feel to it. I bring the soup up to a boil then lower the heat to med/low, stirring gently as I add the beaten eggs. Or, if you’re the sort of person who always has a stash of boiled eggs, cutting one in half and adding it to your bowl at the end is also delicious.

The liquid went into a small saucepan, which I brought to a boil. Meanwhile, I microwaved the solids for about 1 min. They don’t need to be piping hot, just warm enough that they won’t cool the temperature of the liquid when I assemble the soup. I always season my eggs when frying and this time I used Ichimi Togarashi instead of salt, since the eggs were being pared with a Japanese dish. Ichimi Togarashi is a Japanese red pepper seasoning mix that can be found in most Asian stores or on Amazon. On medium heat I fried the eggs in oil, not butter, to achieve a nice crispy texture.

The final step was to cut up some garlic tops that I’ve been growing on my kitchen windowsill. You could also use green onions but I happened to have these handy. Garlic tops taste exactly as you would expect: less mouth-stinging than garlic cloves with a nice grassy-green finish.

All that was left to do was assemble and eat!

Happy Slurping,

D

P.S. For tips on how to grow your own windowsill garden from everyday kitchen scraps, click here.