Spicy Shoyu Ramen!

Recipe courtesy of Nami from Just One Cookbook

Random post about ramen because I was editing this photo late last night (as a means of procrastinating my R coding assignment lol) and thought it looked pretty good! The only downside is you can't actually see any ramen in the bowl lah hahaha. Why? Because every time we went to a ramen shop, they are always so stingy with the toppings. By the end of it all, you're just eating mouthfuls of plain noodles and broth. Since this is homemade, so kiasu put all kinda toppings in it, even though spam is not a typical topping. Hahahahahaha.

Turns out this kind of ramen is not that hard to make. Oh, when I say "ramen" I don't mean like the instant ramen and it's packed sauce/broth. I made the broth "from scratch" but I *did* use the Shin brand korean instant ramen noodles to do the job since I couldn't find fresh ramen noodles.

I am very wary about claiming to have made things "from scratch" because it makes it sound like I actually made my own soy sauce or bean paste and grew my own ginger or garlic liddat, hahaha. But in general "from scratch" means the recipe required more steps then just boiling water and adding pre-cooked ingredients or better yet, just puncturing holes into the plastic films of frozen dinners and then microwaving the meal, lol. I sometimes feel as if claiming cooking like mine is from scratch is kinda cheating since every ingredient you can possibly think of is easily obtainable in the U.S. Like, even pre-made crusts, dough, and pie-fillings. Making a pie is literally as easy as buying a pie crust, opening a can of pie-filling and dumping it into the crust, and then popping it into the oven. Surely it doesn't count when aunties in Malaysia have to make dough and stuff from the most basic ingredients, right?

Take the seaweed and pickled daikon in the picture above for example. I've read comments on YouTube where people had to request the vlogger to provide recipes to pickle their own daikon! So much work. Whereas all I have to do is drive to 99 Ranch and buy me some pickled daikon.

But I am very grateful lah! I used to think that once I come to the U.S. I wouldn't be able to eat anymore Asian food. But California is nice enough to have a variety of Asian supermarkets for the Asian community, with pretty cheap prices to boot.

Also, a disclaimer hor. People on Facebook seem to think I eat like this every night? I am a student and am so busy that I barely have time for anything. If John isn't eating dinner with me, I don't even bother to make anything besides egg and rice, LOL. I guess you can say that the huge motivation to make "fancier" dinners is because of John. Seeing him enjoying dinner makes me happy. I never understood why whenever my dad went on business trips when I was younger, my mom would make terribly plain (and sometimes borderline questionable) meals. I used to complain under my breath, like, "Why is the food always so disgusting when daddy isn't around? I'm gonna make sure not to do this to my kids." But now I fully understand where she is coming from. Sometimes you just want a break!

Oh no, sorry kids, I will try my best but don't bet your lives on it. Hahahaha!