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Tuesday, 26 January 2016

And now, the most classiest of all the recipes

Everyone has their own version of their household, no time to cook real food staple, right? Like maybe you're a god damn wizard at making a casserole out of the random bits in your fridge, or a veggie soup on the fly is your jam. Mine? The most ghettoist of the recipes: Classed up Ramen. Like, the cheapest item to buy in your grocery store Ramen, the package that all the cool kids crushed up and ate raw in elementary school - my mom never allowed us such luxuries, apparently neither did Jake's; "it's not healthy and literally just pure salt", as if that meant anything to us in our green-eyed jealous state back then. I'm pretty sure my mom also had me convinced that eating it raw would give me tummy worms, however this is also the woman who had me convinced that water was "tap juice" and ovaltine was real chocolate milk. What a saint.

But I digress.

Ramen is a favorite staple amongst those in college or freshly moved out of mom and dad's, living with roommates and are flat broke, why? Well, because on a good day you can score 5 packages for $3.50, that's why. When I was living alone and would have max $75-100 at the end of each paycheck to dedicate to food, gas, savings (hahahaha in those days?! as if) and luxuries, I had to learn really fast how to stretch my dollar; enter Ramen, or Ichiban - I wasn't picky, clearly. Sometimes my groceries would literally just consist of half&half cream, coffee, versatile veggies (spinach, tomatoes, broccoli, green onions, cucumber) and a shit ton of Ramen. Staples. Problem being is that it can get hella boring, hella fast - not to mention grossly unhealthy for you. So I had to be creative and start making this staple a gourmet treat so that night after night, I wasn't getting crazy bored and or crazy mal-nourished by solely surviving on MSG & sodium. I had to find ways to turn it into something somewhat nutritious, but also satisfying. Intrigued? I can tell.


Recipe: note that not a measuring cup nor spoon was ever used, this is a dash & pinch recipe if you will ;)

Package of ramen - my favorite is the spicy chicken
Either peanut butter, almond butter, miso or tahini - whatever you have in your fridge and thanks to my parents living in AZ half the year and giving me their condiments when they left, I always had one or the other.
Chose as many as you wish of: Green onion, shredded carrot, spinach, broccoli, celery or pepper
Fish sauce
Lime Juice
Sriracha - KEY ingredient, but the spicier the better in my opinion
Seasoning packet - now as a blogger and lover of generally everything healthy I shouldn't be admitting to using any of it, but fuck it if MSG & sodium aren't delicious. There, I said it - you know we were all thinking it anyway.

Make the ramen as usual, and towards the end add the veggies, unless you're using broccoli in which case cook it for the same amount of time to ensure it's nice and soft at the end (cook it all with the noodles)
drain a bit of the water making sure not to lose veggies (green onions love to slip out) - as little or as much of the water to drain, whether you want it soupier or more like a stir fry consistency
Take it back to the stove or counter and add a good spoonful of your nut butter, a healthy splash of fish sauce, lime juice and sriracha and mix it really well. Add as much or as little of your seasoning packet as you wish, and combine everything together. Finish with bean sprouts if you have them, and adjust the seasonings if you want - I usually throw more lime juice into the mix.

Now, I no longer live alone and thankfully am lucky enough to no longer be flat broke either, but I'll be damned if I don't pick up atleast two packages any time I grocery shop. Old habits die hard! I'll make this for dinner when Jake is working late or away and I don't feel like putting the effort in of making myself a more legitimate dinner. However, I made it the other night when Jake was home and was like, here try my invention it's been my staple for years now, thinking he would hate it as he generally does with my "inventions" - chickpea blondies being the most recent.. Aaand long story short he ate the entire bowl - I have converted him over to the dark side ;)

I mean, it was bound to happen. The amount of trailer park boys lingo that's entered my vernacular because of him is just embarassing.

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