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Many things run in my family, but among the most notable is our love to eat! During lockdown, I've begun to experiment more with creating my own concoctions for my family to enjoy. At the same time, it's given me a deeper understanding of what goes into my stomach, allowing me to make better health choices.
One of my favorite cuisines is Japanese food, and I particularly love slurping down a good bowl of ramen! But as lockdown prevented me from grabbing a bowl at my favorite noodle joints, I decided to try and make my own ramen at home!
The first step was to organize all the ingredients, which was harder than it seemed! With the help of my mom, I slowly managed to acquire the variety of Japanese components that made up the broth, noodles, beef and eggs. A particularly hard ingredient to find was Katsuobushi shavings, used to create the Dashi stock forming the base of the Miso soup. But eventually, we managed to source all the ingredients and started preparing the bowl.
The recipe actually called for a lot of preparation: I had to marinate the beef chashu days and eggs 2 days before actually serving the ramen! Putting in all the sweat and work to craft each of the ingredients really tested my patience, but also gave me a newfound appreciation of the effort ramen chefs go through just to make the perfect bowl. I now understand that the ramen I see being cooked and served across the counter in authentic Japanese stores is the culmination of several days of effort to make all the different components.
Finally, the day arrived to serve my bowl of ramen! I slowly heated the broth up, cooked the noodles and then combined them in a bowl, topping the dish with my marinated chashu and egg! Seeing my ramen creation come together was extremely satisfying, as I managed to create a seemingly acceptable bowl that tasted really good too!
Aside from ramen, I also tried to train my barista skills over quarantine. Even though I actually don't drink coffee myself, I wanted to learn how to assemble drinks that my mom and dad could enjoy. I learned the different types of coffee and how to make them: an espresso, latte, cappuccino and americano. I even tried experimenting with more exotic combinations, like making a coffee-chocolate blend!
Ultimately for me, a meal is more than just food, because its also an opportunity to connect with the people you're eating with. My family has a strong tradition of always eating dinners together, giving us a chance to share our experiences and interesting events that happened during the day, and also to ask for advice with problems we're facing. It's these daily meals that I feel truly bring us closer as a family and strengthen our bonds.
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