Annie found a packet of three servings of miso ramen at the Asian grocery, on sale for 3 bucks. These aren’t your typical fried and dried “Top Ramen” type packets with the overly salty spice powder packet. The noodles are fresh and the sauce is a wet paste. The preparation is straightforward – boil water, make broth, pour over warmed noodles.
To the soup bowl, I added in some frozen corn sauteed in butter, blanched bean sprouts, a barely hard-boiled egg, some slices of home made char siu, and garnished with nori and chopped green onions. I added a few dashes of shichimi chili powder to mine to spice it up a bit.
This really hit the spot. It was just as good or even better than Ramen Halu in West San Jose (supposedly the best ramen in the South Bay).
Annie was inspired to make some red bean (azuki) buns after reading some Chinese dim sum and Japanese pastry recipe books she borrowed from the library. She’s made azuki bean buns before but this time she cut each dough ball into three smaller balls, filled those with the azuki bean paste, and placed the three balls into a muffin tin.
Here they are proofing in the tin:
After proofing, brush with egg wash and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake at 350*F for 12 minutes until golden brown.
They were great – the bread so light and just the right amount of azuki bean. It was hard to stop popping them, one by one, into my mouth!
The buns in the background that don’t have sesame seeds on them are baked char siu bao. Annie made her own char siu the other day, and then made a filling from that. (That’s another blog post…)
Annie made this great chopped salad with blanched broccoli, canned black beans, hard boiled eggs, roasted red bell peppers and corn, chopped cilantro, and green onion. The dressing was Annie’s Naturals brand cilantro-lime dressing.
(Too bad they don’t sell the cilantro-lime dressing anymore – it’s good. At least we can still get the shiitake mushroom-sesame vinaigrette from Trader Joe’s.)
