Sauté rāmen noodles and vegetables, with yuzu flakes
Root, leaves, fruit, sprouts, and bulbs are lightly sauté with rāmen noodles, in little oil quantity, to leave the maximum room for the inimitable aromas of yuzu. Your ticket to Japan. Boarding now.
Serves: 2-3
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 15 minutes
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”. This quote is attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and it resonates to me when I arrange a room, design a system, or cook — especially when I venture into Japanese cuisine. I often balance whether or not adding tofu, seaweed, mushrooms, or a combination of these. I’m always cautious in ingredients I pack in one dish, as I would love to recreate the pure simplicity of shōjin ryōri / 精進料理 dishes. I confess with humility my attempts are still far from what I experienced in Japan. However, I take pride in stating my attempts are still resulting in great meals!
This recipe gathers a limited number of ingredients, sauté with a light citrus flavor. If you’ve read previous articles I wrote, you may remember I love (vegan) ponzu / ポン酢 sauce, a variant of soy sauce. It’s obvious it’s thanks to yuzu, which the present recipe includes.
About yuzu
Yuzu is a citrus fruit which grows mainly in East Asia. It is popular in Korean and Japanese cuisines. The fruit itself is rarely eaten raw; recipes and products use its zest and juice — pretty much as we use lemons and limes elsewhere. It doesn’t taste exactly like lemon, featuring notes of orange mandarine. I discovered yuzu the first time I visited Japan, and since then I always brought yuzu products back home: dried spices, concentrated juice, and even yuzu-flavored saké. As mentioned above, yuzu is also a key ingredient of ponzu sauce.
Ingredients
200 g pre-cooked rāmen noodles1, or udon noodles
190 g mung bean sprouts
6 small Chinese cabbage leaves ~ 170 g
1 carrot ~ 150 g
1 small red bell pepper ~ 120 g
1 big onion ~ 180 g
2 soup spoons of dried yuzu flakes
5 soup spoons of soy sauce2
2 soup spoons of oil (prefer canola, sunflower, or corn oil, whose light flavor won’t overtake the dish; I used corn oil)
Preparation
This recipe will require you wash, peel, chop, slice its vegetable ingredients. There aren’t many, so this should be quick. Still, complete all the preparation steps before even heating your wok, because cooking steps will require you stir pretty much continuously.
Wash the mung bean sprouts
Wash the Chinese cabbage leaves, cut their bottom off (where they were tied to others); cut leaves in their short side into 1 cm wide pieces
Peel the carrot, cut into sticks roughly as thick as the noodles you selected for this recipe
Wash the red bell pepper, then slice it into strips approximately the size of the carrot sticks
Peel the onion, cut it in half, then slice length-wise; cut again in half to obtain half-slices
Cooking
I relied on my carbon steel wok, which is de facto my go-to cookware for stir-fried and sauté Chinese and Japanese recipes. I invested into this wok two years ago, and never regretted the purchase. If you’ve ever used a carbon steel wok, you know that it helps cook (very) fast. Be sure to complete all Preparation steps before proceeding with the below ones.
Heat the wok to medium flame/power
Add 2 soup spoons of oil, from the edge; wait for it to heat
Add carrot sticks and the onion; start to stir, gently and continuously
After 1 minute, add 1 soup spoon of dried yuzu flakes; mix into the ingredients
Add noodles, red bell pepper strips, pour 2 soup spoons of soy sauce on the noodles
Stir for 2-3 minutes, gently flipping the pre-cooked noodles upside down so the heat and liquids start to un-tighten them
Add the sliced Chinese cabbage leaves, and the mung bean sprouts; add another 1 soup spoon of dried yuzu flakes, and 3 soup spoons of soy sauce on top
If the noodles are still packed, and haven’t started to loosen their ties, you can add 2 soup spoons of water on them
Increase the heat to 80% of the maximum, and stir vigorously for 5 minutes; you want to ensure that no ingredients stick to the bottom and burn — at least not longer than necessary to give this awesome wok-cooked taste!
Serve this right away, especially because vegetables cool down fast. Do not cover if you plan to serve later, it would trap moisture which you don’t want. Simply leave the dish in the wok, and re-heat it for a couple of minutes before serving (do not forget to stir from time to time). You can also split the servings into bowls or plates, to re-heat in the micro-wave oven for 1-2 minutes depending on how cold they are. This dish refrigerates and freezes well; you can serve yourself and save some for later.
Note this recipe makes a lot of room for the yuzu flavor to spread and settle in your mouth. Since yuzu is a citrus fruit, its taste can be strong, and even bitter. I served this dish to my beloved one, and she was okay with the yuzu strength — she would have liked it stronger, actually, though she’s not a good reference as living with me for years has gradually changed her tastes. To mitigate a possible side-effect, you can pour additional soy sauce, or add pinches of salt. You can also compensate the dish by serving something else on the side: deep-fried tofu, or a seaweed salad with panko, and cherry blossom flavored rice vinegar dressing for example. Taste it as is first, then decide whether you like it raw, or need support from other flavors.
Enjoy!
If you’ve tried the recipe, and would like to comment - whether you loved it, or hated it - please do so. I’m welcoming ideas, even if these are non-vegan recipes I’ll have the challenge to “veganize”.
Here’s a tip before you go
This is not actually a tip of mine, rather a tip from the shop in Kyoto, Japan where I shopped for spices the few times I’ve been there. Their advice was to freeze the dried yuzu after the bag was opened. My very limited understanding of our conversation (my fault, I was traveling to a country without the minimum of spoken language) was the following: since the fruit flakes are dry, they won’t suffer; keeping them in the bag will slow the oxidization process; finally, the low temperature will help slow the germs growth (which is something most Japanese people are very cautious about).
Be cautious: rāmen noodles are made from wheat, which is a known allergen
Be cautious: soy sauce is made from soy and wheat; both are known allergens