neither quick nor easy | Emily N Cannon

Tampopo is a Japanese cult favorite 1985 movie about food obsessions. It features several humorous vignettes about dining and eating and manners, but the main plot revolves around a struggling ramen shop owner/cook who seeks help from a cowboy-styled stranger to make the perfect ramen. This involves a lot of stealth competitive research to steal the secrets of great broth, noodles, and toppings, until she finds her restaurant is the busiest spot in town.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9m6FoSw4jE]

The trouble with Tampopo is that – aside from one sketch involving an egg yolk – it makes me crave delicious noodle soup, but there aren’t many places around that serve a veg-friendly ramen. And if the movie is to be believed, making great ramen is complex and time-consuming.

I like cooking, but I am not terribly patient, so to attempt great (or at least tasty, passable) ramen, I turned to the recipe developed by J. Kenji LÃ³pez-Alt at the Serious Eats Food Lab. He uses science and everything! (You may also have followed his now-annual adventures in veganism.) Sure, it’s a lot of steps, but I’m not afraid of a project.

This required a hell of a lot of ingredients…

First we start the broth (not pictured: broiling the garlic, onion, and ginger ‘til they’re a tiny bit charred)

Then roast some diced sweet potato and beech and maitake mushrooms with Japanese chili-sesame spice

Then simmer fresh shiitakes with more ginger, scallions, and a crapload of soy sauce and mirin for a tangy sauce

Also make a ‘shroomy infused oil with dried porcini and shiitake mushrooms

AND THEN! Strain the broth, make it creamy by pureeing some of the sweet potatoes and bring it up to almost a simmer WHILE AT THE SAME TIME cooking the ramen noodles (oh right, those)…

Finally, mix it all together in the bowl with a mixture of miso paste, tahini, garlic, and some of that soy-mirin sauce, add the noodles, add the toppings, and…

BON APPETIT.

Holy shit, this took like almost 3 hours to make and I basically had it for breakfast. But WORTH IT.

One of our favorite things to eat out is actually a dish we assemble ourselves: a roll-your-own fresh roll platter with faux fish, rice paper, and fresh herbs and veggies. Versions of it can be found at many Vietnamese and vegetarian Asian fusion-type restaurants, but we get ours at the Vegetarian House, a vegan mainstay in downtown San Jose, where it’s called the Sea Fruits Grill. The whole thing is enough for a very satisfying meal for two, and it’s fantastic in the summer heat.

Here’s their original:

A pretty big chunk of the work is assembling the components. It features mints and basils you’re not likely to find in many places, though luckily the Bay Area is incredibly diverse. The platter typically has: rice vermicelli with chopped scallions, thin slices of cucumber, mint, Vietnamese perilla, and Vietnamese coriander, with a big hunk of something meat-like and a bowl of warm water to soften the rice papers.

Vietnamese parilla has a strong minty flavor with an almost smoky edge

Vietnamese coriander doesn’t look or taste much like cilantro, but has a pleasant fragrance, so give it a try, haters!

Vegetarian House’s fake meat is a really tasty, flaky fish substitute wrapped in seaweed and crusted with ground peanuts and sesame seeds. Seldom satisfied with fake meat available in the grocery store, I wanted to try the recipe in Miyoko’s Homemade Vegan Pantry cookbook, which relies on yuba for substance, seaweed for flavor, and agar to hold it all together.

Yuba is the ‘skin’ that forms on top of soymilk as a byproduct of making tofu, and it’s chewy and a little bit slimy and can cook up crispy and flaky

The result: not precisely like the original at all, but still tasty and fun to eat! We also made a couple adjustments for nutrition (wilted kale instead of lettuce) and, well, negligence (I forgot to pick up a cucumber so I used julienned carrot), but it worked well. I even picked up the parilla and Vietnamese coriander at a local Asian grocery for a little authentic flair.

The just-barely-dampened rice paper is placed on a clean plate, where it continues to soften and become pliable while you pile on the fillings

Tuck in the top and bottom then roll tightly from one side to the other

Enjoy with a sweet/sour/spicy dip, like peanut sauce or mock nuoc cham (like that from Vegan Eats World)