Five Bowls.
“This ajitama is perfect, possibly the best I had this year.”
If the quote above came from my mother or any other pedestrian it wouldn’t mean a thing.
But it was Jess Ho, so who needs drugs to get high, right?
The funny thing was, my inner voice went: I know, right?
I was that cocky.
But it’s Christmas, let me be cocky.
I didn’t even bother with cutting the eggs. I know the ajitama was good because they were cooked softer than usual (6 minutes 15 seconds before the ice bath, 800g size), and I let them steep longer (2 days) in the marinade. Jess’s went for 72 hours, so perhaps it was the jammiest out of the bunch.
The day before, this guy came to pick up a table from my place.
“Do you want to try my noodles?” I asked.
“It’s ok, I need to head back to work.” He said.
“You sure?” I asked.
“Since dismantling the table will take some time, why not?” He probably sensed that I wouldn’t give the table away if he didn’t accept the noodles.
“The soup is great.”
Of course, I thought.
A full chicken, with additional carcass and feet, cooked at 70°C for over 12 hours, chilled, then steeped with konbu, dried mushrooms, dried scallops, and oven-dried tomatoes, chilled, then steeped with carrot, onion, ginger, and garlic.
Everything that had umami in it, was in the broth.
It was impossible not to be good.
The person before Frankie, was MeiHuii.
She was one of the OGs who bought my book in 2020, but we never met in person. I packed and left them above the mailbox and she picked them up.
She brought me a lobster tail, a callback to my pasta post. She has connections with a seafood distributor and advised that since China has resumed buying, lobsters etc will begin to skyrocket. That was a week ago, so maybe it’s too late for you now. The same with abalone, probably.
We joked that if I were to sell this bowl of ramen, I’d call abalone ‘meat mushroom’ — a play on the Chinese’s ‘abalone mushroom’.
Everyone asked how I cooked the abalone to perfection, and instead of taking the credit, I stupidly told them it came vacuum-packed.
You gotta ask Ocean Road how they do it.
For my chicken, I brined in a dried mushroom solution for 24 hours, sous vide for sixty minutes, chilled overnight and then reheated in the soup slightly together with the abalone before serving. I contemplated torching, but there is no fat on either protein. It is better to leave them as is rather than to dry them out just for theatrical purposes.
Amanda and Jon were the first to arrive.
Twelve hours ago, I was shooting their wedding.
They live in Ferntree Gully.
For the Sydneysiders, that’s just two suburbs away, but for Melburnians, you might as well be in Auckland.
So I thought it’d be a great start to the first day of their marriage.
Also, they ‘knew’ me way back during my Subtle Asian Cooking days.
Since they’re a couple, they had the chance to taste two types of noodles.
One was low-hydration at 35%, mixed with tapioca flour, riboflavin (vitamin B) and store-bought kansui powder, the other at a higher 40% hydration, kansui powder made fresh (bicarb soda at 120°C until weight reaches 66%-70%) with only wheat flour and a few tsp of pure gluten.
They all said the ramen was good.
But I don’t trust words, I want action.
If you have time to say I love you, you have time to cut fruits.
All five bowls, empty.
Down to the last drop.
I don’t need them to tell me, I know it was the best ramen in Australia that day.
You know Yoshitomo Nara. Of course, you do.
The artist who paints girls with huge eyes and cute dogs. But my Yoshitomo Nara is not your Yoshitomo Nara. I read his blog when he was still painting in Germany. I even mistook him as a ‘her’. That’s how far back I know (of) Nara.
I own a DVD of his documentary (it’s free on YouTube nowadays duh), in which he sculpted a whole village, figures and houses, and after the exhibition, burned everything down.
Because ‘art’ is fleeting.
It is the tree that falls in the forest.
It is 昙花 Tan Hua, the night-blooming cactus that blooms at night and dies at sunrise.
It’s Christmas, which means my wife and daughter are back and now sleeping soundly before our lunch party with the god family. As I try not to type too loudly, I see ‘bachelor’ Harvard fading out like Marty’s hand in Back to The Future.
Amongst my list of ‘things to do while I’m alone’ - making ramen for strangers was a strong non-negotiable.
To know that I could make ramen that was unapologetically mine, and offer them to strangers, and pull it off.
My ramen was a goodbye letter from 2024 Harvard.
And like Tan Hua, it came and went.