I’ve been wanting to make ramen salad – it seems like an early summer dish. I’ve been tinkering with the recipe – in 2006, I thought you needed to put in the seasoning packs, and use lots of sugar. More recently, I have switched to the Mollie Katzen point of view – when cooking with ramen, throw out the seasoning packs immediately. And use less sugar.
Somehow, ramen salad, fried rice, and bottom of the vegetable bin stirfry are all connected in my mind. They are all ways to use up extra vegetables – and under utilized parts of vegetables – like broccoli stems, which are good in a stirfry, and shredded in a slaw.
I got giant bunches of spinach and escarole in my CSA box Thursday, so I’m plotting what to do with those. And asparagus. I have some ham in the fridge, so I thought I’d make a ham & asparagus lasagna. I bought a pack of RP’s pasta lasagna sheets at the farmers’ market Saturday morning, but Saturday evening everyone was going different directions, so not a good night for lasagna. Al and I had crackers and cheese and olives in front of TV, and Toni and Mark had sandwiches.
The easiest way to use up all the spinach and escarole is just cook it – it’ll shrink so much. I’ve been thinking about wilted escarole with goat cheese croutons. Or maybe Madhur Jaffrey’s spinach with chiles and ginger – saag bhaji. I have everything but the chiles.
Or maybe I’ll make some kind of spinach pie with the spinach – I bought dill at the market and I have lots of goat cheese.
This ramen salad I think is going to have shredded radishes (1st CSA box), kohlrabi (got a giant one in the last box), carrot, and maybe some of the escarole. Maybe turnips – got some of them in the box, too.
We had trout & eggs for father’s day – and there’re leftover potatoes – so now I’m not as sure about the lasagna. Maybe I’ll make something with potatoes and asparagus and ham. And there were two leftover fried eggs, that could go into fried rice – there’s a big bowl of cooked rice in the fridge too – and I have lots of green onions.
So maybe ramen salad AND fried rice will be on the menu this week.
But jeez, it’s almost 5:00 PM Sunday, and I haven’t done all the brunch dishes yet … But, to feel good about what I did do today: went for a walk, meditated 15 minutes, cleaned the cat boxes, made the brunch, lugged a bunch of stuff back from E. Wash …
I guess we’re good.
