Picture this: It's Saturday evening. You've finished a day's worth of chores. Your better half is having a girls' night out and it's dinner time. There's no room in the fridge to fit even a pizza box, so ordering pizza is out. It's the weekend so that gourmet ready-made restaurant, Thyme and Again, is closed. As a rule, there are no frozen dinners in the freezer. What do you do?

Simple. Turn to an old stand-by: instant ramen noodles. Yessir! Yours truly, a self declared foodie who won't let frozen dinners take up any real estate in the freezer, keeps his pantry well stocked with at least 3 types of instant ramen. Two come from Chinatown. Both are imported from overseas. Anything else is "wild card" ramen: new brands or varieties that I find in the stores that peek my interest. This time around the wild card was a Thai ramen that was heavily marketed by Walmart during the Lunar New Year. Blasphemy? Hardly!

Instant ramen is a food that was invented to meet the age-old requirement to quickly prepare a starch base for a weekday meal. These dried then deep fried cakes of noodles are very versatile and can complement just about any meat, seafood, or vegetable. Case in point, that night, I paired a nice bowl of Japanese-style instant ramen in pork broth with stir fried snow pea leaves and pan-seared oyster mushrooms. I also added a side of stir fried baby cuttle fish. The dinner (save for the cuttle fish) took approximately 20 minutes from start to finish to prep, cook, assemble and serve.

Here's a breakdown:

• Pull some frozen baby cuttle fish from the freezer and let it defrost in the fridge.
• Wash and coarsely split some wonderful giant oyster mushrooms into bite sized pieces
• Separate and wash enough snow pea leaves to make up a vegetable serving
• Heat up some left over pork broth that was flavoured with ham
• Boil some water in a pot on medium heat and cook a pack of instant ramen
• Heat some oil in a wok at medium until it ripples and dump in the oyster mushrooms
• Season with salt and pepper and stir fry until the mushrooms take on some colour
• Evacuate the wok, add oil as needed, and toss in the snow pea leaves
• Season with salt and cook at medium heat until the leaves brighten and the stems soften
• Evacuate the wok, add oil as needed, and toss in the baby cuttle fish
• Season with salt and stir fry until the cuttle fish turn white and become slightly rigid.
• Plate up and dig in!

Giant Oyster Mushrooms

Before

After
The mushrooms came from a recent trip out to Markahm, Ontario. We purchased packs of both this variety and enoki mushrooms from a popular Asian supermarket chain, called "T&T". The price, $3.98 for 319 g before taxes.

Giant oyster mushrooms are flavourful and incredibly meaty. They take to heat extremely well and would make a great meat substitute.

I recently found this variety of mushrooms being sold at Loblaws. The price, $4.99 for 227 g before taxes.

Giant Oyster Mushrooms at Loblaws

Snow pea leaves

Snow Pea Leaves and Defrosted Baby Cuttle Fish
Snow pea leaves are a Chinese green that happen to be my better half's favourite. Their flavour is very bright and only slightly bitter. It is best cooked using high heat in a wok. This way, the leaves retain their crisp texture.

The snow pea leaves also came from a T&T in Markahm.

Snow Pea Leaves at T&T

Here are the completed dishes

Giant Oyster Mushrooms on a bed of snow pea leaves

Stirfried CuttleFish

My Bowl of Ramen
Because I also had some left over pork, I slivered it up, reheated it in a pan, and added it to my noodles.

Not bad for a lowly pack of instant ramen eh?



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