Ramen! 2.3: Day 3 Prep

Slow-Poached Eggs

Basically you take the largest pot you own, fill it up with water, and bring that water to 140 degrees Fahrenheit over the lowest possible heat. That's going to take the better part of a hour.

You rig up a steamer rack or "a doughnut of aluminum foil or a few chopsticks scattered helter skelter across the bottom of the pan." The goal is to keep the eggs from the bottom of the pan where the heat will be decidedly above the temperature you're aiming for. Using the largest pot of the pan also helps to ensure that the eggs are most likely cooking at 140 degrees F since the water at the top will be cooler than the water in the middle.

In any case, once you get this all set up, the eggs will poach in about 40 minutes. If you're looking to poach a lot of eggs, this is way easier than the traditional method (which, for the record, I have yet to attempt). Also, it's pretty damn dramatic looking to crack what looks like a raw egg into a bowl of ramen, bibimbap, or what have you. They've been cooking eggs this way in Japan for eons when old ladies would bring eggs to cook in natural hot springs.

Seasonal Vegetables

Though they'll prep English or shelling peas in spring and early summer and cut corn off the cobs in late summer, Momofuku Noodle Bar adds collards to their ramen the rest of the year. When I eat BBQ (mostly at Redbones in Davis Square), I must have collard greens (succotash occupies a very close second-place in my heart). I've never cooked them before and I can say that David Chang's recipe totally hits the spot.

• 1 bunch collards
• 1 piece bacon (Frankly, I think an additional piece of bacon was required. Thankfully, there was rendered pork fat from roasting the pork belly on hand to make up for the collards' lack of oomph.)
• large pinch kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar ("white is fine if you don't have brown")
• 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
• 1 cup water

Collards tossed in the rendered fat and wilted a bit.

Forty minutes later on medium-low. Yum.

There was the prepping of individual bowls of ramen as I finally got everything set up. But eventually I got to kick back, relax, and gorge myself on my own serving of this extremely laborious process. Never again will I spend 2 1/2 long days making this dish (Far easier and more reasonable to take the Fung Wah to NYC and eat ramen in numerous restaurants across at least Downtown, Midtown, and Brooklyn).
I'll never make this again, but perhaps I'll spend a similarly long-assed, involved time cooking something else. Though really I'm not quite sure what.