Ramen can be seen as a combination of 5 elements: broth, flavoring (tare), flavored oil, noodles, and toppings (for example egg, nori, greens). Aside from the noodles, we used wild ingredients for all elements.
Starting from the stock, we used bladderwrack seaweed (Fucus vesiculosus) (introduced here) and boletus mushroom. We imitated miso based tare with koji fermented puffball (Calvatia gigantea) paste (described here). For the flavored oil, we used black wild garlic (Allium ursinum) and crow garlic (Allium vineale) oil (described here). For the toppings, we used fried ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria), which structure wise resembles nori, crow garlic, water pepper (Persicaria hydropiper) , garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) leaves, boletus mushroom and finally, we replaced the traditional ramen egg with stinkhorn (Phallus impudicus) eggs (more about stinkhorn eggs soon).
Wild Ramen with black garlic oil
Equipment
- 2 cooking pots
- 1 Strainer
- 1 Frying pan
- 1 small bowl
- 2 (Ramen) bowls
- 1 whisk
Ingredients
Ramen broth
- 1 litre water
- 10 grams dried boletus mushroom
- 5 tbsp Koji fermented giant puffball paste here: https://chefofnature.com/?p=1096
- 20 grams dried bladder wrack seaweed
Garnish
- 20 stems ground elder (7 leaves on each)
- 10 leaves mustard garlic
- 2 tbsp water pepper optional
- 3 tbsp crow garlic leaves
Others
- 200 grams Ramen noodles of choice
- 2 tbsp Japanese black wild garlic oil here: https://chefofnature.com/?p=1281
- 2 stinkhorn eggs
- oil for frying
Instructions
Ramen broth
- Soak mushrooms and seaweed overnight in 1 litre of water.
- Boil the broth for 20 minutes.
- Add puffball paste to the broth. Mix it well and strain into another pot.
- Separate mushrooms from seaweed. Discard seaweed, and set mushrooms aside.
Garnish
- Separate ground elder leaves from stems and chop them roughly.
- Heat oil in the frying pan. Add ground elder leaves and fry for about 5 minutes. They are done when they barely make any crackling sound and look similar to dried nori.
- Chop mustard garlic leaves, crow garlic leaves and water pepper.
Stink horn egg and noodles
- Peel stink horn eggs.
- Cut the eggs in half and blanch them in hot water for 5 minutes.
- Cook noodles according to packaging instructions.
Assembly bowl
- Add one tbsp of Japanese black wild garlic oil to each ramen bowl.
- Pour the broth into the bowls and whisk well.
- Add noodles and stink horn egg.
- Add cooked mushrooms and garnish with the ground elder, garlic mustard and water pepper.
