jacksonholefoodie

Ah, Mexico.  I am still reveling in the zippy, healthy salsas, soups, and stews that I learned to make in San Miguel de Allende.  

The true cuisine of Mexico differs from region to region, with a dizzying variety of dishes that barely resemble our American-Mexican food.  In the mountains of central Mexico, where I attended cooking school, I learned that most dishes begin with dried chiles, whereas fresh chiles are more typical of the coastal foods. 

Cooking with dried chiles can be a tad intimidating.  They are often toasted briefly before soaking, but are so easy to burn.  Marilau, my Mexican cooking mentor, taught me how to coax the subtle and not-so-subtle flavors out of the dried chiles.  "You must always be in control of the spicihood", says Marilau.  Spicihood may just be my new favorite Spanglish word. 

Marilau also taught me that the tomatillo is a beautiful, versatile vegetable.  I am embarrassed to admit that I had never cooked with tomatillos before.  I wasn't sure what the heck to do with these firm, green, husky tomato-ish vegetables.  Now I know:  make Salsa Verde and make it often.  

As Marilau loves to remind us gringos, real salsa is not for dipping.  Mexicans do not eat chips and salsa before the meal.  Salsa, in the true regional Mexican sense, is a sauce which appears as part of the main dish, on the side of simple grilled pork roast, in the broth of tortilla soup, or as the backbone of a creamy pumpkin seed sauce. 

Like most Americans, it would be impossible not to want to dip a chip into these salsas. But I'll show you how to cook with them too.

I have three salsas for you to try.  First the Salsa Verde, which is as easy as throwing tomatillos, onion, chiles and cilantro in a blender, then gently warming over the stove for 15 minutes.  

Next, there is Salsa de Chile Guajillo, that bright red sauce made of dried guajillo chiles and tomatoes, and a few secret ingredients.  Blended and strained, a smooth perfectly balanced guajillo salsa is the benchmark of excellence for Mexican home cooks.  

Lastly, but not least because this is actually my favorite of the three, a Salsa Morena, or brown sauce. This sauce is also a breeze to make, just sauté ingredients, blend and strain.  It tastes earthy from two types of dried chiles, pasillas and anchos, and slightly sweet from adding raisins (or apples or dates).  It is just the sauce to dress up wild game, duck, pork tenderloins, beef brisket, chicken or turkey.  

Once you get a feel for how spicy you want your salsas, you can vary the "spicihood" by adding more of the chile's seeds and veins.

Marilau"s 5 Rules of Cooking with Chiles: 

1. Never wash a dried chile.  Just gently clean it with a cloth.
2. When toasting dried chiles, be gentle and brief.  Flip every few seconds, and remove from the heat as soon as the aroma reaches your nose.
3. A smooth sauce is the hallmark of a great Mexican cook. You must have a blender and a sieve to make these salsas. 
4. Always control the "Spicihood" by removing the appropriate amount of chile's veins and seeds for your dish. 
5. Chiles are like music; you need to let each one sing. Don't mix dried and fresh chilies in the same sauce. Don't mix red and green salsas on the same plate. And never make a sauce with more than one type of fresh chile.

This salsa will stay fresh in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, or freeze for up to 3 months. 

To prepare the chiles, use scissors to snip off the stem, then cut them lengthwise and open like a book.  Carefully remove veins and seeds.  

To prepare the dried chiles, uses scissor to snip off the stem.  Then cut them lengthwise and open like a book.  Carefully remove veins and seeds.

By the time March rolls around, we are all ready for a change of scenery.

And for a place in which you can leave the house without your Uggs, down puffy and fleece jacket. 

The mass exodus from Jackson Hole is about to begin.  If your Spring Break is taking you South, here is a recipe to get you in the groove.  And if you are staying in Jackson Hole, then you will likely have some fabulous powder skiing and this hearty soup from central Mexico to keep you warm.

 I have fallen in love with the food of central Mexico, with the dried guajillo and pasilla peppers, and the creamy pumpkin seed sauces.  With the chochoyotes (little dumplings made of masa dough) floating in the tomatillo soup, and the cinnamon-laced flan.  

The city of San Miguel de Allende lies 90 miles north of Mexico City, in the mountains at 6000 feet.  This is the land of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, a mecca for artists and students.  It is the land of salsas made from guajillo, pasilla, chipotle and ancho chilis, which are the basis of central Mexican cuisine. 

Here is your first "change of scenery" spring break recipe:  Caldo Tlalpeño, a hearty and healthy tomatillo-based soup, with potato, zucchini, and chochoyotes. And it couldn't be simpler.

First tomatillos are husked, cleaned and quartered, and placed in a blender with white onion, garlic and cilantro.  The vegetables are pureed, and then brought to a boil with chicken broth and a whole chipotle chili.  After a brief simmer, diced potatoes and zucchini are added. Then the chochoyotes:  little dumplings made of masa dough (the same dough used to make corn tortillas), which are rolled into marble-sized balls, with a thumbprint in the middle, like Mexican gnocchi.  When the chochoyotes rise to the surface of the broth, they are done.  Just like gnocchi! 

Before serving, the whole chipotle is fished out of the soup, and chopped up to be served alongside as a condiment.  Chipotles measure 15,000 on the Scoville scale (a measure of a chili pepper's heat level), but when cooked whole without exposing seeds and veins, just a subtle undertone of heat and a lot of flavor is added. 

These recipes are from Marilau, my Mexican cooking instructor.  Her school specializes in the regional recipes taught to her by her ancestors. These recipes are centuries-old, and Marilau is just now writing them down. 

Next on our tour of central Mexican food:  Salsa 101.  The red and green (and brown) salsas of your dreams. 

Tortilla dough is easy to make, or you can purchase it fresh from the local tortilleria, Tortilleria mi Pueblo.  You'll find them on Broadway in Jackson Hole, tucked behind the Gun Barrel Steak House. 

Sunday was such a perfect day for multisporting.  Around here, multisporting means three or more sports are pursued in one day.  This takes organization, a bag full of clothes and gear, and the right food.  It was fortuitous that I had made a big batch of Bacon Sushi Rice Bars and Balls first thing Saturday morning.

The debut of the warm March sun seduces everyone to drop everything and head outdoors for a full day of activities. Everywhere everyone is frantically skinning uphill, skiing downhill, skate-skiing across sun-crusted meadows, biking slushy roads, and taking those white legs out for the first spring run. From sunup to sundown, no one is willing to squander one precious hour of sunlight, or one balmy breeze.

A successful multisport day starts with a good breakfast. Since I was already making Bacon and Egg Sushi RIce Bars (and Balls), breakfast was a deconstructed version of the same ingredients:  steaming rice, crispy bacon bits, scrambled eggs, soy sauce, brown sugar, and a dappling of black sesame seeds, for a bit of crunch.  Rice for breakfast?  Oh yeah. 

Rice is also the ideal ingredient for a high energy power bar to keep you going all day long.  Why rice? Because it's easy to digest while working out, and its high glycemic index makes it the perfect post-workout food as well.  And a savory, rice-based power bar is a nice change of pace after a long winter of prepackaged, nut-oat-chocolate bars.  

My multisport day started with an early morning cruise with Nick on the sun-crusted meadows in Grand Teton National Park.  In the spring, the combination of warm sunny days and single digit nights creates a crust on snowy meadows that is perfect for skate skiing. 

There is a certain freedom that comes with crust cruising...you can ski over fences, you can ski in the bed of a creek, and you can ski fast and far.  But you can't ski all day; the spell is broken mid-morning as the sun beats down on the crust and it cracks, causing you to break through.  

As the sun warmed up on Sunday, it occurred to me that I should haul out my bike.  Early spring bike rides are normally windy, mud-splattered endeavors, and not all that enjoyable.  But last Sunday there was barely a breeze, and as the temperatures topped out at 47ºF, a bike ride down Fall Creek Road was not painful at all.  

How do you top off a day of skate skiing and the first big spring bike ride?  You go alpine skiing, of course.  The warm sunny days have transformed our snowpack into a wide spectrum of ski conditions... powder, corn, slush, ice...all in the same day.  If you hit it right, usually in the early afternoon, you'll be skiing on corn:  soft, easy snow that is fast and forgiving. 

The perfect day of multisporting preferably ends with aprés ski, and a chance to swap tales of the day with friends.  Someone else's multisport day is always going to be more outrageous than yours around here.  Guaranteed. 

These rice bars are the invention of Allen Lim, an exercise physiologist, and Biju Thomas, a chef, who teamed up to create real food for the professional cyclists they train. They found that their athletes were bored with their usual prepackaged power bars, and as a result, they weren't getting enough calories.  More importantly, they were developing "gut rot" from eating too many dense, sweet bars.  

Based on the Chinese rice cake Zong Zi, which are wrapped in bamboo leaves, these savory bars are wrapped in paper foil, and shaped to fit into the athlete's back jersey pocket.  

The bars can be easily varied by swapping chicken sausage for the bacon, and adding nut butters, roasted cashews, or raisins.  Although designed for elite cyclists, they work equally well for an aging athlete like myself, mountain biking on slushy roads on a gorgeous spring day. 

This recipe is adapted from The Feed Zone Cookbook, by Biju Thomas and Allen Lim, a must-have whole-foods cookbook for athletes.  

Some tips for success:

Do not rinse the rice before cooking; if you do, it won't stick together to form a bar or a ball.  Believe me, I've made that mistake (but if you forget, you'll have a nice rice bowl).

The easiest way to prepare the bacon is to take the whole package and chop it without separating the slices first.  They will separate in the frying pan.  Also, be sure to really blot out all of the grease.  You don't want your rice bars to be greasy.

Form the bars or balls while the rice is still warm; it will stick together better.

Make your bars gluten-free by using tamari instead of soy sauce.  

One more thing:  it is important to choose the right type of rice, as this recipe won't work with many varieties. Calrose is a medium grain rice that is available locally.  It is inexpensive, cooks in 20 minutes, and has the sticky quality you'll need. You could use any rice marked "sushi" (which I buy in bulk at Jackson Whole Grocer in Jackson), or the "sweet rice" you'll find in Asian markets. 

Yield:  about 10 bars, or 2 dozen balls

It's a big week for the chocolate-obsessed among us.  Although I am obsessive about chocolate all year round, my interest was reignited last week at a "Chocolate Lab" class given by Shooting Star's pastry chef Amy Oldis. 

Amy has a special touch with all things chocolate, from white to milk to semisweet to the very dark.  Trained at the Culinary Institute of America in California, and schooled at the pastry station at the Snake River Grill, Amy buzzes around the kitchen in perpetual motion whisking and stirring with such speed and accuracy that it makes your head spin.  

And her chocolate desserts are both classic and unique, with a touch of whimsy.  First we made homemade Tootsie Rolls, which are both easy and irrestitible.  Semisweet chocolate is melted and mixed with light corn syrup and the secret ingredient that makes a Tootsie Roll taste like a Tootsie Roll...orange blossom water.  Imagine how much fun it would be to make these with your kids, or surprise them with their very own box on Valentine's Day.

When Amy raved about the flavor of her Caramelized White Chocolate Whipped Ganache, I must admit I was skeptical.  Having never been a fan of white chocolate--technically, it's not even chocolate--I was completely surprised by how much I fell in love with her concoction.  White chocolate is spread on silicon baking mat-lined pan, and placed in a 200ºF oven until it is done.  How will you know it is done?  It will smell like the most delicious dulce de leche, or imagine a toasty fresh caramel aroma wafting from your oven.  

As the white chocolate bakes, Amy pulls it out of the oven and spreads it this way and that so that it cooks evenly.  Once the white chocolate is sufficiently caramelized, it is folded into hot cream to make a ganache, then cooled to room temperature and chilled overnight.  It is whipped to the consistency of a thick frosting just before using, as a cupcake topping, a brownie embellishment, or a decadent straight-up-with-a-spoon treat.  

Vegan chocolate mousse, anyone?  The perfect edible valentine for a vegan sweetheart, Amy makes dark chocolate mousse with water instead of cream.  Another revelation:  without the cream, the flavor of the chocolate comes through even more.  It's more intense, somehow.  Less muted.  More chocolatey.  

I was so inspired by this new-to-me concept of dairy-less chocolate cream that I created a vegan Chocolate Fondue with olive oil in lieu of cream.  My Sicilian Superfood Fondue contains just 3 ingredients:  Valrhona 66% chocolate, extra virgin olive oil, and fiori di sicilia (an extract that is like Sicily in a bottle, think bitter almonds, blood oranges, jasmine blossoms and vanilla).  But the number of dipping ingredients is infinitesimal:  blood oranges, apples and pears, cubes of French baguette or 460Bread walnut cranberry bread, amaretti cookies, Marcona almonds and pistachios, or figs, fresh or dried.   

Back in the kitchen with Amy, we made the most adorable little "Fudgesicles".  Semisweet (54%) chocolate is mixed with cream, milk, egg yolks, sugar and salt. This involves some tempering of the hot cream and milk with the eggs, but don't let that scare you.  Amy makes it look easy.  The result is a rich and creamy chocolate pudding that can be eaten straight up in a bowl, or frozen into fudgesicles.  At home, I made these with Dixie cups and wooden skewers.  There's nothing like a frozen chocolate treat in the middle of a frigid February!

As Amy's Chocolate Lab was coming to an end, she had one more chocolate indulgence planned for us:  Hot Milk Chocolate.  Now, if you are a dark chocolate lover like me, you may not get too excited about a hot milk chocolate.  I wasn't.  But Amy's Hot Milk Chocolate was so creamy, so smooth, but with a salty edge, that I finished every last drop, even though I was getting a bit full from noshing on the Tootsie Rolls.  This hot chocolate is based on the classic French cooking technique of making a créme anglaise, which is hot cream and milk tempered with eggs, and cooked just long enough to make a thick sauce.  The créme anglaise is then strained and stirred into chocolate, to be drunken immediately, or frozen in an ice cream. 

Edible valentines:  the best valentines of all.

Amy Oldis, pastry chef extraordinaire, swears by Alice Medrich's Bittersweet as her chocolate bible.  This recipe for Tootsie Rolls, however, comes from  Gail Gand.  

Orange blossom water can be found locally at Jackson Whole Grocer.  If you can't find it, substitute orange extract instead. 

This fondue is incredibly quick and easy; you only need 3 ingredients for the fondue, and you can raid your cupboards for dipping inspiration.  Be sure to use a high quality chocolate that is at least 54% cocoa solids, and a good fruity and flavorful olive oil.

If you prefer to use even darker chocolate, such as a bittersweet one with over 70% cocoa solids, you may want to add a tablespoon of good honey (Sicilian honey!) to keep the fondue a tad sweet. 


Fiori di Sicilia is an extract that can be found locally at Jackson Whole Grocer.  It is my secret ingredient in biscotti, olive oil cake, and risotto rice pudding.  But its orange-lemon-vanilla-jasmine essence pairs best with pure chocolate.

A new collection of Asian salad dressings has resuscitated my winter cooking routine.  Although I adore the hearty and rich comfort foods of winter,  lately I've been craving a bit more yin and a lot less yang.  Crunchy, fresh, and healthy, one-bowl salad meals with just a touch of spice are my new mid-winter mantra. 

The secret to these big beautiful salad bowls is in the creamy dressings.   Spicy Sesame Sake Dressing and Gado Gado Sauce get their lusciousness from nut butters and their kick from sombel olek, crushed red peppers or good old Sriracha sauce.  Creamy miso dressing is more subtle, with an earthy umaminess from sweet white miso paste, which is low in sodium and calories. 

Stocking your Asian salad pantry should be easy; all ingredients are available at the grocery store, and you probably already have many of these Asian staples. These dressings are meant to be made in big batches; they will keep for up to a month, tightly sealed in the coldest part of your refrigerator.

Rice vinegar (unseasoned), mirin (sweet rice wine), low sodium soy sauce, and toasted sesame oil are some of the pantry staples you will need.  Tahini (sesame paste), creamy peanut butter, coconut milk, and sweet white miso paste give the dressings their body.  Sriracha hot chili sauce, sambal olek (chili paste) or red pepper flakes add heat.  Fresh lime juice, cilantro, fresh ginger and garlic brighten up the Asian salad bowls, and pickled ginger, diced scallions, and nori make nice condiments.

Once your salad dressings are mixed up and spiced to your liking, the rest of the salads need no recipe at all.  Use your imagination and create hundreds of different Asian salad bowls, depending on what's in your fridge and freezer.  

Protein plays a supporting role in these salad creations, but even small servings of meat, chicken, tofu or fish can give your salad the oomph it needs to fill you up when you come in from the cold. Try sushi-grade fish, tofu squeezed dry and browned in a pan, or slices of chicken, pork or beef.  

Even better, forage your freezer for odds and ends of wild game meat; wild game tenderloins, cut into 1-inch thick medallions and seared in a hot pan coated in grapeseed oil and a few drops of sesame oil, are the perfect pairing for the Spicy Sesame Sake Dressing.  Season with salt and pepper, slice against the grain, and drape them over your veggies, for an East meets Wild West salad. 

The Gado Gado Sauce is perhaps the most rich and addicting of the dressings; like the peanut sauce served beside chicken sate, it will make you want to lick the bowl.  It would be perfect on a salad bowl of grilled chicken, cucumber slices, shredded carrot, butter lettuce and brown rice. 

For last minute weeknight meals, I like to cook big batches of brown rice and stash Ziploc bags of it in the freezer.  With a luscious Asian salad dressing (and some good leftover meat and vegetables) in the fridge, and brown rice in the freezer, I am just minutes away from an Asian salad bowl meal.

All of these recipes were adapted from Simple Asian Meals by Nina Simonds. 

Use to dress a salad bowl, or make your own Dan Dan Noodles by tossing it into warm rice noodles with grilled chicken, carrots, cucumbers, bean sprouts and toasted sesame seeds. 

Yields about 1 cup

Sweet white miso paste gives this dressing its creamy, savory flavor.  Miso paste is low in calories and sodium, and this is by far the healthiest of the dressings.  It is perfect for drizzling over seared tofu, sushi rice and vegetables topped with pickled ginger and crispy nori.

Yields about 1 cup

Also known as Sate Dressing, or just Peanut Lime Sauce, this addicting dressing makes everything it touches taste better.

Yields about 2 cups

When skiing with a pack of  10- and 11-year old boys, it is good to have a supply of energy bars along, not that they need any more energy. 

Homemade chewy peanut buttery bars fortified with crunchy granola and drizzled with dark chocolate are perfect for replenishing big appetites on a snowy winter day.

On a special Journeys School Physical Education class celebrating winter sports, we outfitted the kids in nordic gear and headed out to the Park, Grand Teton National Park that is.  Racing across the snowfields to Cottonwood Creek, they discovered a local secret: in the winter, the meandering creek freezes to form the perfect natural terrain half-pipe.   

Instantly the silent winter sanctuary of the Park turns into a backcountry version of the X-Games.

After an hour or so of this, snacks must happen.  A thermos of hot chocolate, another of Chai tea, some oatmeal cookies, and the Backcountry Bars come out. 

Making your own snack bars at home from ingredients in your pantry is fast and easy, not to mention economical.  And it's good to know exactly what's in your bar.  As you may suspect, most health bars on the market are anything but healthy.

Creamy peanut butter serves as the base for the Backcountry Bars, and crushed up cereal or granola gives them their oomph.   

Dress them up with a swerve of dark chocolate, or spice them up with chopped crystallized ginger.  Add chopped figs, cherries or currants.  Throw in some nuts.  This is truly an any-way-you-like-it recipe.

Our favorite Backcountry Bar is made from The Bunnery Natural Foods Original Granola.  I’m not one for store-bought granola, but I make an exception for the Bunnery brand. Sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, almond slices and toasted oats add just the right crunch to these otherwise chewy bars. 

Call them what you will and make them with whatever you have on hand.  These wholesome peanut buttery bars will disappear quickly if you have active people around.

If you are from the South, you may recognize these as a distant cousin to the Swag Bar, made famous by the Swag Country Inn in Waynesville, North Carolina.  I've replaced the corn syrup with brown rice syrup, and reduced the sugar.  Still, these bars are packed with energy, and well suited for replenishing calories spent out playing in the snow.

Yields 24 2-inch bars

• 1 3/4 cups creamy peanut butter (such as Jif)
• 1/2 cup brown rice syrup
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 1/2 cups crushed whole wheat cereal, like Total, or granola 
• 2 ounces (1/3 cup chopped) dark chocolate for drizzling, or 8 ounces semisweet chocolate chips for glazing

Variations I have tried:  

• Rice Krispies cereal (or gluten-free crisped brown rice cereal) + 1/2 cup chopped dried figs + 1/2 cup chopped crystallized ginger
• crushed Total cereal + 1/2 cup chopped crystallized ginger
  
• crushed Total cereal + 1 cup chopped roasted peanuts + 1/2 cup currants  
• substitute Adam's Natural Peanut Butter for Jif; the texture will be a little more grainy
• substitute light Karo syrup for the brown rice syrup
• Note:  when I make these with granola, I don't add anything else; the granola provides everything they need.

A few months ago, when the November wind was blowing and the snow was piling up outside, I spent a cozy day in the kitchen with my Momofuku cookbook, and made an enormous pot of ramen noodle soup.  There was  enough ramen to feed all the boys in the neighborhood, with plenty of broth and meat leftover to stash in the freezer for another blustery day.

This weekend the snow was again piling up outside, this time in earnest with four feet of glorious powder.  With no time for cooking, I turned to my stockpile of ramen ingredients, and threw together a big beautiful pot of ramen noodle soup in minutes.   

As you may suspect, we are not talking about Top Ramen.  We are talking about that mysteriously flavorful soup you would find in a Chinatown, in those tiny noodle shops, where the windows are steaming up, and the happy diners are slurping noodles and tilting the bowl back to catch every last drop of broth.

That was the soup I was craving on that cold November day. And since we are a long way from any Chinatown out here in Wyoming, I had to figure out how to make it at home. (Although you can purchase a decent bowl of ramen at the Jackson sushi restaurant Sudaché.) 

Before I tell you about the recipe, promise me you won’t get discouraged.  
I have simplified the very involved Momofuku method of making Ramen, so that we can make it at home, with ingredients from the grocery store, and without spending the whole day in the kitchen.  It doesn’t have to be completely authentic, it just has to be good.
 
Ramen is broth + noodles + toppings.  “It’s that simple and it’s that complex”, says David Chang, co-author of the Momofuku cookbook.

There is a mother broth made from roasted pork bones and kombu, which is a strip of dried seaweed you’ll find in the Asian section of the supermarket.  (When I was practicing obstetrics, I used kombu to induce labor in pregnant women, and now I’ve strangely found another crucial use for it in the kitchen.  Don't worry, if you are pregnant, you won't go into labor if you ingest it.)

The Momofuku method calls for another broth, called Taré, that is used to season the mother broth.  Taré is made from chicken backs, mirin ( a sweet rice--based seasoning), soy sauce and sake.  For simplicity, I did not make a proper Taré, but instead added those ingredients later to season the soup.  

Preparing the pork shoulder for the ramen is incredibly simple, but it does take time, so plan ahead.  The pork is rubbed with equal parts Kosher salt and sugar, marinated for 6-24 hours, slow-roasted for another 6, then shredded.  The marinade creates a sweet crust, and the slow-roasted meat becomes deeply flavorful and oh-so-salty.   

A two-day meat project is not essential to good ramen.  Instead, you could slice a tenderloin (beef, bison, elk, or antelope) into the thinnest possible medallions, then lie the meat on top of the piping hot broth raw just before serving, shabu-shabu-style. The hot broth will cook the meat, and it will be tender and the perfect size for capturing between chopsticks.  Make sure your meat is cold and your knife is sharp, for paper-thin slicing.

If you don't have time to roast all day, you could get that slow-roasted sweet and salty flavor by giving a slab of pork belly the same treatment as the pork shoulder.  Rub with Kosher salt and sugar, marinate overnight, then roast for about 2 hours. Thinly sliced, it would be a decadent addition to your ramen.

When it comes to choosing noodles, even Chang advises that you don’t have to make them from scratch.  I like using good quality dried noodles, such as skinny wheat somen or thicker udon. I have tried the fresh Chinese egg noodles you’ll find at the grocery store, but found that they become gummy and starchy in the soup.

Stop there, and you’d have a beautiful bowl of soup.  Or add some interesting toppings to make the ramen your own.  Easy embellishments include pieces of nori (roasted and seasoned seaweed), shredded kale or collard greens (cooked down in a piece of chopped bacon), a pickled chile or two, a handful of steamed broccoli rabe, or a handful of fresh corn.  

If you want to really gild the lily, top your soup with a slow-poached egg.  Not only is it an authentic way to serve ramen, but it is also a lot of fun to crack an egg into a bowl of soup, and use your chopsticks to swirl the golden poached yolk into the broth. 

If you really need some ramen—fast—and don’t have time to fuss over homemade broth, use this trick to doctor up store-bought chicken broth.  Simmer 2 boxes of chicken broth (I prefer Swanson organic) with 3 whole cloves of garlic, a piece of kombu (if you have some) and a few tablespoons of soy sauce.  After 15 minutes, discard the garlic and the kombu, and embellish away.  That’s almost as fast as Top Ramen.

Ah, ramen. 

This recipe is adapted from the Momofuku cookbook by David Chang and Peter Meehan.  

The broth will simmer for 7-8 hours total.  After the chicken is removed and the pork bones have been added, I see no reason why you couldn't transfer the contents of the pot to a slow-cooker set on low, and leave it to cook on its own.

Do yourself a favor and make a double batch of the broth.  With Momofuku ramen broth stashed in the freezer, and a good supply of nori and noodles in the pantry, you are just moments away from a superfast meal.  The shredded pork shoulder also freezes well in half-pint plastic bags. 

For each serving of Momofuku Ramen Noodle Soup:

• Ramen broth (2 cups)
  
•  shredded pork shoulder (1/3 cup)
  
•  slow-poached eggs (1 per serving)
  
•  fresh or dried udon or somen noodles, (4 ounces)
  
•  Sriracha hot sauce, to taste

Extras:  sautéed strips of kale or collard greens, sliced roasted pork belly, crumbled strips of nori, pickled chiles, fresh corn, steamed broccoli or broccoli rabe, minced scallions

For the Ramen Broth:

makes 5-6 quarts, enough for about 10-12 bowls of ramen, with leftovers

• 2 pieces (3 x 6 inch) of kombu (konbu)
• 6 quarts water, or more to replenish the pot
• 5 pounds chicken, either a whole bird, or backs and necks (or substitute 4 cups of chicken broth)
• 2 cups dried shiitake mushrooms, rinsed
• 5 pounds meaty pork bones
• 1/2 pound smoky bacon (such as an end piece of Benton's bacon)
• 1 bunch scallions, coarsely chopped
• 2 large carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 1 medium onion, cut in half
• soy sauce, mirin, and Kosher salt, for seasoning

For the Pork Shoulder:
 
makes about 3 cups, or enough for about 10  bowls of ramen

This recipe can be increased to make as much pork as you like.  The cooking time will be the same.  

Leftover shredded pork is great in tacos, quesadillas, or tossed with barbecue sauce for pulled pork sandwiches. 

• 3 pounds pork shoulder, boneless and skin off
• 1/4 cup Kosher salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
  

1. Mix the salt and sugar in a small bowl.
   
2. Put the pork shoulder in a deep roasting pan, and rub the sugar/salt all over the meat, making sure to cover all the nooks and crannies.
   
3. Cover tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 6 and no more than 24 hours. 
   
4. Preheat the oven to 250ºF.  
   
5. Unwrap the pork and discard any juices that have accumulated.  Put the meat in the oven, and roast for 6 hours.  Baste the meat with the pan juices several times in the last few hours of cooking.
   
6. When the pork is done cooking, let it rest on the counter for about 30 minutes.  Shred the meat with two forks, drizzle some of the pan juices over to keep it moist, and store in the refrigerator in a tightly covered container until ready to use. 

Slow-Poached Eggs
 
Slow-poached eggs are a really cool trick.  The eggs are poached in a hot water bath, where they “cook” for 45 minutes.  You can eat them right away, or make them ahead of time by plunging the eggs into ice water when they are done, and holding them in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours.  When you are ready to eat, just warm up the egg in a glass of hot water, and crack it into a small saucer.  Tip the dish into your ramen soup, or any other dish that requires a perfectly poached egg.

• eggs, as many as you like
  

1. Fill a large, heavy pot with water, and warm to 140º-145ºF.  You can measure the water temperature with an instant read thermometer, or just use your finger.  It should be as warm as a very hot bath.
   
2. Place a steamer basket, a cake rack, or a doughnut made of aluminum foil in the bottom of the pan.  You don't want the eggs to be sitting on the bottom.
   
3. When the water is just right, add the eggs, and slow-poach for 45 minutes.  Keep checking the water temperature periodically, either with a thermometer or your finger, to keep it in the 140º-145º range.
4. Use the eggs immediately by cracking them into a saucer, and then sliding them into your ramen noodle soup.  Or, plunge them into an ice bath to cool, then remove and refrigerate for up to 24 hours.