So, last weekend, I had invited an old friend to come up, and asked if he could pick up some food for me on his way. Still bummed from not being able to get to NOLA as planned, he agreed to cheer me up and come and play some rummy 500...keep me entertained as we watched JazzFest from afar (new AXS app for iOS was broadcasting for free). We caught the latter part of Anders Osborne, the Mavericks, and then Santana's full set from the previous night.
What's for eats? A couple of years ago, he turned me on to one of the only authentic Japanese ramen restaurants in NJ...minutes from his house. He said that if I called it in, he'd grab it on his way. Awesome. A quick call later and I was on the phone with the one dude who seems to be always there. I told him my issue: I know it's best fresh, but what could he recommend that could travel well, and then how do I prepare it once it gets here. He quickly recommended the "doubly creamy" broth. From experience, I know this meant a chicken and pork-bone-based soup where the cooking process turns the resultant broth a chalky creamy white without the heaviness of a cream-based soup. Then, its filled with marbled pork back or belly, mushrooms, scallions, sauteed crispy garlic and ginger...and noodles. Noodles are typically key, homemade and essential to the soup. No problem. Order me up one of those, and get it here ASAP.
When G arrived, he had my two containers of soup contents. The instructions from the restaurant was to super-heat the broth to almost boiling, and hit the soup innards with 20 second of microwave time, then pour the noodles and contents into the broth. No problem. Instructions were followed to the letter. The resulting bowl of soup looked amazing. Noodles were an egg variety instead of a traditional alkaline soba. Still, it had the other requisite ingredients: pork slices, Japanese version of gefilte fish (fish cake roll), mushrooms, and a shady looking egg. Seriously? Is that what I think it is? That egg, ashy and gray mottled on the outside with a dark-green yolk, was none other than a century egg (1000 year old duck egg, 1000 year egg, etc.): an uncooked, but preserved chicken egg using alkaline and sodium-filled clays to ferment and preserve it for weeks, sometimes months before serving it. The result of its hibernation is a gelatin-like egg white which looks like it's been dipped in ashes, and a yellowish-green to dark-green egg yolk which gives off a sulfur-like aroma, but is described as rich and creamy.
What did I have to lose? I took the second half of that egg, which I had previously passed off as a strangely soft mushroom, and popped it into my mouth. Mixed with the creamy broth and garlic, this thing was awesome. There's no real chew, but that's not terribly unlike a hard-boiled egg. The flavor was salty, rich and creamy like a really soft cheese, and it just melted into my mouth...and then was over. I quickly pushed through the rest of the soup to see if there was another one in there. No such luck. So, I really have no option but to ask G to bring it again sometime in the future. An amazing experience...but just the soup...I got my ass handed to me in rummy 500.
No comments:
Post a Comment