Ramen

We're pretty much addicted to ramen. 

The problem is, our city is lacking a ramen restaurant (what we wouldn't give for a Ramen Isshin in town).  The only solution is to make our own delicious, noodle-y, flavourful soup.

We made the broth as I described in this post.  After straining it we seasoned it to taste with some splashes of fish sauce, soy sauce, a bit of sesame oil, salt and pepper.  We made sure that it was under-salted.  This is important, because we had a lot of broth and weren't going to be using it all for one meal.  You always want to leave your broth unsalted, or very lightly salted until you're going to use it, because when you bring it to a boil, it reduces, and could easily become over-salted.  We minced some of the fat and meat that was on the bones, and whisked that vigorously into the soup to give it that creamy, gorgeous texture everyone loves in a good ramen.  We also minced ginger and added that.

We used brown rice noodles for our soup, which only take three minutes to cook, and are vegan, as well as gluten-free.  They only have two ingredients, organic brown rice flour, and organic millet.  They are from Costco, and we thought they were great.  They were curly, just like ramen noodles should be, and had a good texture.

After straining the noodles, we put them into ramen bowls, and topped them with raw green onion.

We topped that with thin rare beef.  The broth will cook the meat more, so it's good to barely cook it before putting it into the bowls.

Next, we ladled the hot broth over top of everything.

And topped it with a very soft poached egg (sunny-side would work too).

I forgot to snap a picture before stirring my egg up a bit; I was too excited!  We topped it with sriracha, because sriracha is amazing.  You can also add more salt at this point if your broth wasn't salted enough before.

We cooled the rest of the broth and put that in the fridge.  Today, I brought it to a boil, and added red miso for a new flavour of broth.  This is why it's a good thing that I didn't salt all the broth a lot before, because boiling it would have condensed that saltiness, and also, I was adding miso, which is very salty itself.

This was another great bowl of ramen, for another rainy day.

So comforting.

It looks like the gloomy days are on their way out, as the weekend forecast is beautiful.  We're hiding away in our backyard all weekend - bliss.

What are you up to this weekend?  Do you have a good ramen restaurant in your city?  If so, please share - we'd love to know where to visit if we're ever near there.

Halifax Vacation Part 3

On Wednesday we took the Ferry across the water to Dartmouth. 

It was only a short 5-10 minute ride across the water; it was a beautiful day, and the views were great.

We went to The Canteen, a super cool sandwich shop in Dartmouth, to grab some lunch.

We shared the crabster sandwich, a mixture of snow crab, lobster, and truffle aioli.  We also shared a trio of sides: kale, rice, and potato salad.

We loved everything, and were happy to finally have a delicious lobster roll.  We've had a few in the past, but have never been happy with them ... until this one.  We're still talking about The Canteen.

Later in the day we chilled out in the hotel room for a while and had a hotel room picnic.  While on our winery tour, we had picked up some Dragon's Breath blue cheese, which was named Canada's best blue cheese two years in a row.  Christopher ate that, and I stuck to the other snacks.

We hopped around to a few pubs in the evening, catching some live jazz, before heading to Field Guide for a late dinner.  Field Guide was rated as one of Canada's top 100 restaurants for 2016. 

The menu is simply written on a chalkboard on a wall, and things are crossed off as the kitchen runs out of them.

We ordered three small plates to share, starting with whipped ricotta with peas.

This dish was light and fresh.  Next were the best fish cakes ever!

The charred tomatoes, dill, and beautiful sauce all paired perfectly with the fish cakes, which were crisp on the outside, and soft and tender on the inside.  Our final plate was donair steamed buns, which were absolutely incredible.

The lighting wasn't great in the restaurant, and the pictures don't do the food justice, but this restaurant was spot on with each dish. 

On Thursday we started our day with ramen at Truly Tasty.  Christopher had the fried chicken ramen, and I had the pork.  We both got ours topped with an egg, which is cracked onto the soup at the table.

I had to pack up at least half of mine to-go.  For dinner that evening we went to The Bicycle Thief, a fantastic, and popular Italian restaurant with a gorgeous patio.

We ordered some scallops and oysters to start.

We then shared spaghetti with meatballs, and the most incredible risotto I've ever had, beet risotto, topped with crisp pancetta.  This was an evening special, and it's not always on the menu, which is too bad, because I would order it again and again and again. 

We took some of the beet risotto to-go, as we were too full to finish. 

By this point in the trip we were starting to get pretty sad that we only had one full day and a bit before we'd be heading home; Halifax is really charming and the week seemed to be flying by.

When we're on vacation we try to avoid the popular touristy restaurants, in favour of the restaurants off the beaten path, where the locals are more likely to go.  Because we didn't rent a car on this trip we took taxis quite a bit, and walked for many kilometers.  We dined in areas all over Halifax, not just down by the water, where the prices are hiked for tourists, and the food isn't all that great.  We did our research ahead of time, and then talked to a bunch of locals while in town, to make sure we hit up some of the best places.

Before you go on a trip, do you ever do food/ restaurant research?

How do you decide where to eat while on vacation?