In China, they say “ruh-mian”. In Korea, “rahmiun”. In my house, we used to call them, “curly noodles.”
There’s nothing like sweating over a hot bowl of $.50 Top Ramen in 90degree weather, I discovered today, to bring back memories of my childhood. When it was too hot to really cook a hot meal and summer days made us feel lazy, we would take a couple of packages of ramen, prepare them with about half the water recommended, and add some chopped spring onion from the freezer, maybe some japanese fish cake, and an egg right at the end (so the egg would be soft-poached). My mom still serves ramen with some Korean pickled diakon radish (the yellow kind), with some rice vinegar, and maybe some kimchee.
I remember the big white bowls with blue flower patterns and scalloped edges we’d eat from – when I was four, I tried to take one of these bowls, full of steaming-hot ramen, off the kitchen counter in our home in Stamford, CT and ended up with burns completely down my chest. I had to wait for two years until I could get my own bowl from off the counter again.
It’s been ages since I last ate ramen, but I made it today – with an egg, some frozen fish cake, and frozen spring onions. I found myself eating at the same pace, slurping all the way, as in my childhood, and of course I saved the egg yolk for last – which I scooped into my mouth and ate whole, just like when I was 4 years old.