Vegan ramen

On Friday, I ran rather longer than planned to get to work; 13.23Km, with pack. I also managed 100 reps of each of my exercises, so it looks like the booster shot side effects are mostly worn off. I also found a 1-pound packaged of steamed bamboo shoots at H-mart; I got them, along with a package of king oyster mushrooms.

Today, I went on a nice trip to the Museum of Science. After coming home, I sliced up the king oysters into slices maybe 10mm thick. Most of them went into the dehydrator, and the rest went into a mix of equal parts double fermented soy sauce, mushroom flavored soy sauce, and sake. The ones in the dehydrator will be split into two groups; one to soak in the same liquid, and one to soak in something intended to increase their fat content. I'm thinking of possibly just letting them soak for a while in some sort of oil, probably corn or soybean oil, and then separately letting them soak in a flavoring liquid of soy sauce, sake, and/or mirin. All of these mushroom experiments are meant to produce some sort of reasonable vegan stand-in for chashu pork; perhaps I'll singe them with a blowtorch or sear them in a fry pan just before serving.

As for the bamboo shoots, they have the potential to become menma. I read a little about menma having been fermented, but can find nothing solid indicating that this was ever actually done. However, lacto-fermenting is an interesting possibility for them. The package turned out to be a fair bit over 454 grams. 1/3 of them went into a jar with enough water to cover, then 3% of the combined bamboo shoot/water weight was added in salt, and I'll leave the jar to ferment at room temperature. The remainder of the bamboo shoots were splits between two jars; one got full-strength chashu pork cooking liquid from last week to soak in, and the other got 20mL of toasted sesame oil and 50mL each of sake, "alcohol-free" mirin, mushroom flavored soy sauce, and double fermented soy sauce, along with 10 grams of kombu and 10 grams of dried shittake mushrooms. I also hard boiled 8 eggs, which are soaking in 40% chashu pork liquid and 60% water. I really need to get some noodles bought; I've got oil, tare, a huge amount of both vegan stock and turkey stock, menma, eggs, corn, scallions, nori, mushrooms...I need to find some people to make ramen for.

As regards noodles, I do want to try making them. More than that, I want to try making endless noodles; not a limitless quantity of noodles, but literally noodles that do not have an end. I want to make ramen noodles that are just one long, slender, connected loop. But it's hard to figure how best to do it; a pasta roller obviously has no provision to remove such a noodle. It would have to be done by hand or by a specially constructed roller. A continuous band of dough could be cut by hand or on a chitarra. Getting the band made is the tricky part, but just imagine; noodles that cannot slip off the chopsticks.

I've started to buy food that I intend to store. Nothing major; some pasta, a few jars of peanut butter, that sort of thing. What I really should do is sit down and figure out come recipes that satisfy some basic requirements:

Cooking via either boiling or streaming. This requires minimal equipment and is tolerant of less temperature control.

Require only versatile, long-term shelf-stable ingredients.

Are nutritionally complete.

Things like oatmeal, pasta, steamed rolls or buns, rice and beans, soups and stews, that sort of thing.