Vegetarian Soba

Tonight my roommate and I were craving ramen, so we decided to create a healthy vegetarian ramen. I made the broth from scratch which isn't entirely ideal, however, it is totally worth it! I did make things easier by purchasing chicken stock instead of making my own.

Here is what I put in the broth:

4 cups chicken stock
4 cups shiitake mushrooms
1/2 cup cilantro
1/8 cup soy sauce
a dash of ground ginger
a dash of chile
a dash of salt
1 tbsp turmeric
1 tbsp lemongrass chopped and pounded

I let all of this simmer for 1 hour, then removed from the heat. 

Then I cooked the soba noodles (noodles made out of buckwheat). Usually you can buy these already cooked but I couldn't find any at my grocery store so I had to cook them. They cook pretty much like normal noodles. 

Next, I poached a few eggs. I thought this was gonna be really hard but actually the eggs turned out okay. I brought a pot of water to a boil and added 1 tsp of white distilled vinegar. Apparently this helps the egg white coagulate more quickly and though I have never tried to poach an egg without vinegar, supposedly it will result in disaster. There are 4 eggs here and while they don't look perfect they were almost perfect in consistency. 

Everything came together easily after the eggs were cooked. I brought the broth back to a simmer, added 1 cup of snow peas, and 4 cups of spinach to the broth. Once the spinach had cooked down, I spooned the broth onto the noodles and placed the egg on top. Mànmàn chī!

Delish!