TheLunarCat

4 hard boiled eggs, halved horizontally 
200-300g ramen noodles
2 cups bean sprouts
400g tin corn kernels
50g baby spinach
225g tin bamboo shoots
2 spring onions, sliced
2 nori sheets, cut into 4 squares each
2 litres vegetable stock
2 teaspoons dashi powder
1 tablespoon soy sauce
3 tablespoons white miso paste

Ramen is a Japanese noodle soup, where the noodles are made from wheat flour and are served in a broth. There are a few types of ramen - Shoya, flavoured by soy sauce broth; Shio, flavoured by a salt broth; Miso, flavoured by a miso (soybean paste) broth; and Tonkotsu, whose broth is made from pork bones.

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The ramen noodles and broth are then topped with any number of toppings. For example - braised pork, bamboo shoots, green onions, bean sprouts, boiled eggs, seaweed, fish cake and corn.

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I ate my first ramen in a restaurant in Melbourne, Australia. It was so good that when I got home, mum and I came up with a version that was almost the same. The recipe has a miso base so is called Miso Ramen.

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Ramen has a very colourful history. There is a lot of debate about whether its history started in China or Japan. Ramen shops started appearing in the early 1900s and were actually called Shina Soba which meant "Chinese Noodle". They were eaten by ‘salarymen’, who were industrial workers, as it was a quick meal served on the way to work. There is also some question about whether its history dates back even further to Shu Shunsui, who may have brought the recipe with him when he escaped Manchu rule in China to serve as an advisor to the feudal lord Tokugawa Mitsukuni, around the mid 17th century.

In World War II its popularity waned as there were food shortages and the government had tight control over food supplies.  You could get jailed for supplying or eating Ramen as a result!