vegan ramen with tomato and mushrooms

Hello everyone,
sorry I've been bad about keeping in contact and keeping up the blog lately! work and studying...
anyhow, I have been eating well as usual, making up all sorts of things in the kitchen. you can probably guess what I just had for lunch: ramen. and you may be thinking, hey ramen isn't healthful. well, it can be very healthful! use fresh noodles, make the broth from scratch, add plenty of vegetables and some seitan, and bam!

bam.

let me tell you... that was a good bowl of noodles.

now hurry along to the supermarket so you can buy: 

- about 2 cups konbu dashi

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 1 tbsp koi-kuchi soy sauce (use a respected Japanese brand)

- cabbage, sliced (1/16th of a head should be enough)

- 1/2 tomato (or one small tomato) cut into chunks

- 1 oyster mushroom (エリンギ) sliced and cut into sticks

- 1/3 package seitan (in japanese it's called かくふ and sometimes もちふ or あわふ)

toasted mochi

- 1 clove garlic

- 1 packet of fresh yakisoba noodles (the ramen I saw all had eggs in it, but yakisoba is essentially the same as ramen! without the eggs.)

bring the first three ingredients to a light boil and add all the vegetables. 

simmer until the vegetables are soft, about 5 minutes.

add the seitan and simmer for another minute.

add the garlic and the noodles, and simmer until finished!

bonus: serve topped with a toasted mochi

if you want a vegan bowl of ramen in Japan, you pretty much have to make it from scratch, since all the packaged noodles have meat extracts in them, and restaurants make their broths with pork bones. that's just how it is!
but this recipe was so filling and full of umami that I'd recommend it to anyone :) I'll definitely try it again soon.
other tastes that go well with ramen are spicy (black pepper and ra-yu) and sour (vinegar), so I'll have to cover those in another post!