Recently Noah had plans for dinner and I was feeling, to be honest, entirely stumped. I was in the mood where, when I usually feel this way I order an arepa, but I am trying to order delivery as little as possible, and also to save money since I’ll probably be fired in January, so I decided to cook. Here is a rare recipe for one, based on a NYT cooking recipe.
Baked ramen and tofu is a cute idea, but I found the initial execution to be a bit bland, too sweet, and overall a bit lacking. However! The baked ramen noodles?! Actually really good and so fun to eat. Really just delightful to eat. I never eat instant ramen as it is, but I love using instant ramen packs in other things. Pancakes? Amazing. In bean sprout soup? One of my winter faves. This? Baked???? Also really great. Instant ramen has a texture that just… it just makes you happy. At the very least, it just makes me happy. Crispy noodles are one of my favorite dishes of all time (pan fried noodles, to be precise) and ramen gives you a really different iteration on that theme.
Anyway, I liked the concept, but the sauce… hoisin and maple syrup… why? It’s so sweet. It’s dull. It’s just lacking. Instead, to make this recipe over, I took inspiration from one of my favorite tofu preparations, the Woks of Life (would you believe it?!) steamed Cantonese style tofu to season the ramen, and then took a bit more inspiration from Hong Kong pan fried noodles (couldn’t find a way to work in the bean sprouts though), and then, because it’s in the vein of Cantonese food, I just used mostly oyster sauce for the tofu, I kept a bit of hoisin because I did want it a bit sweeter, and then added some oil from my chili crisp to get a bit of spicy. It wasn’t very spicy, but if you want it no spicy whatsoever use sesame oil or peanut. It’s a pretty approachable recipe, and I know that making a sauce with two types of soy sauce can feel a bit too much, and frying ginger in order to make a sheet pan dinner? The sheet pan dinner that then… requires two pans? Unlined? It’s not exactly a no effort dinner, but it isn’t a super heavy lift, at least that’s what I’m telling myself.
Fake Cantonese style… baked tofu with ramen and green beans (for 1, ish)
1 block tofu, firm, medium firm, (not extra firm or silken, basically, although you could do extra firm if that’s really what you like)
1 block instant ramen
However many green beans or other vegetable you have that you want to eat (basically anything that can roast in 7-25 minutes. Carrots or squash would be bad, but bok choy, cabbage, broccoli, etc, would all work fine.)
Noodle sauce
Inch or so of ginger (more than you think it might need)
A few scallions (2?)
Cilantro
1 tbs or so of peanut oil (or canola if you’re nasty)
1 scant tbs soy sauce
1 tsp (or a bit less, wasn’t measuring) dark soy sauce (optional if you don’t have dark soy sauce)
Ground white pepper (large pinch, probably a 1/4 tsp or so)
1/4 tsp sugar
1 tbs sesame oil (just pour some on)
Tofu sauce
2 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs neutral oil, sesame oil, or the oil from the top of a jar of chili goop
bit of hoisin or sambal or sriracha or just a bit of something different, you know? just a splash of another sauce that you like.
1/4 tsp sugar
Ground white pepper
Preheat oven, 450. One rack on top one rack on the bottom. Get out and oil two sheet pans. Do not think of using parchment paper or a silpat (this will make your shit steam, which defeats the purpose.)
Slice tofu: I like slabs for baking because it’s easier to turn them over than cubes. Set them on some towels to drain a bit, and get dry.
Make sauce: Julienne your ginger. Long thin strands is what you are after here. Once it looks like enough you can stop. Only you can decide what is enough. I made this the first time and realized that actually, what I thought was enough was not enough. I could have used more, well over a tablespoon, although I wasn’t measuring. Julienne your scallion as well. I like to cut a scallion into 3inchish hunks, and then slide my knife down the side, shaving bits off. Long strands again. Usually in this dish you’d separate the whites and greens, and add the greens raw at the end. The baked scallion is a highlight of this dish, so this time add the greens as well. With the ginger oil it creates a bit of a fried scallion situation within the noodles, and it’s really good.
To make sauce: Heat up oil. Add ginger. Fry a bit, until it is starting to brown. Add soy sauce, add sugar, add a splash of water. Turn off heat. Add scallion threads.
Make tofu flavoring: It’s oyster sauce baby, come on what else could it be. Mix the oyster sauce (you can use vegan, natch), oil of choice, extra sauce of choice, white pepper plus a splash of water because oyster sauce is thick.
Boil water. Soak noodles for 5 minutes. Drain. Put in a bowl. Add the sauce, mix. Add white pepper now too. Mix that in also. Try a noodle, is it seasoned? (Is it hot? does it look good? are you proud to serve it?)
Put noodles on sheet pan. Dip the tofu on each side, put that on the second sheet pan. Bake for 15 minutes or so. While baking, toss the green beans in the leftover tofu sauce. Take out the pans, flip the tofu, add the green beans, switch the pans from top to bottom. Bake some more. A few minutes, 7? If things look browned to your liking, then they’ve baked long enough. I found that the noodles baked a bit faster, so I just pulled them out. Tofu that isn’t in a sugary type sauce can bake for quite a while without burning (not that you necessarily should) so just check to see when your veg is done.
Remove from oven, add cilantro. If you are a very hungry boy maybe you eat all of your tofu in one night, if you aren’t, save half of it and put it and some of the leftover green beans on rice or something tomorrow. Or just bake a second block of ramen and season it, lazily, with soy sauce and white pepper and sesame oil, which is what I did for lunch. It’s not as good, but it’s fine.