Thursday I made the Hiyashi Chūka recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. It’s a cold ramen noodle dish topped with a bunch of veggies and a salty-sweet sauce.

The recipe calls for fresh ramen noodles. I found some frozen ones at the Buford Highway Farmer’s Market, but I think instant noodles would work just fine also.

The toppings are an array of vegetables, and Kenji notes that they don’t have to be what he lists, but “[t]he important part is to use a colorful mix of toppings and to use whatever appeals to you most.” For the recipe he calls for cucumber, pea shoots, corn, cherry tomatoes, radishes, and scallions. They are generally cut into matchsticks or slivers, though Kenji directs the cherry tomatoes to be quartered. The goal is to make it easy to mix and pick up with the noodles.

I had a hard time finding pea shoots. Your DeKalb Farmers Market had sunflower sprouts, which seemed close, but I ended up lucking out and finding pea shoots at Super H Mart. They taste a lot like alfalfa sprouts, and I think any kind of microgreen like that would work fine.

The sauce is a mixture of dashi, ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar, roasted sesame oil, chile oil, and toasted sesame seeds. It’s delicious salty-sweet sauce with a background of heat.

The most interesting part of the recipe prep was making the omelet strips. Eggs are thoroughly beaten with sugar and salt. Then you make thin omelets in the wok by heating it to smoking, turning off the heat, rubbing with oil, and pouring in and swirling about half-an-egg’s worth of the egg. It sets immediately in the still hot wok and, after about 30 seconds is ready be removed with fingers and chopsticks. All the omelets get stacked together, rolled up, and sliced into thin ribbons.

To serve, cold ramen noodles are placed in the bottom of a wide bowl. The toppings are arranged radially, and then sauce is poured on top.

I really liked it. Once again Megan said it was “better than expected,” and, once again, I’m taking that as approval. My daughter had some plain noodles with soy sauce and a couple of the omelets on the side. My son had noodles, corn, and omelet strips with soy sauce. Everyone really liked the omelets. My son went back for seconds on those, and Megan ate what was left in the kitchen instead of packing for leftovers.

I would definitely make these again. The only problem is that it doesn’t scale well. Each additional serving is 2 more omelets and toppings that are cut into matchsticks, which is not a quick prep. Some extra hands in the kitchen would help (or prepping ahead of time which is definitely possible with the matchstick vegetables).

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.