***

Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on linen. It should be fairly obvious that this painting is strongly influenced by Japanese printmaking. In case you're wondering, the greenery is mizuna and the water pattern is common to Japanese art.

By the way, all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store.

***

The meatless meals recipe

There are four styles of ramen and all of them rely heavily on the quality of the stock to taste great. When you look into recipes for ramen stock it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly the extraordinary lengths many chefs go to for flavouring their stocks. Think multiple animal carcasses simmered for days! I'm yet to come across another vegetarian stock that looks worth trying or one that is so quick to make from scratch. I assure you, this tastes great, and I am pleased to prove (at least in my mind!) that it is not necessary to cook with fish/chicken/pork to make a succulent ramen stock. The key is to use TWO stocks. Go veges!

Vege stock:

85g (2 handfuls) of finely shredded chinese cabbage

1/2 onion, finely sliced

4 sticks celery, chopped

Put all these in a pot with 3 1/2 cups water and boil for 20 minutes with the lid on. Discard the veg at the end. This will make 3 cups of vege stock.

Shoyu ramen:

2 cups seaweed stock

3 cups vege stock

ramen noodles for two (140-160g dry)

1 teaspoon sherry

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

Suggested toppings: 

1 spring onion, chopped

2 handfuls spinach

cracked black pepper to taste

bamboo shoots

2 hard boiled eggs in slices

tempeh slices

So begin by preparing the stocks and cooking the noodles so they are ready to eat.

Hard boil the eggs if you are having these as toppings and get all your toppings ready.

When the stocks are done, saute the ginger and garlic in a big pot in the sesame oil to take the edge off them.

Add both stocks and the sherry, salt, sugar and soy sauce to the big pot, mix and bring back to the boil.

Put the cooked noodles in the serving bowls.

Add the stock mix.

Add toppings and serve.

This recipe feeds 2.