RAVIOLI-RAMEN (veg) Italy Meets Japan

The idea of this recipe comes just from the concept of your contest. I wanted to cook something hot (comfort food) and in Italy there is the usage of cooking “minestrone” which is a hot vegetable soup to be consumed with spoons. But living in Milan, it is very common to come across Japanese restaurants that prepare "their" traditional soup: the Ramen.

So my idea was born to merge 2 traditions, Italian and Japanese ones, and create something that reminds the grandmother’s homemade pasta (the Ravioli), Italian “minestrone soup” and Japanese Ramen. Everything, however, strictly Vegan and cruelty-free.

Here you are: RAVIOLI-RAMEN

Ingredients:

For the soup:

• 1 celery coast
• 1 carrot
• 1 leek
• 1 piece of fresh ginger
• 1 Pak choy
• 30 g of soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons of miso
• 3 lt of water

• pinch of salt

For the condiment:

• 2 fresh spring onions
• 10 fresh shiitake mushrooms
• 30 g of wakame seaweed
• 1 tablespoon of sesame seed oil
• fresh coriander to taste

For the Ravioli:

• 200 g semolina flour
• water
• pinch of salt
• 5 g sesame seed oil
• 300 g pumpkin
• 1 clove of garlic

Let's go!

Put a saucepan on the flame with at least 3 liters of water with a carrot, a leek, a celery, a pakchoy cabbage, a piece of fresh ginger and about 30 g soy sauce.

Get to the boil and after 10 minutes remove the pak-choy and set aside for the final preparation.

Continue cooking the soup for about 1 hour, lowering the flame a little.

In a frying pan, put the finely chopped fresh spring onion, the wakame seaweed (previously placed in a bowl with water for rehydration) and the shiitake mushrooms to sauté with a little sesame seed oil.

Add a little salt or soy sauce.

Cook for about 5/7 minutes and set aside for the final preparation.

Cut the pumpkin into cubes and cook in a pan for about 15 minutes with sesame seed oil and a clove of garlic. At the end of cooking, blend with an immersion blender with a bit stock of soup that in the meantime is boiling.

Take a portion of the shiitake mushrooms and cut them into small pieces and mix them with the pumpkin cream.

Put the mixture in a pastry bag and keep refrigerated.

In a bowl put the flour, a pinch of salt, about 5 g of sesame seed oil and water enough to create a fairly solid dough. Form a ball and set aside for about 20 min.

Roll out the ball of the dough with a rolling pin.

Cut with a wheel cutter to make squares of dough about 4 cm.

Put on each square of dough a little of pumpkin cream with the pastry bag.

With your fingers, take each square of pasta with the pumpkin in the middle and close it in half forming the ravioli as in the picture.

Cut the tofu into regular cubes of about 1 cm and keep aside for final preparation.

Miso doesn’t need to be cooked. It’s ready to go but it must be mixed in a bowl with a ladle of hot soup and keep aside for the final preparation.

Cook the ravioli in a saucepan with salted water and boil for 5/7 minutes.

Take a bowl and put inside:

• a couple of ladles of filtered soup
• miso
• the pak choy
• shiitake mushrooms and wakame seaweed
• the ravioli
• tofu cubes
• fresh spring onion cut into slices (the green part)
• a lot of coriander
• add more soy sauce and sesame seed oil to your taste

Enjoy your meal!!!