Inspiration: Remember when I made ramen noodles a few weeks back? Well, I went full tilt on my new Let’s Make Ramen cookbook and made dashi, quick ramen broth (mainly because I’d some homemade chicken broth already on hand), rayu (Japanese chili oil), and Yakitori (only I don’t own a grill and wasn’t interested in breaking in my gas oven’s broiler — so I just marinated the chicken overnight and pan-fried the chicken meat in the marinate).

Let me tell you — it was tasty! Hence the above pic!

Even better? All the components needed to make this were affordable. The most expensive? The $11.99 bottle of sake. Everything else was $5.99 and below (even the chicken, we found a great sale on chicken thighs)!

Christie: Again, I can see the globe-trotting detectives (Colonel Race, Colonel Despard & Rhoda, or Luke Fitzwilliam) taking a shine to ramen as it’s full of veggies, warm, comforting, and above all, delicious.