The Ramen of Baltimore (Mi & Yu)

For four years, I called Baltimore my temporary home as a college student, and yet I missed out on the vast majority of food opportunities waiting to be explore in Charm City (a case study of poor college student syndrome).  Lucky for me, I currently live and work in what is considered the same metropolitan region.  Since I was up in Baltimore for the day, here was an opportunity to try out Mi & Yu Noodle Bar, a hip little noodle joint in downtown.

The concept at Mi & Yu is versatility in Asian noodle soups.  They offer several different broths, several different protein toppings, and three different types of noodles (ramen, udon, pho) ready for the customer to mix and match.  It was easy to tell that they want to create a sense of endless experimentation and several return trips for the customer, and I knew going in what I was getting into.  Presented with all the options they offer, I ordered the miso ramen with roast duck and barbecue pork belly, pictured below.

Here is what they did really well:

1. The duck was prepared correctly.  Duck is a gamy meat, and I think too many restaurants view that as an undesirable trait to be feared.  These restaurants where I tried the duck went to such excruciating lengths to mask or remove the natural flavors that the final product tasted more like over-salted protein out of a 3D printer than like duck.  Then, asking you to turn the other cheek after they slapped you once, these restaurants proceed to charge you an exorbitant amount for their excruciating efforts to make your duck not taste like duck.  Mi & Yu treated the gaminess of duck as a flavor advantage as they should, and the duck rewarded them for it.
2. The barbecue pork belly stole the show.  Spiced, braised, and then grilled with a sweet glaze, the pork belly was easily the highlight of the bowl.  If not for each bite causing the sweet, long-cooked fat to melt on the tongue, the bowl of ramen would have been severely underwhelming.

And here were the unimpressive parts:

1. The soft-boiled egg was overcooked and not marinated.  While they may have been trying to differentiate their art from the typical Japanese seasoned egg (味付け玉子) offered with ramen, I was not sold on the idea.
2. The noodles came out of a ramen packet.  Watching Shokugeki no Soma has made me amenable to the idea that, with enough finesse and tender love and care, low-grade or cheap ingredients can be turned into a refined, delicious meal.  But if your cheapest bowl of ramen is over $10 (their cheapest is $12.75 before tax), the noodles cannot come out of a packet that I could buy from the store.

My overall verdict: Worth a try because of its novelty in Baltimore, Mi & Yu is great if you are confined to Baltimore City for your ramen needs.  If you are not confined to Baltimore City, then their ramen leaves too much to be desired.  Their meat toppings are top notch, but unless they step up their Asian noodle soup game, I don't think their identity as a "noodle bar" really makes sense.

Mango Chicken - Using Unwanted Ingredients

These mangoes I purchased in a whole box recently turned out to be extremely sour, so much so that eating each of them was a struggle.  Hating food waste and lacking patience to let them ripen after several days, I decided to return to an idea from a while back (about which I never wrote because it turned out to be more than just a small failure).  That idea was combining mango with chicken.

The previous iteration found me trying to make a mango chicken curry, only the second time I had attempted curry.  And boy did it turn out badly (I burned it).  So this time, I went with a different approach and stuck with the methods with which I was raised and semi-trained: stir fry.

I prepared the marinade for the chicken by mincing the whites of three green onion stalks, four garlic cloves, and about one cubic inch of fresh ginger.  I also diced two mangoes and about 1.5 pounds of chicken thigh, de-boned, de-skinned.  But I did not throw out the bones or the skins (to be used later...the subtitle of this piece indicates the use of typically unwanted ingredients after all).  Dicing the chicken as well, I combined all these ingredients in a marinating bowl and got my hands dirty mixing things up.

The stir fry needed only a little bit of oil, which was further heated up by the addition of some turmeric, cayenne, and white pepper.  As soon as the spiced oil started to effervesce (and that happens very soon; you will be able to tell because you will start to smell the spices), the chicken-mango mixture should have been added.  Do not make the mistake of letting the spices cook too long, or the organic compounds that give them flavor will start to escape the wok and you might find yourself sneezing/coughing/choking on airborne spice.  Hindsight is 20-20.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has said before that humans create art for the very simple, primordial reason of pleasing each of our senses.  There are paintings and sculptures to please our eyes, music to please our ears, perfumes to please our noses, soft fluffy things to please our fingers, and the culinary arts to please our tongues.  As with any art, plating and presentation is probably half the battle, if not more.  So how did I do for an amateur?

I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that I did not let the chicken skins or the chicken thigh bones go to waste.  The leftover thighs I used for soup, to which I added the remaining Chinese green vegetables I had bought earlier in the week (not pictured).  I used the chicken skins to revitalize some rice that had been sitting in the fridge for 2-3 days.  This was done by adding the diced skins to a tiny bit of oil in the wok to release the oils from the skin, and then adding the rice to the wok as if fried rice was the goal.  Of course, nothing else was added to the rice.  It is not exactly healthy, but as they say: waste not want not.  Right?

Here is the original recipe inspiration, with thanks to Barbara Triplett: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/mango-chicken-over-rice.