From Weathering with You · 2019 · Reconstructed
Hina's Instant-Ramen Salad
Serve when
Serve it cold and crunchy on a hot, endlessly rainy day — resourceful home cooking that makes something fresh out of a pantry staple.
In the movie
Theatrical
- Among the simple, inventive meals Hina puts together in her small apartment is a salad built on instant ramen — the kind of make-do home cooking that defines her warmth and her thrift, feeding herself, her little brother, and a runaway boy on almost nothing.
Shinkai's film treats Hina's cooking as a form of grace: she has almost nothing, and she turns it into meals that hold a little improvised family together through Tokyo's endless rain. The ramen salad is that spirit exactly — a pantry staple made bright, fresh, and generous.
Ingredients
- For the dressing:
Method
- Crush the dry ramen into shards (for crunch), or boil it briefly and cool it under water for a noodle-salad version — both are done in Japanese home kitchens.
- Toss the cabbage, lettuce, carrot, cucumber, and scallions in a big bowl.
- Whisk the dressing and pour it over just before serving, tossing to coat — dressed early, the cabbage weeps and the salad goes limp.
- Add the ramen — crunchy shards folded in at the last second, or cooled noodles tossed through — and finish with sesame seeds. Sprinkle a little of the seasoning packet if you like.