Roasted Garlic Parmesan Ramen

There's something borderline obscene about roasting a whole head of garlic just for yourself on a random Thursday, but that's where I was mentally, standing in my kitchen with the oven preheating and this bulb of garlic that I'd been ignoring for weeks because it felt too fancy, too intentional for someone who usually eats cereal for dinner.

I sliced off the top, drizzled it with olive oil like I'd seen in some cooking video I half-watched at 2 AM, wrapped it in foil, and stuck it in the oven, telling myself this was self-care or whatever people call it when they're trying to justify spending forty minutes waiting for a vegetable to caramelize.

The apartment filled with this smell that was halfway between Italian grandmother's kitchen and something vaguely pornographic, sweet and rich and completely unapologetic about taking up space.

While the garlic did its slow transformation from sharp to sweet, I grated what was left of the parmesan wedge I'd been hoarding in the cheese drawer, the rind so hard I nearly took off a knuckle trying to get those last precious shavings.

The whole Italian-meets-Japanese thing felt wrong on paper, like mixing wine and sake or wearing sneakers with a suit, but I was committed now, the pot of vegetable broth simmering with thyme and butter while I squeezed those roasted garlic cloves into the liquid and watched them dissolve into creamy, golden submission.

When the parmesan hit the hot broth it melted into this sauce that looked like liquid gold and smelled like every carb-loaded sin I'd been avoiding, and I thought yeah, this is why people cook, this moment right here where cheap ingredients turn into something that feels expensive and important.

The ramen noodles went in fast, cooking in their separate pot because I'd learned that lesson the hard way, and I poached two eggs directly in the garlicky parmesan broth because if I was going full indulgence I might as well commit to the cholesterol.

Everything came together in my biggest bowl, noodles first, then that obscene golden broth with its roasted garlic sweetness and parmesan funk, the poached egg perched on top like a crown I didn't deserve but was taking anyway.

I cracked black pepper over the whole thing with the kind of aggression that probably says something about my mental state, watching those flakes settle on the surface like little punctuation marks on whatever weird fusion statement I was making.

That first bite was a religious experience, if your religion is based on fat and umami and the kind of comfort that comes from carbs swimming in cheese sauce, the roasted garlic adding this mellow sweetness that kept the whole thing from being too sharp or one-note.

The egg yolk broke and ran into the broth, making it even richer, even more ridiculous, and I sat there twirling noodles around my fork like I was in some Italian restaurant instead of my cramped kitchen with the flickering overhead light.

By the time I finished, scraping the bowl for every last drop of that garlicky, cheesy broth, I felt simultaneously guilty and completely at peace, which is probably the whole point of comfort food, making you forget for twenty minutes that you're eating dinner alone on a Thursday and turning it into something that feels almost ceremonial, almost like you planned it this way all along.