The Right Way To Eat Ramen

Ramen

 Ramen is a Japanese noodle dish. It consists of Chinese-style wheat noodles served in a meat- or fish-based broth, often flavored with soy sauce or miso, and uses toppings such as sliced pork, dried seaweed, kamaboko, green onions, and sometimes corn. There are regional variation of ramen in Japan, from tonkotsu (pork bone broth) ramen of Kyushu to the miso ramen of Hokkaido

 

Soup First or Noodle First? 

Santouka's Shio Ramen

Miso Ramen with Smoked Salmon Rice, pickles and half boiled egg

First, observe the whole bowl. Appreciate its gestalt. Savor the aromas.
Jewels of fat glittering on the surface. Shinachiku roots shining. Seaweed slowly sinking. Spring onions floating.
Concentrate on the three pork slices...they play the key role, but stay modestly hidden.
First caress the surface...with the chopstick tips.
What for?
To express affection.
I see.
Then poke the pork.
Eat the pork first?
No, just touch it. caress it with the chopstick tips. Gently pick it up...And dip it into the soup on the right of the bowl. What's important here is to apologize to the pork by saying..."See you soon".
Finally, start eating the noodles first. While slurping the noodles, look at the pork. eye it affectionately.

The old man bit some shinachiku root and chewed it a while. Then he took some noodles. Still chewing noodles, he took some more shinachiku. Then he sipped some soup. Three times. He sat up...sighed, picked up...one slice of pork as if making a major decision in life...and lightly tapped it on the side of the bowl.
What for?
To drain it, that's all.

A delightful scene of Gun (Ken Watanabe) learning from a ramen master.

Transcribed from Juzu Itami's second film, Tampopo.
Tampopo is an off-beat comedy featuring several intersecting stories all related to food.
Itami's second film is widely considered to be his best and to be one of the finest Japanese films of the 1980s; Tampopo lampoons Japan's obsessive search for the proper way of doing mundane tasks, while exploring the subversive and erotic qualities of food.
Tampopo was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 1988 Independent Spirit Awards.

Noodle Culture

In 2002, archaeologists found an earthenware bowl containing the world's oldest known noodles, measured to roughly 4000 years ago through radiocarbon dating, at the Laija Archaeological Site along the Yellow River in China. The noodles were found well-preserved. They were described as resembling the traditional lamian noodle of China, which is made by "repeatedly pulling and stretching the dough by hand."

Every culture has a noodle dish because it is a staple food and one of the most comforting dishes is a noodle soup: phở, beef noodle soup, chicken noodle soup, laksa, saimin, batchoy and many more.

Saimin is a good example of a noodle dish that has evolved. Saimin is a noodle soup dish developed in Hawaii. It is a soup dish of soft wheat egg noodles served in hot dashi garnished with green onions, kamaboko, char siu, spam, nori , inspired by Japanese udon, Chinese mein, and Filipino pancit.

In the Philippines, there is Batchoy, which is a noodle soup made with pork organs, shredded pork, crushed pork cracklings, chicken stock, beef loin and round noodles. I realized that I love eating ramen because it is very similar to batchoy and it brings me back home.

Batchoy from panlasangpinoy.com

Batchoy Recipe

Adapted from Panlasang Pinoy

http://panlasangpinoy.com/2011/04/14/batchoy/
 

Ingredients

• 1 lb miki noodles, boiled for 1 minute and drained
• 1 lb pork loin or beef (or combination)
• 1 lb pig’s intentesines; cleaned, boiled, and sliced
• 1/4 lb pig liver, sliced into strips
• 1 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon shimp paste (bagoong or guinamus) * optional or fish sauce
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 cup pork cracklings (chicharon), crushed
• 3 tablespoons spring onion, chopped
• 1/4 cup toasted garlic
• 7- 8 cups chicken stock or beef stock (preferable homemade or low sodium)

Cooking Procedure

1. Simmer stock in a cooking pot.
2. Put-in salt, sugar, onion powder, ground black pepper, and shrimp paste. Cook for a minute.
3. Add the pork and cook until tender (about 30 to 45 minutes)
4. Put-in the intestines and liver, and then cook for 6 to 10 minutes.
5. Remove the pork, liver, and intestine from the broth (caldo). Set aside.
6. Slice the pork into strips.
7. Arranged the cooked miki noodles in a single serving bowl.
8. Place the strips of pork, liver, and intestine on top of the miki noodles.
9. Pour the broth in the bowl, and then garnish with spring onions and toasted garlic.
10. Serve hot.

  If you are feeling adventurous and time is not an issue, I recommend that you try making this recipe .

  

Tonkotsu Ramen Recipe 

from  http://www.souschef.co.uk/bureau-of-taste/recipe-tonkotsu-ramen/

For the broth  to serve 8

• 4kg of bones – can include pork, chicken and beef bones
• 1 onion
• 1 head of garlic
• 500g pork belly

For the seasoning

• 50g   Kikkoman soy sauce (roughly 1tsp per person)
• 40g Chilli bean paste  (roughly 1tsp per person)

To garnish

• 6-8 packs of ramen noodles (1 pack of ramen noodles serves 1-2 people)
• 4 Nitamago (ramen eggs) – allow half an egg per person
• 6 spring onions, finely chopped

Making the stock  8-10 hours 

• Put all the bones in a stock pot, cover with water and bring to the boil.
• Fry the onion and garlic over a high heat until blackened – the gently bitter, caramel flavours enhance the stock. Add to the pot.
• Keep the pot on a rolling boil – and top up the water throughout the day and skimming off any scum that gathers on the surface. The ideal cooking time is between 8-10 hours.
• The pork belly – used to garnish the dish – is best cooked in the broth. Add the to the stock three hours before the end of cooking. It is easier to slice the belly when cold. So if time allows, lay it flat in the fridge for 2 hours before serving.
• Double strain the stock, and either freeze, refrigerate, or serve straight away.

Note: It is difficult to provide exact ‘bone : stock’ ratios. But as a rough guide, we made 5 ½ litres of intensely-flavoured stock from 3.75kg of bones.

To serve

• Add the stock,Kikkoman soy sauce and chilli bean sauce to a pan. If you are saving some of the broth for another day, allow 700ml of stock, and 1tsp of soy sauce and chilli bean paste per person.
• Add the noodles three minutes before the end of cooking.
• Finely slice the pork belly, and lay on top of the warming noodles – by the time it the stock has heated, the pork will be warm throughout.
• Ladle the broth and noodles into a ramen bowl , garnish with slices of pork, half a Nitamago egg and spring onions.

Nitamago

Serves 8

 For the marinade

• 200g mirin
•  200g sake
•  200g Kikkoman soy sauce
• 15g brown sugar
•  8 eggs

1. Put the mirin and sake and Kikkoman soy sauce and brown sugar into a pan. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved. Leave to cool.
2. Plunge the eggs into boiling water for 6 minutes, and then ‘shock’ cool in an ice bath.
3. Peel the eggs and place them in the mirin-sake-soy-sugar marinade for a minimum of two hours, but ideally overnight.
4. Cut the eggs in half, and use to garnish a bowl of ramen. Pour the remaining marinade into a sauce dish and serve alongside the ramen. 

Inspiration

A bowl of ramen is a self-contained universe...with life from the sea, the mountains and the earth. All existing in perfect harmony.

Harmony is essential. What holds it all together...is the broth. It gives life to the ramen.

-  Ramen Girl, written by Becca Topol and directed by Robert Allan Ackerman