Japanese Noodle Lunch by Ruth Paget
With Ramen Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide by Christ Toy and online ingredients (if you cannot obtain the ingredients locally), it is possible to make great ramen at home with the many recipes in Toy’s book.
Toy begins his guide by telling readers that Chinese travelers brought wheat noodles to Japan in the 1800s and called them shina or chuka soba. The Japanese word ramen comes from la mien in Chinese, meaning noodles. (Chinese lo mein and chow mein are both noodle dishes that Americans might be more familiar with.)
Toy gives the following formula for building a bowl of ramen:
1-broth
2-tare sauce
3-noodles
4-toppings
The first building block of ramen is broth.
There are 5 different broth flavors:
1 - shio – salt-based broth
2 – shoyu – soy-sauce based broth
3 – miso – fermented soybean broth
4 – tonkotsu – broth made from boiling bones
5 – kare – curry broth
The second ingredient for making a ramen soup is the concentrated tare sauce. You place the tare sauce in the bottom of the ramen bowl before adding the other ingredients.
There are 4 tare sauce types not to be confused with broth types:
1 – shio tare – salt based sauce
2 – shoyu tare – soy sauce based sauce
3 – miso tare – fermented soybean based sauce with seasonings of sweet mirin wine, ginger, and red pepper added
4 – kare tare – curry based sauce
The third ingredient that goes into ramen is wheat noodles. The wheat noodles are eggless and made with flour, salt, and kansui (an alkaline water). Ramen noodles may be thin, thick, straight, or wavy.
The final ingredients for the ramen noodles are the toppings. There are many, but some of the most common follow:
-ajitama eggs – hard-boiled eggs that have been marinated in sweet mirin wine and soy sauce overnight
-chashu pork – braised or baked pork marinated in soy sauce and brown sugar
-kamaboko (naruto) – sliced, processed fish cakes that have been steamed and refrigerated
I was happy to find a recipe for a ramen I ate as a high school exchange student in Japan: kitakata ramen
Kitakata ramen comes from central Japan. Its ingredients follow:
-shoyu tare
-tonkotsu pork broth
-udon noodles
-chashu pork
-kamaboko fish cake
-menma bamboo shoots
-scallions
-chopped and dried nori seaweed
To make delicious Japanese noodles at home, let Ramen Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide by Christ Toy be your reference book.
By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
