US-made Ramen noodle #3 ラーメン その３ アメリカ製

Last time I posted ramen noodle ラーメン, I promised that it would be the last post on ramen but I lied. We only rarely eat ramen noodles and, by no means, we are aficionados (Japanese expression would be ramen-otaku ラーメンオタク, which sounds a bit more sinister), not even close.  For that matter, usually neither of us can finish one traditional Japanese sized serving of ramen and end up splitting the package of noodles between the two of us. The last several times I made ramen was when my mother sent me a box of ramen noodles from Nishiyama seimen 西山製麺 in Sapporo 札幌.

This time, my excuse for posting another ramen is that recently at my Japanese grocery store I found frozen ramen noodles which are made in US . This company called Sun Noodle appears to have originated in Hiro, Hawaii by a Japanese American who was born there. They have facilities in other locations including Los Angeles and New Jersey. They also run a pop up ramen restaurant in New York and give ramen classes. Besides specialty retail stores, they provide ramen noodles to restaurants and appear to be very dedicated to introducing authentic ramen noodles to Americans. I was curious about how good these noodles would taste. This particularly package came with seasoning packets. I chose a classic "shoyu" or soy sauce flavor.



I divided up one serving of the noodles into two and made two half ramens or "han-ramen" 半ラーメン.



I made sort of classic ramen toppings with roasted pork チャーシュー, seasoned bamboo shoot or menma めんま, seasoned soft boiled egg or "ajitsuke tamago" 味付け玉子, nori and chopped scallion.



Of course, I used pasteurized eggs for this.



Some years ago, we bought sporks, a hybrid fork and soup spoon designed specifically to eat ramen in chain noodle restaurants called "Sugakiya",  from the  museum store of MOMA . I got the sporks out since I remembered that we had them. This spork is very awkward to use and we switched to chop sticks. Good idea but not really practical.

 

Toppings:
Pork: This was re-purposed left-over barbecued pork. The weekend before we barbecued pork loin on our Weber grill. It was hot smoked and seasoned with salt, black pepper and fresh rosemary. Since I had a one inch thick end piece left, I decided to make it into a ramen topping. I had left over clear soup which was based on broth made from a "Dashi pack" with dried bonito and kelp. I reused this soup by adding more mirin, soy sauce, and sake. I also added one star anise and slices of ginger. I made this simmering sauce rather strong. I then simmered the barbecued pork in it for 30 minutes. I let it cool down to room temperature and placed it in the refrigerator. Just before serving, I sliced it to make 4 good sized portions (2 per person).

Seasoned eggs: I made two soft boiled eggs (7 minutes in simmering water) using pasteurized shell eggs. I peeled the shell and placed the shelled egg in the simmering sauce I used for the pork (above).  I placed it in the refrigerator and marinated overnight.

Seasoned bamboo shoot: I just used a commercial product that came in a jar which I bought at the Japanese grocery store when I got the ramen noodles.

Ramen Broth: I made broth from a dashi pack which contained dried fish (bonito, sardine, kelp). I made it rather strong. I had a choice of adding the pork simmering sauce I made or the seasoning packet that came with the noodles. Since this exercise was to see how good these US made ramen were, I added the seasoning packet to the broth. I did not add the entire package at once but in increments as I tasted it. I used about 70%. This made a rather classic shoyu ramen broth. With my strong fish based broth, it had a clean classic taste.

Ramen noodles: I followed the instruction on the package. After I thawed the noodles, I boiled the them but rather than timing it, I checked the doneness as I cooked the noodle. Some ramen fans really like "hard" or undercooked ramen noodle but we like an properly cooked (just a bit al dente) noodle. I then drained the noodles and placed them in the ramen broth.

We were quite impressed with the quality of these US made ramen noodles. The noodle was straight (not curly) and had a nice toothyness. I assume they were in the style of "Tokyo straight noodles". The company makes 6 different ramen noodles. The slices of pork were also unexpectedly good despite my impromptu repurposing especially since the slices had more fat than the rest of the loin. The best was the egg.  The egg yolk was still runny and the white absorbed the nice flavor of the pork simmering sauce. We were quite satisfied with this ramen.

Chestnut flour crepes with honey Ricotta 栗の粉クレープ

This is a continuation of the seasonal chestnut flour recipes. This is a  recipe by Mario Batali.  We served it with very ripe and sweet Mission figs.



This is a rather simple recipe.

Ingredients
1 cup chestnut flour
2 extra large eggs
1 1/4 cups water
2 cups ricotta
1/2 cup honey
2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions
Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and beat in the eggs, 1 at a time. Add the water, whisking until smooth. Allow to stand 15 minutes.

Place the ricotta in a mixing bowl and stir in half the honey.

Heat a 6 to 8-inch nonstick frying pan over medium heat and brush with some of the olive oil. Add 2 tablespoons crepe batter and roll pan to distribute evenly and thinly. Cook until the crepe is firm on the underside and is curling up at the edges, about 1 minute (see below picture).



Flip the crepe and cook on the raw side for about 30 seconds (see picture below).



Continue making crepes until all the batter is finished, stacking each finished crepe on top of the previous one, to keep them warm. To speed up the crepe making process use multiple skillets.

To serve, spoon 2 tablespoons of the ricotta honey mixture in the center of each crepe, roll it up and placed a dollop of honey Ricotta (the original recipe suggested to put honey but that would have been too sweat for us).



We really liked the honey ricotta. The crepes are a bit dry/brittle (or "bosoboso" ボソボソusing Japanese expression) but had a unique flavor of chestnut. We will not get chestnut flour just to make this crepe in the future, though.

Chestnut Flour Cake: Castagnaccio 栗の粉のケーキ：カスタナチオ

Since my wife got chestnut flour, she searched for some recipes and came up with this Tuscan chestnut cake. This is indeed an interesting cake. As the recipe indicated, it requires wine to "wash it down".



This is a flat cake without any leavening agents. It is savory in taste with rosemary, pine nuts, walnuts and raisins.

 

My wife put some of these in the batter and some on the top.

 

We made a few variations from the original recipe.

INGREDIENTS

2 ounces raisins
16 ounces chestnut flour
2 tablespoons sugar
Zest of one lemon,
Pinch salt
2 cups water
3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for pan
1 fresh rosemary sprig, leaves picked and finely chopped
1 ounce toasted chopped walnuts
1 ounce toasted pine nuts

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Place the raisins in a ramekin of water to soften for 20 minutes.

In a large mixing bowl, sift the chestnut flour. Add the sugar, lemon zest, and pinch of salt, mix well and then gently start adding the water to the mix.

Using a whisk, beat the mixture well making sure to eliminate any lumps, then add 2 tablespoons olive oil, and half of the raisins, nuts and rosemary and mix again.

Lightly oil an 11-inch pie plate with 2-inch sides with olive oil and pour in the batter it should be no more than 1/3-inch thick. Sprinkle the cake with rosemary leaves, the remaining softened raisins, walnuts, and pine nuts. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon olive oil and bake for about 40 minutes.

We used a rustic looking ceramic pie pan.



We used finely chopped fresh rosemary from our herb garden.



This is a very interesting cake. It has the texture and taste of a very large chestnut smashed into a flat piece. The predominantly chestnut flavor and texture is accented by intriguing overtones on rosemary and pine nuts (I couldn’t detect any walnut flavor). The original recipe said that this was not “kid friendly” and they were right. This is definitely not for desert and will not go well with coffee or tea. But the flavor grows on you. Also over time the rosemary and pine nut flavor marry into the chestnut flavor and the cake gets better.  We were probably too careful about adding too much rosemary. This time of year the rosemary in our garden is extremely aromatic and tacky with oil—probably at its best for the season.  Next time we can be a lot more aggressive with that herb. This cake reminded me of when I was introduced to the Italian liquor Compari. When I first tasted it, the flavor was very strong/bitter, unique and distinctive and I wasn’t sure I liked it. But then it grew on me. The cake is rather crumbly and we ended up eating it in chunks rather than slices. Since the raisins, pine nuts and rosemary we put on the surface just fell off as we ate and while we stored the cake, my wife suggested that next time we just mix all of it into the batter.

We had this with red wine and that combination worked out well. This cake ranks next to my wife’s anchovy black pepper cookie . They are of a similar  genre. Both go well with sipping wine rather than as a "dessert".

Chestnut flour pancake 栗の粉のパンケーキ

When we got this year's shipment of North American Chestnuts I prepared my usual Chestnut rice and other chestnut dishes. In an effort to expand our seasonal chestnut repertoire my wife hit the internet and came up with several recipes using chestnut flour. This is an ingredient we have never used before so my wife had to hit the internet again to find where we could purchase some. She got chestnut flour from Amazon and we made these pancakes one weekend. This also uses almond flour which we just happened to have in our freezer (how it got there and why is another story).  By the way, this pancake is gluten free if that is important to you.



For a pancake without any wheat flour, this one came out very fluffy. I also added my chestnut in syrup as a garnish.



I used a small amount of maple syrup but this pancake is rather sweet and may not need any additional syrup.



This recipe came from this site. We modified the recipe using our CCK (Common Culinary Knowledge)

Ingredients: (4 pancakes)

- 3 Large Eggs
- 1 Cup Chestnut Flour sifted
- 1/3 Cup Blanched Almond Flour sifted
- 3 Tbs Granulated Sugar
- 2 Tsp double acting Baking Powder
- Pinch of Salt
- 1/4 cup Milk*
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 Tbs. melted Butter

Directions: sift the flours. (This step can not be skipped because the chestnut flour has a tendency to clump and without sifting ends up with several hard lumps). Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and the wet ingredients in another bowl. Stir the two together. Adjust the amount of milk to get a pourable consistency. Ladle the batter into a hot pan with a little olive oil on the bottom. Cook as you would any other pancake.

*Note: It is important to have a appropriate consistency when making pancake batter. We had to add over 1/4 cup of milk (more like 1 cup) to get a "spreadable" consistency so that the batter would spread in the pan (see below). Probably we could have added more liquid to make it spread to fill the pan. We also omitted "vinegar or lemon juice" included in the original recipe since double action baking powder has it's own source of acid to activate and we judged that "acidic" taste will not be good in the pancake.



The pancake tends to brown quickly because of the sugar.



This is a great pancake.  Despite being gluten-free, it has a very fluffy fine texture. It is slightly sweet and because of the chestnut flour, it has a hint of chestnut flavor as well. Amazingly we were surprised that the pancake seemed to have a “chocolate” flavor. If we did not know how it was made we would have sworn that it included coco powder; although it clearly did not. Because of the special flours, this tends to be a rather expensive pancake to make but we really liked this and we will definitely make it again.

Chestnut buns 栗入り全粒小麦 バン

Since I have exhausted my collection of chestnut recipes over the past several years, my wife came to the rescue. She made chestnut buns. She ended up using her favorite whole wheat buttermilk bun recipe and added chestnuts from North American Chestnuts which I prepared.



We served this with my chestnuts in syrup and pats of butter.

 
The bread recipe came from Laurel's Kitchen: Bread Book.

Ingredients:
2tsp active dry yeast
1/2cup warm water
3/4cup very hot water
1/4 honey
1 1/4 buttermilk
5 1/2 whole wheat flour
2tsp salt
4tbs butter
1 to 2 cups chopped up chestnuts in fairly large chunks

Instructions:

Bloom the yeast in the 1/2 cup warm water. Mix the hot water, salt, honey and buttermilk. It should be just slightly warm. Put 4 cups of wheat flour into the bowl of the mixer. Add the liquid ingredients to the flour and continue mixing. Add additional flour until the dough reaches a soft but not sticky consistency. For rolls the dough should be fairly soft. Once the right consistency is reached, knead for 7 minutes. Then an additional 3 minutes first adding the butter a tablespoon at a time until incorporated then the chestnut pieces. If the mixer can't handle the chestnut pieces knead the last part by hand.



Form the dough into a ball and put into a bowl that has a little vegetable oil on the bottom to coat the ball so it doesn't dry out as it rises. Rise in a warm place until double. Deflate and let rise again. The second rising will take 1/2 the time. When it has doubled again deflate and form into individual buns. (To get buns of equal size I weigh the dough--3 1/8 ounces makes the size shown here). Put them in a heavily buttered baking dish. (The butter in the dish makes the crust nice and crunchy). Cook at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes (check them after 15 minutes).



Although this is a whole wheat bread, it is very soft and moist and, by far, our favorite whole wheat bun. The addition of chestnuts was very nice but in retrospect, we should have put in larger pieces and more of them. (Initially we were concerned that the chestnuts might end up fairly hard and in a large size would not have a pleasant mouth feel but it turns out they absorbed into the dough and were quite soft). Since preparing chestnuts is a lot of work, next time we may try making this recipe with prepared chestnuts in a jar (from Europe especially France).

Tsukune with renkon 蓮根つくね

This is a variation of Japanese chicken patty, tuskune つくね.  Generally tsukune in Japan contains chopped up "soft bone" (cartilage or "nankotsu"  軟骨).  My wife does not like this, since  it reminds of her childhood when ground meat always had some bone fragments mixed in.  Instead, I chop up lotus root ("renkon" 蓮根) to add some crunchy texture to tsukune. This time, instead of including chopped up lotus root in the patty, I used a slice of lotus root as a base and pressed tsukune on the top. The combination of ground meat and lotus root is rather common and I posted deep fried lotus root sandwich 蓮根のはさみ揚げ,  previously.  I got this idea from "Sakaba hourouki 酒場放浪記 on YouTube which we saw one evening. In one of the episodes, this dish was served to the always somewhat inebriated host.



To show how this is constructed, left is the patty side and right is lotus root side on the top, respectively. I took a shortcut and I cooked this in a frying pan. Instead of making "tare" sauce, I just made a quick pan sauce to coat the tsukune.



There are many variations on what can be included in tsukune.  The only consistent ingredient is ground chicken.  One of the reasons I had for making this dish was to use barbequed chicken left over from the previous weekend. So, I mixed finely chopped cooked breast meat with store-bought ground chicken breast. I am not sure about the amount as usual but both the cooked and ground chicken were about 1 lb each. The idea here is that the cooked chicken adds texture and the raw ground chicken binds the tsukune together.  You could add anything you like but this time, I added finely chopped scallion (5 stalks including green parts), grated garlic and ginger (about 1/2 tsp each but whatever amount you like), and 1 tbs of miso. Since the mixture was a bit stiff, I also added one whole egg beaten. I made 1/3 for this dish and 2/3 for usual tsukune. For the usual tsukune, I added coarsely chopped lotus root. I made 8 tsukune on lotus root as you can see below. I pressed the meat mixture so that some went into the holes of the lotus root.


With a small amount of vegetable oil (or dark sesame oil if you so prefer) on medium heat,

I cooked the meat side first for 1-2 minutes until the surface was nicely browned. I flipped them over and cooked for another 1-2 minutes. I then added mirin, sake and soy sauce (1tsp each) into the pan. I shook the pan, until a viscous sauce developed and flipped them over so that the sauce coated all surfaces.

I served hot with a sprinkling of powder “sansho”  山椒. Because I used only breast meat, it was a bit on the dry side especially when it was reheated later. But this is another good way to use up cooked chicken.

Japanese pumpkin potage with chestnut 栗入りカボチャのポタージュ

This is nothing really new. The other day, I got a Japanese pumpkin or kabocha カボチャ at the Japanese grocery store. As usual, I made simmered pumpkin or カボチャの煮物 (second picture below).  I also made chestnuts simmered in syrup 栗の甘露煮.  So, I just combined all three into one dish.



I prepared the kabocha as usual. I removed the skin and rounded off the sharp edges of each piece to prevent the edges from crumbling during the cooking process (called "nikuzure 煮崩れ). So, I used these scraps and the portion of kabocha which was too thin to be made into individual pieces to make the potage. I made the simmered pumpkin  exactly the same was as before seasoned with sugar, mirin, and soy sauce.



For the potage, I added finely diced onion sautéed in butter, small cubes of potato simmered in chicken broth (my usual Swanson no fat low sodium) with a few bay leaves for 20 minutes or until everything was cooked and soft. After removing the bay leaves, I pureed the pumpkin mixture using an immersion blender until all the solids were gone. (picture below).



I added cream, mixed, seasoned with salt and white pepper and warmed up before serving. Since I  made chestnuts simmered in syrup, I placed the simmered pumpkin and chestnut in the bowl and poured the potage and garnished with finely chopped parsley.



The potage was sweet and velvety. With the addition of the simmered pumpkin and chestnut, this is really the taste of autumn.