Hiyashi Chuka and the Art of Cold Summer Ramen
 |
| Yes, dammit, yes! |
The wife had abandoned me for some far flung journalistic escapade. So, feeling sorry for myself, I retreated to Haikan clutching the London Review of Books to steady the mind, seeking ramen to fortify the constitution. I'm blessed to have Haikan, an outpost of the budding ramen empire spun off from Daikaya in Chinatown, DC, within stumbling distance of my couch. Fuck me, those fellas do know how to rummage through the ramen omnibus.
I'm usually partial to Haikan's spicy shoyu (put an egg on it). It's a go-to-dish in times of existential need, and when the nip stalks the night. Warm and nourishing, the Japanese equivalent of your Jewish grandmother's chicken soup, spicy shoyu à la Haikan is quite splendid, indeed.
But this particular evening itself was warm, inducing a conundrum. I've tried my better half's vegetarian ramen there before (clean, bright flavors, very scrumptious), but not wanting to miss an opportunity to EAT MEAT in her absence, I perused the specials menu looking for cooked animals.
It was there, nestled between offerings of pork belly and cucumber salad, that I first encountered Hiyashi Chuka (冷やし中華, or chilled Chinese noodles to the English speaking Japanese). Lavished with cherry tomatoes, cucumber, an Onsen egg, and lashings of a spicy chicken ragu verging on a paste, the bowl of wonder duly arrived. I spent the rest of the meal staring at the diminishing pile of noodles, documenting my best guesses at its ingredients, and plotting a MacFoodface redux.
On my return home, I commandeered google to the task at hand, and rustled up some excellent resources. The end result, served to my wife on her triumphant return, was duly spectacular and induced much praise. I've now repeated this feat a number of times, and with the last of the season's tomatoes sweating on the kitchen counter, I suspect we'll be eating more Hiyashi Chuka before the first frost stiffens my knees.
Try it. It's quite splendid (as well as being relatively quick and very goddamn easy to make).
 |
| Even the philistines who have never learned how to use chopsticks will be impressed. |
What you'll need
You may think some of the ingredients are frivolous (Furikake, for god's sake?). Get what tickles your fancy in the garnish section. However, you will need everything listed under the broth sub-heading. None of it goes bad in haste, so don't worry about it going to waste in a hurry. That said, do remember to refrigerate your sesame oil after opening it.
As for toppings: eat what you have/desire. To my mind, cherry tomatoes and mini cucumbers are compulsory, but I've made do with zucchini, steamed broccoli, and all sorts in the past.
I've heard the Japaneezers are partial to topping their Hiyashi Chuka with cubed lunch meats as a compliment to the veg. In an effort to avoid undue sodium, and to keep up the pretense of healthy living, I have avoided that particular temptation. Of course, the aforementioned Haikan sprinkles their noodles with some kind of ragu pixie dust to great fanfare.
Hardware -
A few prep bowls
A large bowl filled with ice and topped with cold water
A medium sized pot
A steamer (if so inclined)
Ingredients -
For the "broth":
Soy sauce
Toppings:
A medley of crunchy vegetables. Whatever's in the fridge really: carrots, radishes, and Persian or Japanese cucumbers (aka mini cucumbers)
Cherry tomatoes
Sprouts
Some shrimp, perhaps
Noodles:
As ever, the quality of your ingredients matters. You could saunter on down to the bodega on the corner and pick up some dried ramen for a dollar (or less), but you're going to be far better off throwing five bucks at a two-pack of frozen Sun Noodle ramen at a specialty store (find a stockist with your zip code here). If you're a total pedant, you could make your own ramen, but you're on your own if you do (I've never tried).
Garnish and condiments:
Spring onions
Karashi (Japanese mustard)
Eggs:
Freerange x2
Method
You know it: coaxing that elusive Japanese phenomenon 'umami' is going to be the critical factor here. Hence, some kitchen-hack, counter-top pickling is going to be fundamental to the project.
Fill your medium sized pot with water + a large pinch of salt. Place pot on burner and set it to bring it to boil.
Julienne your veg. Quarter your cherry tomatoes.
Using a prep bowl or small mixing bowl, whisk (a fork will do) a generous dollop of sesame oil (1/2 a tea spoon or so), with half a table spoon of rice wine vinegar, and a tea spoon of mirin (cooking sake works too). You want to whisk it sufficiently to ensure that the oil is no longer a discreet component of the liquid. Taste, and adjust as you like.
When the marinade is good to go, toss in the cucumbers and a pinch of furikake. Mix it up, ensuring that all pieces of the jullienned cucumber are coated in the pickling liquid. Set it aside, mixing it up again, here and there, when you remember to do so.
In another prep bowl mix in 1/2 a tea spoon of sesame oil with a table spoon of soy sauce (full sodium... is better). Toss in the quartered tomatoes. Sprinkle with a pinch of sesame seeds and salt and pepper to taste. Set aside with the cucumber, tossing occasionally when the urge arises.
Once the pot is on the boil, carefully lower your eggs into the boiling water without breaking the shell (I use a slotted spoon). Cover the pot. Set a timer for seven and a half minutes. When the timer sounds, remove the eggs from the boiling water with a spoon and transfer them to the bowl filled with ice and water.
Return the pot of water to the boil, topping it up with more water if it looks a little low.
While the eggs cook and cool, prep your "broth". I did quite a bit of research on this, scouring the interwebs for clues from afar. For my first foray into the world of Hiyashi Chuka, I whipped up a version of the noodle kaeshi in Nancy Singleton Hachisu's excellent Japanese Farm Food.
Nancy's recipe calls for the mixing of 1 part mirin with 1 part sugar and 8 parts soy (as in 1/2 cup mirin, and 1/2 a cup sugar with 2 cups of soy) stirred together in a pot on the stove until the sugar dissolves. This kaeshi, is then used to flavor dashi at a ratio of dashi to kaeshi of 3.3 to 1 (as in 300ml of dashi with 90ml of the mirin-sugar-soy kaeshi.
Obviously, that was all irritatingly fiddly and I have since hacked her recipe down, and jettisoned the sugar. And we're not sending a rocket to the moon, so measure to taste. There's no need for precision here.
I use approximately one table spoon of mirin, 2 table spoons of rice vinegar, to half a cup of soy, and add up to half a cup of water to taste. Mix it up, taste and adjust. Voila!, you have your broth in two minutes or less.
Now we're good to go with the noodles. I'm assuming you've been obedient gastronauts and that you have procured some fine frozen ramen from a local purveyor of Sun Noodles. Remove the ramen from their little bags and add them to rapidly boiling water. Set a timer for 2 minutes.
Brandish some chopsticks, and stab at the noodles until they have loosened and will not be prone to sticking together. Now cover the pot and fret about how al dente you would like them.
Ideally, you want a bit of spring in the noodles. Sun Noodles recommend 1.5 minutes in the pot on their packaging. Unfortunately, adding frozen noodles to boiling water kills the boil, and I've found that it doesn't roil back until about 1.5 minutes later. So I stand there freaking out at about the 1.5 minute mark, and I leave the noodles until the boil returns to push foam up to the pot brim (usually this is at about 2 min, but may be 30sec more).
At this critical juncture, when you feel like you're traversing the lower range of totally devastating your precious $5 ramen, drain the noodles in a sieve and transfer the entire sieve with noodles to the ice bath where the eggs have been chilling.
Try not to let the noodles soak for too long in the ice bath, and stab at them again with chopsticks to move them about and encourage them to cool down. Another method encouraged elsewhere, is to simply hold the sieve over the sink and rinse it with cold water until the noodles have cooled (tho I find I want them ice cold).
Presentation
- Divide the noodles between two bowls.
- To each mound of noodles, add your assorted veg (let the marinade go with it, it will add to the kaeshi broth).
- Add your protein if you choose to go there (nobody ever complained about shrimp fried in butter with S&P and finished with a squeeze of lime).
- Finally pour over your noodle broth, and garnish your little piles of wonder with some black sesame seeds, furikake, the chopped green shoots of spring onions (aka scallions), and/or a dab of karashi mustard. The wife - hot sauce fiend that she is - has been known to add some sriracha or David Chang's heavenly Ssam sauce, much to my disapproval. Finish with a drop or two of sesame oil delivered with the precision and flamboyance of the home chef that you are.
- The final flourish - one that generally never fails to impress - is the addition of your 7.5 minute eggs. Roll them on the counter-top to break up the shell, then peel them under a tap. Cut them in half to reveal solid egg whites complimented (if you got the timing and cooling right) by a slightly liquid yolk.** Position the halves sexily to one side of the bowl, and sprinkle a pinch of furikake on top to make them pop. Oh yes, life is good.
This is a quick recipe (you'll be feeling about a bit on your first attempt), but unless you do some mise en place, and pickling, up front, I find that you do experience its execution as a bit of a frenzy of beeping timers and dizzying decision points. In this scenario, your kitchen will resemble the aftermath of a small food fight, but the result will more than impress whoever you're entertaining that evening. If there is a McKinsey survivor out there, who is willing to impose a lean management analysis on a few data points, and send me a PowerPoint deck elucidating an efficient flow to the cook, please be in touch.
If you did have the foresight to prep your veg and broth up front, and the components have been chilling and communing for a couple of hours in the fridge, this would make a very impressive home meal for a date. Picture our hero sashaying in, pouring a selection of fine wines while the noodles boil, then wordlessly assembling a veritable triumph with ease, and in minutes. Badassery, I tell you.
Feedback welcome. Any particular toppings, I've neglected to try?
** I never did get into the whole Onsen egg phenomenon that I experienced at Haikan. Given the strangeness of aspects of Japanese pedantry, one should not be surprised to learn that somewhere along the line, someone tried their hand at cooking eggs in the millennia old Dogo Onsen hot springs. One needs to be quite dedicated, as an actual Onsen egg must be cooked for upwards of 45 minutes at the rarefied temperature of 145'F or 63'C. Thankfully, somebody figured out you get the same effect cooking the eggs for 13 minutes at 167'F or 75'C. But in the absence of a suitably warmed hot spring out back, you need some fancy equipment at home (an immersion circulator or other sous vide phenomenon). I tried it, once, in our fancy pour over kettle, with middling results. I should try again. The Onsen end result should be a milky and nominally solid egg white, and an almost entirely liquid, but coherent yolk (if that makes any sense).
Comments
Post a Comment