Tsukemen

Waseda students love ramen. Actually, lots of people love ramen but because its cheap and pretty well varied, and usually comes with unlimited rice, its a big hit with the college students. (Yes, you get a big bowl of noodles AND unlimited white rice. I think Dr. Atkins just rolled over in his grave and I want to make hte point again that there is no reason why Tokyo-ites should be so thin because this is how most people eat here.) I digress. Waseda and Baba area is packed with ramen places. I think last count was somewhere around 40 but I'll leave that up to someone who knows more about ramen than I do. Check that blog for some really gritty details and history of ramen and ramen varities.

Basics are ramen is a bowl of curly noodles, typically egg based. Rather rich tasting. Toppings, broth and way of serving varies shop to shop, but typically the broth is in the bowl with the noodles, there is a wonderful thing called a "ni-tamago" involved, and slices of fatty pork. In the world of Japanese noodles, there are three big players. You have ramen, soba, udon. Soba is my favorite. Udon is hte most hit and miss. I've had some good ones and some that go down with the excitement of thick worms. Ramen is fun, hard to screw up, and just about every likes it, but I don't think its anything special, but it has a tremendous cult following because there are so many varities and places around. For me, the regular soy sauce or shio ramen is a middle of the road go to, then I was introduced to tsukemen, that takes the fun of dunking and your noodles of soba and combines it with the delicious greasiness of ramen (and the ni-tamago). In tsukemen, the noodles and toppings are seperate from your bowl of...well...whatever you dunk in. Options at this ramen-ya were spicy miso and wa-fu, which was basically soy sauce and sesame oil based. I opted for the wa-fu


Here we have the "tsuke" part of the tsukemen. Its a warm bath of menma (tender portion of bamboo, common ingredient in ramen, negi (scallions) soy sauce, pork broth, sugar, sesame oil, and probably some pork fat from the broth. You can see some lemon peel in the picture and I think it the broth was thickened by some grated daikon. More concentrated than the normal broth of a typical bowl of ramen. It was thick enough and had enough in it so when you dipped the ramen, the soup adhered very well. Some of hte first bites were pretty greasy actually very greasy, could feel the grease all over when I swallowed. Grease is part of the ramen experience...this is not exactly health food or clean eating like soba is. Flavors when the ramen is in the broth are much more diluted...less grease, spice, etc. This stuff had body to it, perfect for clinging to the noodles. And it was a lot more fun eating the ramen this way and fishing out all the pieces of menma and dropped goodness from the bowl. You could also combine ingredients the way you wanted, like wrapping some nori around the noodles then dunking, trying a little nori on its own. This nori was a nice texture, not paper thin like most yakinori. A bit thicker and held its own against dunking in the broth without collapsing into a limp mess.
So on to a little about the ramen and toppings. Ramen was cool, not chilled, but definitely not right out of the hot water. Noodles, with the exception of udon, because it is so thick, definitely beloing outside of hot broth. The soften too much in a hot broth and lose al dente rather quickly. To Japanese, al dente may not be a good thing, given how much more like like soft food than Americans but to me, and my italian blood, its al-dente or nothing. This held al dente very well and alone you could taste the flavors in the noodles better. The egg, flour, little butter maybe. Ramen isnt usually hand-made, but the good noodles absolutely carry a flavor. Pork was a bit too thick and fatty for my liking. This is the one ingredient best sitting in a pot of broth to soften it up a bit. For tsukemen, pork shavings rather than slices would be better. If I make it, I'll try this way. The dip in the broth wasnt enough to soften up this log of fat and meat, and the dish would have been better without it. But a leaner cut of roasted pork, close to shaved thin, dunked into the soup would be magical.

Speaking of Magic: Ni-Tamago in Action
Just when I thought I was getting close to replicating a ni-tamago, this ramen shop throws a new twist in. This was the best ni-tamago I've eaten so far. And not because of that jelly-like yolk, but the white this time stole the show. To clarify, a ni-tamago is essentially an onsen tamago in reverse. Solid white (hard boiled) and jelly-like, not runny yolk. Onsen tamago has a barely coagulated white and a sold, but not chalky yolk. This egg though nailed the yolk perfectly white keeping the white from becoming rubbery like a hard-boiled. Only way to pull this off is to cook the egg under boiling. Probably around 90 degrees C or maybe lower. This will give the yolk time to turn to jelly while not turing the outermost portion of the egg into a white tire. The egg was taken out of some sort of warm bath immediately before serving, which had to be under 60 degrees so the yolk does not solidify. Bath was something more on the sweet than salty. The outside of the egg is stained very lightly, not a tan or brown from soy sauce. Above pick is the egg simply split by my chopsticks and the bottom is with the yolk inverted. Slight chalking of the yolk on the very outside, but nothing to complain about. Just goes to show how delicate the preperation is, that a few degrees or seconds too long will blow the perfect ni-tamago. These ramen shops must have this down to a science.