The ramen soup is eaten with a big noise and a sequence of tiny kisses, designed to cool the special noodles that gave it its name and compliment the cook • One regular sound in an orchestra of infinite delightful versions
A world of food, at a price anyone can afford.
Chicken ramen soup
Photo:
Ithiel Zion
In 1995, seven Jewish families arrived in Tel Aviv from the city of Lancho in northwestern China, where wheat grows and noodle artists fill the streets.
Three of the same group, the Wong brothers and their brother-in-law Rafi Shu, opened the "Great Wall of China," a small restaurant not far from the old Central Station.
From day one it was clear that they were going there to eat Lao Maine, which means "hand-stretched noodles," and to stare at a cook holding a ball of dough, and with stretching, shaking, and shooting movements quickly turned it into a pile of noodles.
These noodles came to Japan, and there, in the Japanese lyrics, there was the non-main to ramen, noodles that owe their flexibility, like the yellow hue, to the mineral presence of baking soda relatives.
To this day, there are debates in Japan about the date and manner of arrival of noodles, which were eaten on the fringes of Japanese cuisine and gained popularity in the hungry and defeated country after World War II, when there was a shortage of rice that the Americans took care to fill in wheat.
This popularity grew with the advent of instant noodles in late 1950s Japan.
Ramen noodles can come in different sizes and shapes.
They can be eaten fried, roasted, sautéed or dipped in stew, but when the world calls for oil it usually means an infinite variety of soups, in which they are served outside or inside the liquid, in varying degrees of making.
As the quality of the ramen increases, so does their longevity in the boiling liquid, and it seems that nothing will be able to bite the dough between the teeth, its durability, flexibility and smoothness.
Between sticks, like a long beak growing from the palms of the hands, tons of ramen noodles are trapped every day from boiling liquid, which are sucked in with a great noise of a sequence of tiny kisses - the next action is to cool the noodles and compliment the cook.
One sound is fixed in an endless orchestra of performances and versions, offered at a price anyone can afford.
If we stretch the history of the origin of the ramen towards the Caucasus, we will reach the "legman" noodles, which just by writing the oil fills the mouth with the desire to dive into a plate of soup where lamb bones and leaves the lips shiny with pleasures and fat.
And so, in a kind of historical justice, the son of the Caucasus is behind the making of the best ramen soups in the country.
* * *
Nissan Alhasov, 34, was 5 when he moved with his family from Nalchik, the capital of the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in southern Russia, to Upper Nazareth.
There, in the kitchen next to mom and grandma, he fell in love with pots, learned the wisdom of dough.
For years he cooked alongside chef Oren Goldwasser, most of whose fame in recent years came from his involvement in Italian cuisine, but his mouth does not forget the Japanese meals he would have prepared when he returned from Tokyo in the early 2000s.
In January 2017, when the food market opened in Rothschild-Allenby, Alhasov was the one who took over the sushi restaurant in the complex.
A year later, when the market closed - leaving a broken heart and pocket - he continued with the members of the "Mantenten" group, which survived the upheaval.
From a first sip it was clear that the little Japanese at the end of the compound, whose name - like her menu - had been imported from a restaurant in Tokyo, was properly suggested by Ramen.
It was imported by restaurateur Yariv Bornstein, along with Assaf Menachem, who returned from 15 years in Japan - where he traveled after the army.
He traveled to it soaked in the stories of his father, who for years served as an electrical engineer on ships, and fell in love with culture, landscapes and Alice, the daughter of a Japanese father and a French mother.
When their two children were born, he returned home to his parents, to Kiryat Motzkin.
Nahum's mastery of Japanese culture, language and the raw materials he imports himself is reflected in the food.
The connection to Alhasov gave birth to restraint found in flavors, far from the sweet scream that characterizes the Zionist version of Japanese cuisine.
Mantantan emigrated to Nahalat Binyamin, Alhasov was appointed its head chef, and the menu he signed expanded, offering small, precise Izakaya dishes and the beauty of dough and sushi pouches, making sure to choose dishes that know how to shine without being drawn to the use of expensive ingredients.
I went to Alhasov to take a ramen-making class, a class I had been asking myself since watching the Tempo movie somewhere in the late '80s.
In honor of a mild winter, in honor of those who take care of foreign kitchens as if they were their own, and in honor of a growing Japanese longing, I bring you the mantan chicken ramen, after being adapted for the home kitchen.
I bring you Nissan Alhasov's offer for homemade and rewarding noodles, which are easy to get to.
* * *
Before approaching the recipe, here is a small list of important products, which you will get in stores that specialize in imports from the Far East or on the dedicated shelves in the marketing chains.
Mirin
- a sweetened rice wine, which together with the sake and soy serves as one of the cornerstones of Japanese cooking.
Sake
- an alcoholic beverage produced from the fermentation of rice and koji yeast and offers a wonderful world of flavors, clarity levels and price.
In this case one can quietly go for a modest sake for cooking.
Bamboo Shot
- Hazran Hazran in Hebrew.
This is the young and soft part of the bamboo, which is a big hit in Asian cuisines, which in Israel is sold canned.
Japanese soybeans
- In recent years, the shelves have been filled with light, spicy soybeans, from a variety of Asian cuisines.
The reference in this recipe is to Japanese soy, Shimasa and Kikoman are the most prominent of those imported from it to Israel.
Togarshi
- the Japanese seven-flavor mixture, which got its name from one of the peppers in it and also includes white and black sesame seeds, yuzu peel, ginger and nori seaweed.
This mixture, which brings with it a gentle spiciness and a great perfume, is mostly used for seasoning food after cooking.
Yuzu Kosu
- a Japanese seasoning spread installed from the yuzu compiler, hot peppers in red and green and a touch of salt.
Simple, great, and knows how to get along well with a variety of foods and drinks.
Touching it is a common guest at ramen soups wherever they are.
Chili oil
- In small bottles is marketed this red oil, in which hot peppers soaked in vegetable oil and colored it red.
It is also used for seasoning over prepared foods.
Sesame oil
- refers to the oil obtained from cold pressing of roasted sesame seeds, and is one of the basic and traditional ingredients in the cuisines of Japan, Korea and China.
Nori seaweed
- the ones everyone knows from the sushi shell.
In this case they are some of the additions to the soup.
Chicken ramen soup
And now - to the kitchen.
My advice to you is to read all the steps in advance - it's not as complicated as it sounds, and it's rewarding.
I arranged the preparation steps so that you reach the finish line, it is arranging the plate, at the right timing.
The translation into glasses is done according to disposable cups and the amount is good for 8 diners.
Ingredients for the bark stalks and eggs:
√ 50 ml (1/4 cup) sake
√ 50 ml (1/4 cup) Mirin
√ 2 tablespoons sugar
√ 1 cup Japanese soy
√ 3 peeled and crushed garlic cloves
√ 6 cm Peeled and crushed ginger root or finely grated
√ 1 liter of water
√ 4 eggs
√ 1 teaspoon salt
√ 1 can of bamboo shoots
(bamboo whip)
Mix all the ingredients (ie all the ingredients, except the eggs, wicker and salt), until the sugar has melted.
Place the eggs in a pot of water with salt, cook for 7 minutes from the moment of boiling, transfer to a bowl with ice water and peel after 15 minutes and transfer to a saucepan for 3 hours, or even overnight.
It is important to observe the cooking times of the eggs, in order to get the exact degree of making, and it is important to transfer them immediately to ice water to stop cooking and facilitate peeling.
The whip bamboo is filtered, sliced thinly against the direction of the fibers and added to the batter along with the eggs.
Ingredients for ramen soup:
√ 1 kg of chicken skeleton bones (ask the butcher to leave the skin
and flesh of the back)
√ 1/2 kg of chicken shanks
√ 2 small carrots washed and peeled
√ 5 green onions, without root, washed and cut into sections of About 5 cm
√ 4 cm Peeled ginger root
√ 1 whole garlic head
√ 1/2 tablespoon coarse salt
√ 1 tablespoon sesame oil
√ 5 liters water
√ 3/4 cup Japanese soy
Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
Season the chicken, bones, carrots, ginger and garlic with sesame oil and salt, massage and place in the oven for 30 minutes, until browned.
Transfer everything to a large pot, add the water and on a large flame bring to the boil.
Transfer to a low heat to simmer gently, remove the foam with a spoon and cover to gently cook for an hour.
Then remove the calves, disassemble the meat and place in a bowl with a ladle of the cooking liquid.
The contents of the pot with the bones are continued to cook without a lid for another hour, with the bones being crushed every 15 minutes with a wooden spoon inside the pot, in order to exhaust the taste and gelatin.
Then strain the bones and vegetables through a large sieve, then filter through a sieve cloth to obtain a smooth and clean hinge, to which add the three-quarters of a cup of Japanese soy.
Ingredients for ramen noodles:
√ 300 g (2 cups + 2 tablespoons) flour
√ 200 ml (1 cup) lukewarm water
√ 1 teaspoon salt
√ 1 teaspoon baking powder
Sift the flour into a wide bowl, add the salt and baking powder, mix well and add water gradually while stirring.
Continue to knead for 15 minutes until a uniform and smooth dough is obtained (you can definitely use an electric kneader), wrap in cling film and send to rest for an hour in the refrigerator.
In a pasta machine or rolling pin, roll the dough into a sheet about 2 mm thick, roll the leaf on both sides as if it were a Torah scroll and cut into noodles about 2-3 mm wide.
Open gently, and next to serve, cook in a large pot with boiling water for about 25 seconds - and strain.
It is important to remember that this is a homemade version of making ramen noodles.
It will not satisfy the longing for Japanese food, but it is superior in my eyes to most of what is sold in stores.
On days like theirs I would send you to find the ones made by Boaz Tzairi, but the days are days of closure and access to them is almost impossible.
Ingredients for assembling the dish:
√ Yuzu kosho (chili spread and yuzu lemon peels)
√ Soup liquid
√ Dissolved chicken meat
√ 4 Bok choy heads
cut
lengthwise, boiled in boiling water for 20 seconds and filtered
√ 1/2 kg of spinach leaves boiled in water Boil for 20 seconds and strain
√ 6 green onions, bare root and thinly sliced, both white and green
√ The semi-hard-boiled eggs that have been
soaked
√
Sliced bamboo shoots (bamboo whip)
√ Chili oil
√ Tugarshi spice mixture
√ 4 nori seaweed cut into quarters
At the bottom of each bowl, place a teaspoon of the yuzu kusho spread and pour the hot soup liquid over it - about 300 ml per plate. Place the cooked noodles and a little of the shank meat, in another corner of the plate the beech choy heads and spinach leaves, Slice and a half hard-boiled egg In the center of the plate place five slices of bamboo whip, add a small drizzle of chili oil and a quarter teaspoon of tugrashi, place over two squares of nori seaweed, and serve immediately.
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