Ramen!

Ah yes, ramen, meal of the college student right? Nope, not this ramen. See, here in the west, ramen has a bad rap. Because the ramen we all grew up on was instant. And just like how instant mashed potatoes are incredibly convenient and can taste good, they are not the real mashed potatoes that the family makes up at Thanksgiving that makes you come back for seconds.

I first got the notion of this magical ramen while watching the movie Ramen Girl with Britney Murphy. I'm pretty sure this movie went straight to DVD. Regardless, it was a cute movie, albeit mostly a chick flick. I do recommend it though, if not to gain insight into the extraordinary world of ramen, then to watch a movie much like "Como Agua Por Chocolate" (Like Water For Chocolate) in which we are treated to the magical realism of how the emotions we put in to our cooking is passed on to those who eat it. Good for a good laugh, good for a good cry.

Anyway, so I watched the movie and was inspired to "soup up" (haha) my ramen.

It was still instant ramen though. Just with vegetables and a boiled egg in it. It was good though. Not spectacular enough to carry it on.

I was on a group ride last year and the ride leader was talking about an amazing ramen place inside the Japanese market. I have been in an Asian foods market and it can be a bit intimidating. Foreign foods written in a foreign language. It's one thing to walk into a store and buy a loaf of bread with a Japanese label on it. It's entirely different to find a package of black squishy stuff with Japanese writing on it and decide whether or not to take it home.

Anyway, I checked this place out on Yelp and it seemed legit. One of the highest rated ramen places in San Jose. Santouka Ramen inside Mitsuwa Marketplace.

My god, I have never had ramen like this before.

I can't even begin to describe it. It is the most comforting of comfort foods, and such a unique taste that it can't be replaced with anything else when you get a craving. Santouka always has a huge line and they're cash only. They also might have a location near you (they're international too!). Check them out!

Anyway, I googled how to make it myself, since $10 a bowl can be a bit steep sometimes (but well worth it). I came across this great website called Serious Eats. Kenji decided to try his own hand at ramen and spent days laboring over the perfect tonkotsu (pork) ramen. See, it's the broth that is the important thing (and they address this in Ramen Girl-super cute). The broth makes the soup.

Tonkotsu ramen is thick, creamy (fattening) and opaque. It's incredibly flavorful. This is not your average chicken broth. Having seen Ramen Girl, I was not naive enough to think this would be an easy task, but I figured it couldn't be impossible.

There are a couple ways to "half-ass" ramen. I chose the three-quarter ass way to make ramen. I'm ok with boiling broth away on a stove for 12 hours (except that bedtime came before that so it ended up being 8) but not standing over a sink for half an hour picking tiny little blood vessels out of bones so that the broth doesn't turn brown. You may notice the broth above is basically white. That takes some added care that I decided to forgo on this round. It's supposed to still taste the same, just different presentation.

I made a list and was off to Mitsuwa.

I also managed to not bring home any more mochi, which I am both proud of and saddened by. I finished the last of the mochi I had last night and now am mochi-less. Which is probably for the best, but it's a bit heart breaking. I grabbed a nice bottle of sake instead.

So this is what we've got: mushrooms (some weird kind and "wood-ear"-another weird kind), seasoned bamboo shoots (next time I will go with unseasoned), onions, garlic, ginger, ramen noodles, pork belly, pork bones, and chicken carcasses. Yeah, you can buy pork bones and chicken carcasses. Thankfully they are not expensive or I would've had to first roast a chicken, then take all the meat off to get my carcass.

Mind you, the majority of this stuff is just for the broth (not all of it obviously). The broth is what we're working towards here. The end goal. I was going to need a big pot.

Fortunately I own one of those. I am so proud of that pot. Anyway.

I tossed all the bones and carcasses in to boil.

(A photo in case you weren't aware of what boiling carcasses looks like.)

In the meantime I put the garlic, onion, and ginger on the stove to bring to a "near char" as per Kenji's instructions.

Then I dumped it all in the pot and set it to boil for as long as possible. It would be my bedtime before time was up entirely, so it would have to suffice at 8hrs.

Ramen calls for seasoned soft boiled eggs. I had originally planned on just using a regular boiled egg, but decided at the last minute to marinade them with the instructions on Serious Eats.

A couple of problems. It called for a cup of sake. I had one small bottle of beautiful sake that I wanted to drink. This saddened me. I compromised and gave the recipe 3/4 cup sake, while I started drinking the remainder.

What saddened me even more was that the recipe yielded far too much for my 5 eggs anyway, so I ended up dumping the extra mixture down the drain, being as my lovely sake was now mixed with a ton of soy sauce and a little water.

Unfortunately I did not have the mirin, or sweet wine, that the recipe called for, and the only possible substitute I had was a port that is currently aging- waiting for that special day when I graduate, or get married, or have some other spectacular event worth opening up an aged bottle of port for.

So the eggs ended up a little too much on the soy side.

But check out this cool little contraption I discovered at Aunt Pat's house!

I recommend getting one of these. Especially if you either tend to forget about your eggs on the stove (last week I forgot about my eggs for over an hour....there is no alarm on this thing unfortunately) or you like something other than hard boiled eggs.

Ramen calls for soft boiled eggs and it's a relief not to have to guess. This thing turns purple from the outside in as it reaches each stage of done-ness.

See: here it is soft boiled.

Super cool right? I think I got mine at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Love that place.

So, Kenji warned that at this point the egg whites will be fragile. Fragile indeed. The poor things were completely slaughtered by me. The first two went horribly, the second two were great, and then the last just got thrown away, it was demolished so badly. You cannot slaughter a soft-boiled egg and expect to continue on with it. It doesn't work that way.

In went the marinade.

In order to marinade them evenly without having to keep going in and rotating the darned things, I put a couple paper towels down on the eggs which kept the marinade on top of them.

I put the lid on the tupperware and put it in the fridge to marinate overnight... but not before I discovered there was a hole in the bottom of the container. No big deal, threw a little plate underneath it and called it good.

The pot was just boiling away on the stove. At about 7:30 pm, as it apporached my bedtime, I remembered that I had to put the pork belly in if I expected it to get nice and tender. Bah. I only left it in about a half hour, because I had a mess to deal with before bedtime.

I put them into a container (no holes in this one) with some of the broth so they wouldn't dry out, and into the fridge they went.

Then there was the broth to contend with.

I dumped it into another pot through a fine mesh strainer to get out all the solids.

And since there was plenty of broth made, I separated it into freezable containers, and into one larger container for the fridge.

While the broth is not white, it is certainly opaque.

Can't see through that baby.

I cleaned up my mess and went to bed, leaving the remainder of the job for the next day.


The next morning I woke up and had my coffee as usual. I began to brainstorm about what I was going to have for breakfast since I didn't have any protein shakes made. I figured I might as well continue the ramen mission and have a bowl for breakfast.

I got the eggs out of their marinade.

Yeah, those things look pretty sad. But it's what's inside that counts:

Mmmmm. I like soft and medium boiled eggs. I feel like they have a more complex flavor.

So, there are a few options when it comes to seasoning the broth. I was a little baffled that the most popular flavor at Santouka Ramen was Shio, or salt flavor. What the heck is salt flavor? But I decided to trust the Yelp ratings and go with salt flavor. I was not disappointed.

Other flavors include Shoyu (soy sauce), and miso (soy bean paste), and a mixture of all of them. I decided to start with soy sauce and add salt as needed (like a pinch). It wasn't too bad except that I feel like soy sauce can have a slight bitter taste to it. Anyway, this was breafast:

Here you can see the beautiful egg, wood ear mushrooms, noodles, bamboo shoots, green onions, and somewhere in there are a few strips of pork belly. Honestly I'm not entirely sure what exactly pork belly is and I don't care to look it up since it's delicious and I wouldn't want to ruin it.

So the broth is a little brown, and again the soy sauce added a bit of bitterness to it.

I went to lunch with a friend from church (Hawaiian restaurant in Japantown where I had poke for the first time!) so I didn't try again until dinner time.

This time I just seasoned the broth with salt (Shio Ramen). Of course I added far too much, but fortunately I still had some unseasoned broth in the fridge, dumped that in, stirred it around to dilute it, then returned most of it back to the fridge. I liked this one far better than the soy sauce flavor.

While it is in no way equal to Santouka's ramen, it was pretty good. It's just too bad I didn't have any sake or mochi to top it all off.

I am fortunate not to live within walking distance of Mitsuwa. I would live off mochi, sake, and Santouka ramen, and be completely broke. And fat.