Cooking: Tonkotsu by Nanban

I first decided to cook ramen after visiting a restaurant/bar in Brixton (London) called Nanban, set up by Masterchef winner Tim Anderson. Tim sells a cook book at his bar with excellent recipes for ramen and soul food dishes. His love of ramen comes from living in Kyushu, Japan's third largest island located southwest of the main island Honshu. Kyushu is famous for big bold flavors so the ramen tends to be pork based - as a result, my first cooking attempt was Tonkotsu. Quite lucky I had set aside the weekend then … I have subsequently realized chicken broth takes one third the time (and you can add a trotter for more body)!

Ingredients:

Ramen requires a lot of ingredients. It helps to have a good Japanese store so you get all the shopping done in one go. I used Japan Centre (japancentre.com) in London. This first shopping trip took hours - I had no idea what most of the ingredients were but you get very familiar with them after one cook and its part of the fun.

Getting hold of pig trotters and pork bones for the broth was a little intimidating - I had no idea who would have these. I called up a local butcher (thegingerpig.co.uk) and they were great. You normally have to order trotters ahead of time but they give you bones for free and even with pork belly for making chashu the bill was under ten pounds.

“Ramen is street food - it is inexpensive, unpretentious and should remain so! Tsuta (Tokyo) is the first ramen restaurant to be awarded a michelin star and also the cheapest michelin starred restaurant in the world! ”

Broth:

It may take between 12-20 hours to make pork broth but it doesn't require much more than boiling, stirring and occasionally tasting. There is nuance like stirring technique and the heat of your burners but making this for the first time you get a good result from vigorous boiling on a normal stove for 15 hours, stirring occasionally and keeping the water topped up. I turned it off over night and fired it back up in the morning - it worked fine.

Before you start making the broth, make sure you boil the bones briefly, discard the water and then start with fresh water - this gets all the blood out.

It is really important to season the broth at the end - I added dashi (made from a stock pouch) garlic powder, ginger powder, salt, white pepper and what I thought was black pepper. The pepper I bought was actually a spice mix so my broth was hot but I liked it! In future, I will divide the broth into portions and experiment with little bits before adding to all of it.

Chashu:

Pork braised on low heat for four hours - very simple and delicious. It can be used in many other dishes. The Nanban cook book uses cola along with shoyu (soy sauce), mirin and rice vinegar. If you think about it, the tastes in cola are perfect but I was skeptical initially! It makes the chashu rich which works well in Tonkotsu but I prefer other recipe's for lighter bowls like shio or shoyu ramen.

Marinated Half Boiled Eggs:

Key to this step? Boil eggs for exactly six minutes and twenty seconds then into an ice bath. Beyond that, there isn't much too it. The marinade I used was Nanban's which includes star anise, dashi and a smoky tea like Lapsang Souchong. I left the eggs in the marinade indefinitely but I recommend twenty four hours max.. This is a strong marinade. Tim Anderson combines any leftover eggs with mayonnaise and chives to make an egg mayo sandwich. I tried it - very good but my eggs tasted so strong. I tried this after subsequent attempts with better eggs and it was delicious.

Peeled eggs in marinade ready for 24 hours in the fridge

Black Mayu:

I spent an hour looking for this in Japan Centre before realizing it was burnt garlic which you make myself. It’s the most bizarre thing - you literally burn garlic in oil and whizz up in a blender. Seems like it should be bitter and disgusting but gives amazing flavor in Tonkotsu. In a variation of this dish, he fries garlic chips which I have had in other ramen bars. You don't need both but one is good.

The finished bowl:

A small matter of 24 hours later and you are finally ready to pull together a bowl of ramen. It made me feel kind of nervous - I have never taken so long to cook something that gets eaten so quickly. The good thing about cooking ramen is you can prepare each element ahead of time and assemble once the noodles are cooked. So this is what I did - laid it out on a plate, timed the noodles (two minutes) and combined all ingredients!

Taste / Improvements:

I honestly couldn't believe how much flavor I managed to get into this bowl. I think it lacked any nuance or complexity - it was just packed with bold flavors and overall it tasted good. For me, there was a little too much going on and I decided to try and make lighter ramen going forward. In looking into how you make more complex tastes in the broth I realized you combine a strong tare (a concentrated base) with a light broth (like chicken). This is ultimately the direction I am heading in … but its personal preference.