Spaghetti with asari (clams), shirauo (little white fish) and arugula at Pizzeria Matsuhisa in Denenchofu, Tokyo. Someday, I will open a wafu (Japanese-style) pasta shop in Oakland.

Drunken noodles at SriPraPhai in Woodside, Queens. From Umamiventure #4 in 2007. The savory hot sweetness of the dish still hovers in my memory.

Photo by Irwin Chen.

Happy February, everyone!

Umamimart turns 5 years old this month, and I thought it would be fun to celebrate NOODLES! We’re all fans of noodles here, and there are pages and pages worth of posts, since 2007 (!), dedicated to the almighty noodle on Umamimart.

The column name “Great UM Noodletown” is an homage to one of my favorite late-night spots in NYC Chinatown called Great NY Noodletown. With roasted birds dangling from the windows, I had many a meals there–both solitary and rowdy–all on the dirt cheap, with slices of oranges always for dessert. Thank you, Great NY Noodletown. You hold a special place in my heart.

To start off the column with a big bang, I give to you Misoya, a ramen chain from Japan that has made its way to Santa Clara, CA. The first U.S. outpost opened in the East Village, NYC (looks like the owner of Totto brought it over). It’s right around the corner from Ippudo, a mega-popular ramen joint, but I hope it’s holding its ground there regardless. Personally, I think Ippudo is garbage and I absolutely cannot believe there are still lines to get in. I mean $15 for a bowl of ramen in a techno-club setting?? No thank you. Yamahomo bitched about it when it first opened. We have not been back since.

Anyhow, here’s Misoya, set in a strip mall right across the street from a hospital in sunny Santa Clara, CA. Welcome to the sprawling suburban nightmare that is my childhood. But you know I love it!

I think it’s hilarious that the South Bay Area (San Jose, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Mt. View) has all the awesome Asian eateries, rather than SF proper. [Sorta like having to go to boondocks Queens from Manhattan]. I have to say that it’s testament to the fact that the audience in the South Bay just has higher standards for Asian food. I’ll get a lashing for saying that, of course. But it’s true!!! Dim sum, Viet, sushi. Alright, I admit, the East Bay has superb Korean and Thai though.

Miso. Soul. Japan. Holla!

Don’t you dare seat yourself, asshole.

I always come early enough so there’s never a line. You get a view into the kitchen from the counter.

Hungry. The bowl of rice is FREE! Carbs with a side of carbs, please!

Misoya is known for… wait for it… their MISO ramen.

The miso broth here is komemiso, which is a Hokkaido-style, darker blend with a hint of spice. They put a dollop of the komemiso on top.

Soup is deep and hearty.

Grease bubbles are muy importante.

Noodles are bouncy and squiggly, just how I like.

It is imperative that you order the cha-shu pork ramen. I ordered the regular ramen once, thinking that it would come with the standard two slices. WRONG. That was a sad, sad day.

They boast that this cha-shu is special because of the way it is grilled over an open flame. It is the fattiest piece of pork you will have for the week, but well worth it.

Now this puzzled me: the fried potatoes in my ramen.

This must be a Hokkaido thing? The Tokyo-girl (ok, Saitama) in me shuddered a little bit.

The gyoza were chive-y pork bombs. I peeped a guy in the kitchen making them from scratch.

Delightful!

So I didn’t finish my potato, but did pretty well otherwise.

The ramen was $11, gyoza $4. Not bad!

The ramen at Misoya is a damn fine bowl of noodles. While I will refrain from using declarative statements like “Best in the Bay”, I will say that this is the CLOSEST you will get to the ramen you will find in Japan. This means: hearty, heavy, greasy broth, which is all the rage in Tokyo. Not surprising that Misoya was started in Chiba, which is where I had a great bowl of ramen at Tonikaku, on my last trip.

Washi calls most ramen he has here generally as “California Ramen”. This means an assari (light), clean, broth. Most ramen broths you find in the Bay Area are definitely light and seemingly “healthy”, California-esque. Don’t get me wrong, I like an assari, salt-based broth, but I have to say that my go-to has always been miso.

Misoya is located right across from Orenchi, which is always packed for some reason. Skip the line and just walk across the street! I am happy to have found a great miso ramen, even if I have to drive 45 minutes for it.

I’ll be writing about noodles all month! All year! Forever! Comment below if you have a noodle spot you love. And thank you for supporting Umamimart all these years!

*Nahoko Morimoto is a Tokyo-based photographer. Her work has been featured in Brutus and Vogue Japan.

I’ve been obsessed with making this dish for a few months now — it is really satisfying when you are craving noodles, and so ridiculously easy to make. You can usually find nabeyaki udon on the menus at Japanese restaurants, for $12+. This is so easy to make at home, and cheap!

INGREDIENTS
1 pack of frozen udon noodles (if you only have the hard kind, that is fine too)
A few pieces of fishcake (I use chikuwa here)
A type of green (bok choy, napa cabbage, spinach)
Some green onions
Udon/Soba soup base

Optional: Egg and mushrooms

METHOD

1. Fill pot with 3 cups of water:

One requirement for this dish is to have a heavy pot, be it a nabe-style clay pot, or cast iron. Le Creuset works fine.

2. Chop all ingredients

3. Once the water starts to boil, add about a tablespoon of the udon soup base, or homemade tsuyu, to the water. Add the fishcakes to get more dashi, and umami.

4. Optional step: In another pot, boil water and cook noodles seperately

This is a not-so-lazy step that I do because I find the starch element, that Anders had mentioned before in his bacon udon recipe , to be too much when the noodles are cooked in the same pot. But technically if you have frozen udon, you should just be able to put it in directly to the pot where you’re cooking everything else.

I found these frozen Sanuki-style noodles at the Korean market, for super duper cheap. $2.50 for five packs!

It’s not the best udon, but it works fine. We are in a recession, afterall.

5. Dump all the vegetables into your pot.

Let it all come to a simmer.

6. The stove should be on medium. Add noodles.

Again, you can pre-boil the noodles, or just add the frozen pack directly into the pot, at this point.

7. Add egg.

8. Cover the pot, with all the ingredients boiling.

9. After about three minutes, open the lid.

It’s done when the egg is cooked to your liking.

All in all, this took about 15 minutes, including prep.

Add grated daikon if you please, and a heap of green onions. If you have any ten-kasu (tempura flakes), sprinkle some over. Serve in little bowls.

This is the perfect dish to keep you and your family warm during the winter months.

As 2011 draws to a close, I am not thinking about the Mayans. Rather, I am trying to decide what I will be eating over the weekend. PRIORITIES, people!

I’ll be working on Saturday evening (apocalypse be damned!), but I’ll have all the accouterments ready to ring in the new year with Johnny and a bowl of toshikoshi soba as soon as I get home. With a bottle of bubbly of course!

Toshikoshi soba is always eaten on New Year’s Eve in Japan. Toshikoshi roughly means, “to kill off the year”, and so you can start the new year with a clean slate. “Why soba?”, I asked my mother. Hideko thinks the soba represents living hosoku, nagaku (slenderly, long). She hung up on me before I could ask any more questions regarding this matter of living “slenderly”.

I bought this fancy shin soba (new soba) in Nagano prefecture, when I was there in November. Nagano is well known for their soba. The notion of “new soba” is interesting — essentially, it is soba made of newly harvested buckwheat. Shin soba is quite a specialty in Japan, as the Japanese love anything “new”.

I figure December 31 will be a good time to break open the seal (erm, before it expires).

Yes, the strands of soba are slender and long.

It is a treat to have fresh soba, as I usually eat the hard stuff throughout the year. I’ll be making Yoko’s soba tsuyu (dipping sauce), and eating the soba cold. Traditionally, toshikoshi soba should be served warm, but I prefer mine cold. That’s how Hideko usually served it, anyhow. Although zaru soba (cold soba) in the winter time is pretty blasphemous.

Photo by Yoko Kumano

Happy new year, Martians!  Thanks for all your support in this last year. Umamimart will turn 5yo in 2012. Wow! I look forward to sharing more food adventures with you in the new year.

*Top photo by Yoko Kumano 

Aaaah, one of the things I really miss in London is a good bowl of ramen. Now that we’ve got a brilliant udon-ya for keeps, the next big thing will hopefully be ramen. Unlike in the States, we only have a couple of restaurants offering old school ramen which are alright. But considering there is a ramen boom sweeping across Japan, I’m just surprised it hasn’t hit London yet. I mean, I would have expected ramen to be more popular than udon outside Japan.

So I was over the moon to find out that Tsuru Sushi is running a series of monthly ramen events in preparation to them opening Tsuru Ramen. So I went and got some tickets for the first event for me, my sis and my brother-in-law, since we were always going on about ramen and would be checking it over with critical eyes. Plus it was my birthday and who doesn’t want to eat ramen on their birthday?

Tsuru Sushi serves general Japanese food and its three branches are situated close to and within the City of London, the financial district of London. Although I haven’t had their regular menu, I’ve heard good things about their katsu curry and sushi.

And check out the giant paper cranes or tsuru that are hanging from the ceiling. Nice idea for home.

This was the first food/pop-up event we’ve been to so we were really excited about it and wondering what kind of people came to these events. We were expecting a lot more Japanese people but there were only a few. But there were a lot of trendy people who seemed serious about noodles.

For this event, called Tsuru Ramen Ichiban, I ordered shoyu. The ramen would be the classic noodle with a soy or shoyu-based broth prepared from chicken, pork, fish and vegetable stock simmered for over 15 hours. An interesting point about the ramen is that it’s free of MSG. I’m not sure whether I’ve ever had ramen without MSG before…

While we waited for our ramen, we prepared ourselves with a welcoming pint of Asahi on tap which was cold and hit the spot.

And some house-made pork gyoza.

They are one of the bestsellers in this restaurant and I’m not surprised because they were juicy, full of flavour and perfectly cooked.

They were SO good that between the three of us, we scoffed FIVE plates. Oh yes. We go all out when it comes to food. My sister and I often used to complain when we lived in Japan that we never had enough gyoza with our ramen. One plate is never enough, right?

Then the other people in the restaurant began to get their bowls and we waited in anticipation until ours arrived.

It came with the usual accompaniments of chashu pork, marinated egg (or ajitsuke tamago) which was creamy and perfect, wakame (seaweed) instead of nori, menma (bamboo) and some negi (chopped spring onion) on top.

The noodles were standard ramen noodles and tasted fine. I’m not sure whether they make their own, although it didn’t seem like it. The chashu and the tamago were lovely and complimented the noodles. However, the shoyu broth was pretty heavy on the fish flavors, which isn’t particularly my favourite, but both my sister and brother-in-law really liked it. I think we were just happy to be slurping proper ramen in London.

Tsuru Ramen will be doing other pop up events with different broths from tonkotsu to spicy Tokyo to Hokkaido-style before going to Japan on a research trip to decide how and what they want their ramen to be. I hope they get to visit Nagoya and try out my favourite, the Taiwan ramen, a super spicy ramen made with lots of chilli, garlic and minced pork in a red hot soup, which apparently you can only get there.

We all really enjoyed the event and won’t mind going to more, and we will be looking forward to what kind of ramen-ya materialises. But as long as they keep their gyoza recipe as is, I’m happy.

Chicken noodle soup, whatever the reason maybe, is often eaten when we are sick. I have no idea why. I don’t think there’s any anti-cold medication in it, nor is it medically proven to cure illnesses whatsoever. I guess it’s simply the comfort of its flavor, clear soup, with healthy vegetables, along with the filling noodles.

I don’t like this soup. When I am sick, I would rather have udon noodles, which I guess is the Japanese comfort food. The other day, Nate had some belly issues, and he requested chicken noodle soup.

What I hate the most about chicken noodle soup is how the noodles gets so soggy, and it absorbs all the liquid, and becomes mushy soup-ish blob.

So I decided to deconstruct it to make the best chicken noodle soup.

For chicken, rub the breast meat with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast in a 375˚F oven for 20 minutes (even if the center is still pink, don’t worry since it will be boiled thoroughly at the end). Once the chicken cools down, cube it up, set aside.

For soup, cut onion, celery and carrots, sauté until translucent, add white wine (about a cup), cook the mixture down. I had leftover napa cabbage so I dumped it in the soup as well.

Then add enough chicken stock. I use store bought stock. People use the chicken for the soup that are used to make chicken stock as well, but I think it becomes tasteless, so I bought stock instead. Cook until vegetables are tender. You can add other herbs here, thyme, rosemary, bay leave, etc. Add salt and pepper.

10 minutes before serving, boil egg noodle (I use yolkless noodles) for about 8 minutes (package says 9, but I always like 1 minute less al dente).

3 minutes before serving, add chicken cubes in the soup.

Here is how you serve it:

First, lay noodle on a soup bowl.

Then add soup on top.

If you have leftover frozen wonton wrapper raviolis, you can bake them till crispy for additional texture.

This way, the noodles never get soggy!  This is more pasta dish than soup, but that’s ok.

It’s so easy to make, yet taste so gourmet. Since the chicken is roasted, it isn’t dry at all!

Next time you make chicken noodle soup, or any kind of noodle soup where you don’t want the noodles to get soggy, I recommend this method.

Enjoying the early winter so far? I know I am.

I’m a cave bear and enjoy spending the long Scandinavian winter evenings in my studio or couch, working, crafting or watching Daria. In fact, since it is so windy, wet and utterly, depressively dark, I feel less bad about not hanging out on the beach, not frolicking around in the sun or not jogging around the lakes that I live nearby. And I don’t miss summer and all its tedious focus on body, tan and skin deep waste of time.

And since this spring, when I was forced to change my diet, eat less takeaway and more homemade Japanese food, I spend more time in the kitchen. However, I haven’t turned into a zombie foodie who talks about artisan vinegar or wheat ban enforcements all the time. Yet.

I just like to cook healthy, eat leisurely, clean quickly and get on with other stuff. But it’s not a pain anymore, I actually truly enjoy it as long as it’s not a day-long effort.

Which is why I like Bacon Udon – a recipe I got from my Mile High Club friend. It’s another super easy dish you can throw together in 15 min or less if you’ve got snappy kitchen fingaz.

+++

BACON UDON
(2 peeps)

INGREDIENTS
4-5 slices of bacon
1/2 broccoli
3 spring onions
50g of mushrooms (can be left out)

Udon noodles, half a pack or more
1 tsp powdered dashi (Ajinomoto = MSG!)

Shichimi togarashi(Japanese 7-spice mixture)

Salt + pepper

QUICK RECIPE
1. Put some drips of sesame oil (or really any high temp durable oil) in a wok pan and heat up. Place the slices of bacon in the warm oil and let it sizzle real good.

2. Heat up a big pot of water and when it boils, throw in the udon noodles. Check the udon pack for specific instructions. I cook these for 8 minutes.

3. Rinse and chop the broccoli, spring onions and the musrooms while the wok and the pot are simmering.

4. When the bacon is well-done and crispy, remove from the pan and pour half of the remaining fat out of the pan (don’t pour fat in the sink! Save it in a jar for a rainy day). Put the chopped greens into the pan.

5. Stir fry the greens and chop the bacon. Add some salt, pepper and shichimi spice while frying.

6. Remove 1 deciliter (about 1/2 cup) of the boling hot water from the noodles and pour in some dashi. Stir and let it sit.

7. When the noodles are done, rinse them in cold water to clean out the starch.

8. Put everything back into the wok and heat up: noodles, dashi and bacon into the greens.

9. Serve when hot, steaming and full of bacon umami.

EASY & HEALTHY, no?

+++

Broccoli, spring onions, Danish bacon, mushrooms and udon noodles.

Udon!

Heat some oil in a pan. I like this sesame oil.

And place the bacon — let sizzle.

I eat so much spring onion. I wonder if you can have too much?

Chopped broccoli (super healthy)

Oyster mushrooms. I also use these in miso soup, they’re very soft yet fleshy.

3. Place the noodles into boiling water.

Not entirely done yet, hold on…

Looks good now — very crispy but not black and overdone.

Chop it up!

Put all the chopped vegetables in the bacon — juicy wok oil fat and stir fry.

And the bacon.

Shichimi togarashi - a Japanese spice mix perfect for a dish like this.

It’s red, beautiful and not too spicy.

Remove 1 deciliter (about 1/2 cup) of the boiling water.

Pour in some powdered dashi (about 1 tsp) and stir it up in the boling cup.

Or, you could be like Yoko, not be lazy, and make your own dashi. Imagine that!

When the udon noodles are done, wash them well in cold water to remove starch and add them to the wok. Add the cup of dashi and fry!

And it will look like this: delicious sticky noodles in a bacon + broccoli embrace.

Serve in Japanese udon bowl, of course.

My mom loves it. She says it suits a glass of red perfectly. Chopsticks are too much fuzz though.

Bon appetit, noodle heads.

Now, I’ve always considered myself quite the noodle connoisseur, but I had never heard of the houtou noodle before. Originating in Yamanashi prefecture, Japan, the noodles are like thicker versions of udon, but flat, ribbon-like and looooong. It is served in a miso broth with many vegetables and meats, in a heavy steel pot. Nabeyaki style.

Naoko and her mom took me to a place in Yamanashi that specializes in houtou, called Kosaku.

There are many varieties of houtou, including venison. Game is widely served in this part of the country.

Plastic displays not for eating.

The interior of the restaurant was very homey, old-Japan style. Many people can sit around this table and admire the steel fish.

I didn’t really know what to expect, but one thing was certain: I better be hungry.

I ordered the oyster houtou, as it was proudly hand-written as a seasonal special on the wall.

However, as Yamanashi is a landlocked part of the country, I really should have gone for the meat variety. But the kabocha pumpkin was sweet and delicious.

Here is the actual noodle. So thick! So long!

The contents of this soup included sansai (“greens of the forest”), kabocha, shiitake, carrots, and even potatoes. Yamanashi’s winters are harsh, so I imagine that this is the ultimate heart-warming, comfort food in this region. Especially with such a hearty miso broth, this was certainly a meal for lumberjacks and burly hunters. Ha. I kid. Actually, according to the Wiki page, houtou was considered the poor-man’s food until restaurants such as Kosaku started popping up around town. I guess adding ingredients like oysters and gochujang is considered a montrosity to locals. Ain’t modern life grand??

I bet houtou would be great first thing in the morning, before heading out for school or work, getting ready for the icy cold day ahead.

Burrrrrr. I love California. Time for some ice cold somen!