The Amazing Edible Seaweed

What classic vegetarian combination resembles seafood so strongly that it acts as a stand in? Would it help if the CC provided the clue that this is the one thing that the Japanese and the Welsh have in common?

The answer is  nori — "laver" in English but today, everyone just refers to it by its Japanese name.

The combination of nori and soy sauce is legendary. It rivals other classic combinations for sheer force because it ticks off all the right notes — salty, umami, seafood-y except that it is vegetarian.

Years ago, when talk of radioactive "dirty bombs" were all the rage in New York, people at the CC's dinner party were talking about stockpiling "iodine pills". The CC just scoffed, "Just come over. I'll cook with nori. That's got more iodine in a sheet than any pill." The CC stands by that statement. If you're gonna die, you might as well have a good time doing it.

It's also very "Japanese". The combination of nori and soy sauce over rice is one of the most-frequently requested items on bento boxes. Apparently, it's so "alien" that non-Japanese can't appreciate it. The first time the CC ordered it, the delivery boy claimed that the CC must've made a mistake and couldn't possibly have ordered this dish. After the CC told him to "fuck off!" in extraordinarily polite Japanese (= "does your head hurt?" = "are you stupid?"), he was charmed. Broad grins ensued as exemplified by the classic bonding moment of bumping fists. Such is the beauty of swearing in a foreign language as done in the context of a genuine appreciation of food.

Nori Tsukudani (海苔佃煮)

Ingredients

10 sheets nori

1 cup dashi

1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup sake
3 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp mirin

sesame seeds/sesame oil (only when serving)

Note 1: This is like a pickle or a preserve, You can make it fresh but it will last for a long time because of "osmotic pressure" and salt. The Japanese would just make a small batch and leave the rest in the fridge for later.

Note 2: This is seriously intense. A small portion goes a very long way. You'd place a small amount on top of a mound of white rice. It's a classic breakfast "power dish".

Note 3: The sesame or sesame oil are added at the last minute. You need one or the other for nutritional reasons. The CC prefers the seeds. They're easier to store.

Recipe

Tear the nori into rough pieces. It doesn't matter much. Just cut it into squares if that's faster.

Bring the dashi to a boil. Add the nori and let it cook down. When the water is almost gone, add the rest of the ingredients and continue to cook until the liquid is almost gone.

It will last for a long time in the fridge. (You can halve this recipe too.)

Nori Sumashijiru (海苔すまし汁)

Ingredients

4 sheets nori

3 cups ichiban dashi
soy sauce
mirin

Note 1: The "home-style" recipe often contains a scrambled egg. It's then "nori tamago sumashijiru".

Note 2: If you've forgotten ichiban dashi (literally: first dashi) is the stuff that is made first. It should be completely clear which is part of the charm. The crystal clear broth contrasting with the black seaweed.

Note 3:  Ideally, you should use clear soy sauce for this as well. It's a visual thing. The CC assumes nobody here has it so just go ahead and use the regular stuff. Call it "home cooking" rather than "fancy cooking" and be done with it.

Recipe

Oh, the recipe?

It's trivial.

Shred the nori. Heat the dashi. Mix and serve immediately.

Nori no Furikake (海苔の振り掛け)

Ingredients

4 sheets nori

1 tbsp sesame seeds
kosher salt

Note 1: This is rather painful and intense to do in a mortar and pestle but the coffee grinder makes mince out of it. You'll just have to do your best.

Note 2: The first time the CC made it for a friend, he was like, "This would be so amazing on popcorn." — "Yes, my good friend, yes, it would!"

Note 3: It's traditionally a sprinkle on "boring" white rice.

Recipe

Pound the nori and the salt in a mortar and pestle. This is just painful painful work. It takes forever.

When crushed "sufficiently", add the sesame seeds and pound some more.

It stores forever in a tightly sealed container and ironically, it's easier to make in large quantities than in small ones.

Hiyashi Tan-Tan ((冷やしたんたん)

One of the wondrous things about ramen is that it gives Japanese chefs full freedom to explore creativity outside the traditional norms of washoku. It allows them to escape the "wa" (和) of the washoku (和食) — the "Japanese-ness" of meal formats, rules, etc.

Every culture has some escape pod by which they can break the rules and are no longer subject to the dictates of "traditional culture". You need a release mechanism for creativity and rebellion.

Ramen is unambiguously Chinese and hence "foreign" however the Japanese have adapted it, refined it, and taken it to great heights. In the spirit of experimentation, it's not unusual to find "Thai Ramen" and "Indian Ramen" and "Italian Seafood Ramen", etc. in Tokyo. Any number of tricks from other cuisines are amenable as long as they ultimately get integrated into the ramen format.

The CC first ate the dish at a restaurant near his former workplace. It's a riff on a riff on a riff.

The owner of the restaurant is Burmese who ran away to Japan, lived there for a decade, and in spite of marrying Japanese, was unable to get a permanent visa. The couple opted for "life, liberty and happiness" and Japan's loss is New York's gain.

Tan-tan men is a variation on the classic Sichuanese dan-dan mian (担担面) — the spicy-tingly noodles with ground pork, pickled vegetables, and chili oil.

The Japanese version sticks to the idea broadly. It somehow got caught up with the very Sichuanese doubanjiang (辣豆瓣酱) possibly because its umami is very similar to miso.

So the ground pork is stir-fried with ginger, garlic, scallions and toban jan (as it's called in Japanese) until you have a loose dry mixture.

The ramen noodles are topped with an intense pork broth, the spicy ground pork mixture, slivered scallions, etc. This is a broad idea. The specifics depend on the creativity of each chef. You'd probably find slivered cucumbers or bean sprouts. It may be topped with rayu (chili oil.) It all depends.

Ramen, being served piping hot is cold weather food. Japan has blistering summers and a history of a lack of air-conditioning. The very hot weather dish, hiyashi chūka, featured here often is a response to that.

Hiyashi tan-tan is the bastard love child of hiyashi chūka and tan-tan men as conceived by a Burmese entrepreneur trained in Japan to satiate the ramen-crazy Yankees in a blistering New York summer.

What could be cooler than that?

There are some elegant subtle melodies inside it that make it sing.

Traditional ramen is frequently made with stock made from pork bones. It has a milky-white color.

The stock here is much lighter as befits a summer dish. Seafood-based or chicken-based which has been hit with a solid amount of sesame paste. Traditional Japanese sesame powder (gomashio) is made with roasted sesame seeds and has a brownish color. This one is clearly made with unroasted ones which gives the broth the same intense milky-white color. The CC strongly suspects that the restauranteur is just using tahini thus introducing a Middle-Eastern ingredient. It's New York, after all. Why not?

The advantage of cold-ingredients pre-prepared to a restaurant should be obvious but one of the complete non-negotiables is that the ramen has to be made fresh. You can dunk it in ice-water to cool it down but it must be freshly made.

Since the recipe clearly has diverged so far from its roots, such as they are, the CC feels absolutely no shame in diverging further. It would almost be regretful to stick to the format. The pork has been subbed by ground seafood (non-traditional) and bamboo shoots (absolutely traditional.) The cucumbers and scallions are retained in the summer heat.

It's the beauty of ramen. Within the broad tradition, as Cole Porter might have put it, "Anything goes".


Ingredients

(serves 2)

Dashi

2 pieces kombu
4 cups water
1/2 cup dried shrimp (or bonito flakes or both)

1/3 cup sesame seeds

Ground Pork

1/2" ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp toban jan
1 tbsp soy sauce
sugar (to balance)
peanut oil

1/2 cup ground pork (or ground seafood or ground chicken)
1/2 cup bamboo shoots

2 packages ramen

cucumber
carrots
scallions

sesame oil

Recipe

Note 1: Once the sesame paste is stirred into the cool broth, you cannot reheat it again. The broth and paste will separate which will destroy the texture. It must have its ice-cold white texture.

Note 2: Mound the pile of the ground pork mixture in the center. The toppings should be to the side. Yes, this is "only" aesthetics but it really goes a long way to emphasizing the cold-hot nature of the dish. The spicy pork with the ice-cold ingredients. It will all turn red-gold once you start slurping.

Note 3: If you have time, soak the sesame seeds in water. Don't worry too much about this step. You can always loosen the sesame paste with the dashi you make.

Note 4: The whole recipe is eminently scalable and can be made ahead of time. Except the ramen. They must be made fresh. You'll probably learn the hard way the science behind this step.

Note 5: It takes a while to chill all the ingredients especially the broth. Maybe the CC's fridge is crappy but it took more than 6 hours to get it down to the right temperature.

First, make the dashi. Heat up the kombu with the water. Just before the water boils, fish the kombu out and discard. If you don't do it, the broth will turn bitter. Add the dried shrimp/dried anchovies/bonito flakes and bring to a loose boil. Let it steep for at least 15 minutes. Pass the broth through a double layer of paper towels. You should be left with a clear golden broth.

Meanwhile, take the soaked sesame seeds and grind them to a fine paste in a mortar and pestle. Add some of the above dashi if you need to loosen the paste. Add the paste to the dashi and add salt. Set aside and let it chill.

Cut up the cucumber, carrots, scallions into long very thin batons of the same size and set aside to chill.

Make the ground pork mixture. Smash up the ginger and garlic in a mortar and pestle to a paste. Heat up some peanut oil in a skillet. When shimmering, add the ginger-garlic paste. Fry for a bit. Add the toban jan and fry for a little bit. Add the ground pork, soy sauce and sugar and let it cook until it is dry. You will probably need to add 2-3 tbsp of water to make sure it doesn't burn. Add the bamboo shoots towards the end. Take off the heat and cool. You can store this for a few days. Chill it.

When ready to serve, make the ramen. The ones the CC has require 2.5 minutes. Immediately dunk in an ice bath.

Top the ramen with the chilled dashi. Put the ground pork mixture in the center. The cut up scallions, carrots and cucumbers to the side.

(You can add sesame oil but that's gilding the lily.)

Slurp the intense icy awesomeness.

Japanese Five-Grain Rice (五穀米)

Every country has a healthier version of its staples in the modern world. This is a recipe that you are unlikely to find in a standard Japanese cookbook.

The number "five" (go - 五) has a special significance in Japanese cooking. Traditional Japanese cuisine — washoku (和食) — has long been characterized by the principles of  "five colors, five tastes, five ways, five senses, five outlooks".

It's really a shorthand for how to make meals more nutritious and serves as an organizing principle for daily meals. (It sounds hard but the CC assures you that it's shockingly easy in practice.)

The five grains mentioned obviously feature rice but there are other grains from the wheat family. They add both texture and nutrition.

The recipe below features -- white rice, brown rice, black rice, barley (mugi) and oats but in the modern day, you'll see everything from Job's tears (hato mugi) to farro to quinoa.

The general principles stand though. You want rice and you want a complementary set of grains for nutrition and texture.

The black rice turns everything purple and the dish is visually arresting. It also has a nutritionally complete set of amino acids and with the addition of the sesame provides a complete meal (even though that's not how it would be served.)

Lest this sound some like some "austere" dish from the land of peace, love and granola, the CC will tell you that you will be chowing this dish down faster than you can say "roast pork".

It's herushi (= healthy), it's visually appealing, it's delicious, it's nutritious, and it's addictive!

It's a modern-day classic of Japanese cooking.

Ingredients

1/2 cup white rice
1/4 cup brown rice
1/4 cup black rice
1/4 cup barley
1/4 cup rolled oats

2 1/2 cups dashi

1 tbsp sesame seeds
salt

Notes

[1] The proportions are 2:1:1:1:1 with the white rice being 2. That adds up to 6 units so you want about 10 units of the dashi. You can always add more water later.

[2] The various soaking times are different because the stuff is cooked together. If you don't follow this, the softer stuff will be mush while the harder grains have barely softened.

[3] The sesame seeds act as a white counterpoint to the purple. They are also necessary for nutritional reasons. The fat is needed for the absorption of the amino acids. The CC also sometimes sprinkles gomashio (= sesame and salt roasted and powdered into a fine white powder.)

[4] The purpose of letting the dish to sit for a few minutes afterwards is that the starches bind the dish together. It makes it easier to eat with chopsticks. If you're not a chopsticks person, ignore this point. Also, this dish is made for bento boxes. It's awesome at room temperature.

[5] The dish is a game of texture. It's chewy and each bite is different because of all the various grains. This is one of the reasons it's "addictive".

Recipe

Soak the black rice in a bowl for at least 4 hours.

Soak the brown rice in a bowl for at least 2 hours.

Soak the barley in a bowl for at least 2 hours.

Wash the white rice in copious water until it runs clear. Wash the oats too. Let them drain together in a colander. (This level of "soaking" is sufficient to get the right texture. You don't want them too soft.)

Drain the water from the other three components and mix together.

Combine the five grains, the dashi with some salt and bring it to a boil. Let it cook in an open pot till the liquid has been absorbed, roughly 10-12 minutes. Check that the grains are cooked. If not, add some water and let cook further. They should still have a chewy bite (= al dente).

Turn off the heat and let it sit for 4-5 minutes.

Meanwhile, lightly roast the sesame seeds in a skillet till they are golden. Set aside.

Sprinkle the rice with the sesame seeds and serve.

Hiyashi Chūka (冷やし中華)

Literally "Chilled Chinese", this is the summer dish in Japan that only shows up on menus when the summer heat turns oppressive. Restaurants love it, since except for the ramen, the dish consists only of assembly. All the components are pre-made and chilled down ahead of time.

It's exactly as rock-star as it sounds. Perfect cold dish for the insane summer heat just like this week here.

There is an ugly fact here that is going to upset most readers.

Precision of effect frequently requires substantial expenditure of means.

Each piece needs to be precisely made, cut up, and "chilled" and then the whole gets put together. It's not at all hard but it does go against that "effortless" summer dish mojo.

So why is the CC sabotaging his own readership with something that takes effort?

The answer is the sheer awesomeness of the dish with ingredients that can be stored for another day.

What is it?

It's cold noodles with a umami-laden gingery sweet-and-salty sauce and cold toppings. Unlike salads, the sauce sits at the bottom of the dish. You mix whatever ingredients you like for the "next slurp" and, let's face it, you need to slurp the ramen, people! The ingredients have been arranged at the top for visual interest not for "mixing". Each mixed-up slurp is going to be unique and umami-laden thanks to the personal mixing and the sauce.

The dish can only be described as "cold magic for a hot summer's day".

It is absolutely modern and in spite of its name it's no more "Chinese" than the CC is. It's Japanese through and through. The name is advertising. Every culture likes "foreign" stuff because exotic stuff sells and this dish fits the bill. It could never have existed before the age of refrigeration. The tastes are purely Japanese and only the noodles are "kinda sorta vaguely" Chinese. Don't let the name fool you.

(There's a general trend here. Names of dishes that contain a country/place rarely originate in the country/place named. For example, French Fries, Chinese Chop-Suey, Pad Thai, Baked Alaska, Hamburger, etc. This list is long!)

The dish follows the rules of washoku (和食) even though it is not really traditional. Five flavors; five colors; visual interest.

Typically, you would work with five ingredients plus the ramen but the CC had most of the stuff in his apartment; he was bored, and he is a little bit crazy (Really?!? Who'd think that?)

Let's enumerate the ingredients starting from the "6 o' clock position".

• Simmered lotus roots.
• Simmered shiitake mushrooms in savory sauce.
• Wakame.
• Eggs cooked "mollet".
• Pickled carrots with sesame.
• Crab-stick.
• (Egg).
• Crab-stick.
• Cucumber.

In the center we have cherry tomatoes, strips of nori and "Chinese chives" (nira - にら).

There is one deviation that makes it "modern modern" (to ape the modern way of talking.) Traditionally, the eggs would have been cooked in a Japanese-style omelette and cut into strips. The rest is pretty much conventional.


As pointed out the dish is a game of assembly. Each of the ingredients was cooked or cut up and chilled in the refrigerator. When the time came to serve the dish, the ramen was cooked and quickly chilled in ice-water and the dish assembled. It's also easiest if you just chill the plates in the freezer ahead of time. That way everything stays cold.

Everything serves two but you are welcome to make more and store it. Each cooked component stores really well and you can always quickly cut up the other stuff in a few minutes.

Also if you read the recipe carefully, the sequence in which to make things is clearly to make the dashi first, then simmer the crab sticks, then the lotus roots, then add the ingredients to make the mushrooms, and use the reduced sauce as a component in the dipping sauce. That way everything gets used up and no flavors are wasted.

This sort of complex sequencing is really the heart of many "hard" dishes. In order to not repeat things, you must sequence them out correctly up-front.

Vegetables

Ingredients

8 cherry tomatoes
1 small cucumber
Japanese-style pickled carrots (just use fresh if you don't have this)
4-5 Chinese chives

Recipe

Cut the tomatoes in half. The cucumber, carrot and chives must be cut into long thin strips. Set aside and chill.

Seaweed

Ingredients

1/2 tsp dried wakame
1 sheet nori

Recipe

In a small bowl add cold water to the dried wakame. The nori must be cut into fine strips. You can drain the wakame just before assembly.

Crab Sticks, Lotus Roots & Egg

Ingredients

2 cups dashi
4-5 crab-sticks
1 small lotus root.
1 egg

Recipe

The crab sticks are generally frozen. Bring the dashi to a boil and cook them for about 3 minutes. Lift out and set aside.

Add the lotus roots to the dashi and let them cook for about 4-5 minutes. Lift them out and set aside.

Cook the eggs mollet-style in a separate pot with some water. 7 minutes. Immediately plunge them into an ice bath. Peel when cooled and set aside. You can slice them right before serving.

Simmered Mushrooms

Ingredients

8 dried shiitake mushrooms.
1 cup dashi
4 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. brown sugar

Recipe

Combine the ingredients and bring to a boil. Let it cook uncovered for about 8 minutes until the shiitake mushrooms are cooked through. You can reduce the sauce and use it in the dipping sauce.

Dipping Sauce

Ingredients

1/3 cup dashi
2 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. black sugar
2 tbsp. sesame oil
1 tbsp. grated ginger

Recipe

The measurements are a little approximate. Mix everything together like a vinaigrette. You will need to taste it and make sure it has the right balance of sweet and salty tastes. The dashi will provide the intense umami.

Ramen

Ingredients

2 packages frozen ramen
2 tbsp. roasted sesame seeds

Recipe

NOTE: The frozen ramen available in the Japanese grocery store are the preferred ones. They are the ones made traditional-style with alkaline water. They will look pale yellow.

Roast the sesame seeds on a medium-hot skillet until they are golden and set aside.

Prepare an ice-bath. Then in a large pot, bring water to a boil and add the frozen ramen. Cook as per the instructions. The ones the CC had said 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Yes, this level of precision matters.

Immediately drain them and plunge them in the ice-bath to ensure that they stop cooking and chill down. Drain.

Now assemble everything. Ramen in the center. Pour the sauce over it. Add the toppings all around. and on top. Strew the sesame seeds all over. Serve at once.

Za'atar

This is always a pain-in-the-ass to explain because it's one of those complete linguistic fuckups.

It refers to a specific herb but also to a specific spice mixture. Most of the time it's the latter not the former but it still requires a ton of explanation every single time.

These linguistic faux-pas are not entertaining.

This one is the mixture.

It's terrific baked as a bread topping or even just for dipping with fresh pita bread.

Ingredients

2 tbsp. dried oregano (preferably Mexican oregano)
2 tbsp. sesame seeds (lightly toasted)
1 tbsp. crushed sumac.
1 tbsp. dried marjoram

salt

Recipe

Crush in a mortar and pestle and mix together.

India : Day 5 : Post 4 : Lodhi

By sheer coincidence, we landed in Delhi the night before Lohri.

Eating sesame and jaggery is customary, and naturally, we partook too.