by Ivan Orkin
4 (15-centimeter/6-inch) hero rolls
8 (13-millimeter/ ½ -inch) slices PORK BELLY CHASHU, warmed through in its cooking liquid
8 slices good-quality cured ham
8 slices Swiss cheese
2 dill pickles, cut into thin rounds
PORK FAT
1 Make garlic mayo by mixing the roasted and raw garlic, garlic oil, and mayonnaise together in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
2 Slice open the rolls and slather both sides of the interior with an (un)healthy amount of garlic mayo. Layer on the warm chashu, ham, Swiss cheese, and pickles. Close the sandwiches and brush the tops generously with pork fat.
3 Heat a panini press or a skillet over medium-high heat until very hot. Place a sandwich in the press or skillet. If you’re using a skillet, weigh down the sandwiches with a brick wrapped in foil, or press down firmly on it with a large metal spatula.
4 Flip the sandwich when the first side is crisp and golden, about 3 minutes. Repeat on the second side. Toast the rest of the sandwiches, serving them hot as they come out of the pan.
ROASTED GARLIC AND GARLIC OIL
This garlic isn’t really roasted, just poached in oil until very soft. All I do is put garlic cloves in a pot, cover them with oil, and cook at a low temperature until they’re golden and soft—about 2 hours. This yields two very versatile products: roasted garlic puree and garlic oil. I use vegetable oil, which makes everything vegetarian, but this is a golden opportunity to substitute schmaltz or pork fat. Animal-based garlic fat will drive a person berserk with lust, perk up any dish, and make you a god among men. But I digress.
If you don’t have two hours to spare, throw a handful of garlic cloves into a small pot, cover with oil, and cook over medium heat just until the garlic starts to color. The garlic won’t be as soft, but you can chop it up, and the oil will still be fragrant.
Makes 250 grams (9 ounces) of garlic and 500 milliliters (2 cups) oil
500 milliliters (2 cups) vegetable oil (or a different fat of your choosing)
250 grams (9 ounces) peeled garlic cloves
1 Combine the oil and garlic in a small pot, and set over the lowest heat you can. If you have a heat diffuser, all the better. Keep the pot on the heat until the garlic cloves can be smashed easily—about 2 hours. Carefully monitor the heat; the oil should bubble lightly, but if it simmers, the garlic browns quickly and gets tough. Remove the pan from the heat for a minute if you sense it’s getting too hot.
2 Strain the garlic from the oil and reserve. Puree the cloves with a hand blender, a mortar and pestle, or a fork. Add a little oil to facilitate the process. Let both oil and puree cool to room temperature before storing in the fridge. Now you have fragrant garlic oil and sweet, aromatic garlic paste.
Variations on a Noodle
When Ivan Ramen first opened, shio ramen was the only thing on the menu. For me, shio ramen encapsulates everything that’s great about ramen—the purity of flavor, the attention to detail, the balance of salty and fatty and meaty. My shio ramen defined me as a ramen chef and put the restaurant on the map.
There are dozens of ramen variations—from shoyu (soy sauce) ramen, to miso ramen, to tonkotsu (ultra-rich pork broth), to mazemen (just a little soup), to tsukemen (noodles and separate dipping sauce). Of all the major types of Japanese food, ramen is the only one without a rigid set of regulations dictating its preparation. Soba, udon, sushi, kaiseki—these are all things that are meant to be made a certain way. To step outside the rules is heresy. But ramen didn’t grow from a grand, ancient tradition, so it allows for creativity and experimentation.
I worked in a soba shop for a month. The owner was nice and let me make the noodles, but I hated it. I hated the way you have to make soba. I hated the rigid stance I had to assume when I was kneading, and the specific way I had to touch the dough. (Learning classical French food can feel the same way.) I didn’t like the rules and the whole Zen aspect of it. But I did really like making noodles and working with dough.
As my shops grew in popularity and reputation, I felt more confident dabbling with other styles. Some of these experiments went awry. (I once made a Mexican taco mazemen, and to this day I maintain that it was fucking brilliant. I toasted guajillo chiles and blended them with pork fat for the soup, and topped it with a bean and spicy pork thing, shredded iceberg, tomatoes, chipotles, and negi. Everybody hated it. It was with a heavy heart that I shelved it.)
Other dishes were triumphant successes. Now at any given time, we have three or four ramen varieties on offer at both restaurants. The dishes at Ivan Ramen Plus are little bit more funky—cheese mazemen and the like. Most of the dishes are unique to the restaurant. In this section are some of our greatest hits—the dishes that I’m most proud of because they’re delicious and uniquely mine.
None of these are really easier or quicker alternatives to the shio ramen recipe. Ramen is meant to be eaten quickly, but the good stuff takes time to make. As with the shio ramen, you can pick and choose where you want to cut corners in the following recipes—whether it’s using store-bought noodles, substituting katsuobushi for the multiple types of dried fish I call for in the dashi, buying premade stock, or any of the other little shortcuts I offer. On the bright side, a lot of these recipes utilize some of the components of the shio ramen. If you’ve made extra, you’re halfway there.
Roasted Garlic Mazemen
WITH CHICKEN FAT AND CHASU
Mazemen are noodles served with just a little soup; they need to be mixed around in their sauce as they’re eaten. They’re a bona fide style of ramen, but I’d never heard of them before I came up with them through independent experimentation. During the first few months after opening Ivan Ramen, I was perpetually too busy to construct and eat a full bowl of ramen. But as bundle after bundle of noodles came out of the cooker, I yearned to enjoy the fleeting flavor of freshly cooked pasta. I started quickly mixing a few simple ingredients with noodles fresh out of the cooker, and wolfing them down.
This dish was the first mazemen that made it onto the menu: noodles, a little fat, a little soup, some shio tare, and a big dollop of garlic puree. It’s easy and super fast to make and eat (if you have all your ingredients lined up), and the texture of the noodles is better preserved than if they’re sitting in a steaming bowl of soup. This is a style I’ve come to love, and this dish is my go- to family meal.
Makes 1 serving
30 milliliters (2 tablespoons) SHIO TARE
10 milliliters (2 teaspoons) CHICKEN FAT
10 milliliters (2 teaspoons) garlic oil from ROASTED GARLIC AND GARLIC OIL
50 grams (2 ounces) roasted garlic from ROASTED GARLIC AND GARLIC OIL
5 grams (2 teaspoons) KATSUOBUSHI SALT
130 grams (4½ ounces) TOASTED RYE NOODLES or store-bought ramen noodles
100 milliliters (½ cup) DOUBLE SOUP, simmering
Thinly sliced green onions
1 (13-millimeter/ ½-inch) slice PORK BELLY CHASHU, warmed in its cooking liquid or in the noodle water as it comes to a simmer
Aonori (powdered seaweed), for garnish
1 Bring a large pot of unsalted water to a boil for the noodles.
2 In a ramen bowl, combine the shio tare, chicken fat, garlic oil, garlic puree, and katsuobushi salt. Set aside.
3 Add the noodles to the pot and cook until just al dente, about 50 seconds. In the meantime, add the hot soup to the ramen bowl and whisk everything thoroughly.
4 Once they’re cooked, drain the noodles thoroughly, shaking them well to get rid of as much water as you can, and drop them into the bowl.
5 Mound green onions on top, and casually arrange the piece of chashu nearby. Sprinkle aonori over everything and serve.
6 Give everything a good stir before eating.
Chile Mazemen
WITH EGGPLANT AND CHIPOTLE
This dish was born at the local yaoya, or greengrocer. It was a classic cook’s moment, where the ingredients created the dish. Not to sound too hippie, but I
was standing at the market, transfixed by a basket of perfect eggplants. I love eggplant, and had seen some places garnish a cold ramen dish with a slice of grilled or pickled eggplant, but I hadn’t ever thought to include it in my own ramen. Before I could reason myself out of it, I gathered up the eggplants and headed back to my kitchen.
I decided to toy around with my basic sofrito and replace the garlic, ginger, and apple with onions, eggplant, tomatoes, and chipotle chiles. The resulting sofrito is super creamy with incredible depth of flavor. With a little shoyu tare and the house soup, it became something really unique in Tokyo, and further evidence that letting Mother Nature dictate your menu is good practice.
Once again, please forgive the laundry list of items that you need to produce this dish. I generally find cookbooks that require a lot of special pantry items incredibly annoying, but the resulting dish is worth it, and you can always use components of this ramen in other dishes. Remember to take the chile sofrito out of the fridge in advance; you want it to come to room temperature since you’ll be serving it as a topping.
Makes 4 servings
400 milliliters (1½ cups) DOUBLE SOUP, simmering
40 milliliters (3 tablespoons) CHICKEN FAT
120 milliliters (½ cup) SHOYU-SOFRITO TARE
520 grams (18 ounces) TOASTED RYE NOODLES or store-bought ramen noodles
400 milliliters (1½ cups) DOUBLE SOUP, simmering
320 grams (1¼ cups) room-temperature CHILE SOFRITO
4 (13-millimeter/½-inch) slices PORK BELLY CHASHU, warmed in its cooking liquid or in the noodle water as it comes to a simmer
2 green onions, cut on the bias
Chipotle powder, for garnish
1 Bring a large pot of unsalted water to a boil for the noodles.
2 Set out 4 ramen bowls, and divide the chicken fat and shoyu-sofrito tare evenly among them.
3 Drop the noodles into the boiling water and cook until they are al dente, about 50 seconds.
4 About 10 seconds before the noodles are done, ladle the hot soup into the bowls, dividing it evenly. Drain the cooked noodles well, shaking them thoroughly to get rid of as much water as you can, and divide among the expectant bowls. Use a pair of chopsticks to mix the noodles with the soup and tare.
5 Divide the chile sofrito among the noodle mounds and lay a piece of chashu on top. Add a heap of green onions and sprinkle chipotle powder over the whole thing. Be sure to mix thoroughly as you eat.
SHOYU-SOFRITO TARE
Use a good quality soy sauce here, or a 50/50 blend of light and dark soy sauces. If you’ve got a bunch of Ivan Ramen sofrito lying around, this is where that hard work pays off.
Makes 1 liter (1 quart)
125 milliliters (½ cup) sake
125 milliliters (½ cup) mirin
350 milliliters (1½ cups) good-quality soy sauce
140 grams (¾ cup) SOFRITO
1 Combine the sake and mirin in a small saucepan, bring it up to a simmer over medium heat, and let the alcohol cook off for 3 minutes. Add the soy sauce and bring back to a simmer, then stir in the sofrito.
2 Turn off the heat and let cool to room temperature. Store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
CHILE SOFRITO
I love this recipe because it shows how we create new dishes at the restaurant while staying within the same basic structure. Just like the sofrito in our shio ramen, this chile sofrito forms a base upon which other flavors can be layered. This sofrito is very savory and a little bit spicy. It speaks to the way we should all cook—letting what’s available locally dictate what we make, rather than coming up with an idea and then going out of our way to make it happen.
Makes about 1 liter (1 quart)
500 milliliters (2 cups) vegetable oil
350 grams (12 ounces) onions, diced small
150 grams (5 ounces) eggplant, diced small
250 grams (9 ounces) tomatoes, diced small
9 grams (2½ teaspoons) chipotle powder
1 Combine the oil, onions, and eggplant in a large saucepan set over the lowest possible heat; if you have a heat diffuser, use it. Cook for 4 hours, stirring regularly. The oil should bubble lightly, not simmer; you want the vegetables to soften and melt but not really brown. After 4 hours, add the tomatoes and continue to cook for 1 more hour. Finally, add the chipotle powder and cook for 1 more hour. The oil will take on a deep-red hue, and the vegetables should be soft, almost to the point of falling apart.
2 Cool to room temperature and store, sealed, in the refrigerator. The sofrito should last at least a week, likely two.
Toasted Sesame and Spicy Chile Tsukemen
Toasted Sesame and Spicy Chile Tsukemen
WITH FAT RYE NOODLES
Tsukemen is a type of ramen modeled after its more illustrious cousin, soba (buck wheat noodles). Soba is the most Japanese of Japanese noodles, and it’s most commonly served cold with a side of soy-flavored dashi (also cold). Tsukemen is different from soba in that, while the noodles are cold, the broth is hot. Since the broth is meant to be consumed as a dipping sauce and not as a soup (although some places will add a little hot soup to your dip at the end and encourage you to drink it), it’s much more pungent and intense than normal ramen broth. Tsukemen was invented by Kazuo Yamagishi, the owner of Taishoken, one of the more legendary ramen shops in Tokyo. In the last four or five years, tsukemen has taken Japan by storm—there are now shops that peddle tsukemen exclusively.
When I opened Ivan Ramen, I wasn’t a big fan of tsukemen, but I felt compelled to accommodate its popularity. But my tsukemen never quite came together the way I wanted, and I took it off the menu after a few months. The following year, I went back to the drawing board. I realized that the real joy of tsukemen is that it highlights the noodle. Around the time I started trying again, my flour purveyor sent me a bag of rye flour. Rye is a really interesting flour—incredibly fragrant, and with much less gluten than wheat. Of course, it also immediately sent me back to my Jewish childhood, when my mother would buy a fresh loaf of rye bread every Friday for Shabbos.
At this point, I didn’t know anybody who used whole grain flours in ramen noodles. When I told people I wanted to use rye in my noodles, they warned me not to make a noodle with flecks of grain in it—“People will think it’s bugs or dirt.” But the rye gives the noodles a beautiful aroma and more integrity. Five years later, whole grain noodles are everywhere. I’m not suggesting I started the trend, I’m just saying …
Makes 4 servings
150 grams (1¼ cups) toasted sesame seeds
10 grams (1½ tablespoons) crushed red chile flakes
14 grams (2½ tablespoons) KATSUOBUSHI SALT
110 grams (4 ounces) roasted garlic from ROASTED GARLIC AND GARLIC OIL
60 milliliters (¼ cup) rice vinegar
45 grams (2 tablespoons) honey
225 milliliters (1 cup) SHOYU-SOFRITO TARE
40 milliliters (3 tablespoons) PORK FAT
560 milliliters (1½ cups) DOUBLE SOUP, simmering
800 grams (1¾ pounds) FAT RYE NOODLES, cooked and chilled
4 thick slices PORK BELLY CHASHU, warmed in its cooking liquid or in the noodle water as it comes to a simmer
Sliced green onions or negi (Japanese green onions), for garnish
4 HALF-COOKED EGGS, optional
1 Grind the sesame seeds and chile flakes in a mortar and pestle until they’re about half the size they started. (Alternatively, you can do this in a food processor, but pulse carefully or you’ll end up with butter.)
2 Mix the ground seeds and chile with the katsuobushi salt, pureed garlic, vinegar, honey, and shoyu-sofrito tare. Set out 4 cups or bowls and divide the mixture among them, then divvy up the pork fat.
3 Distribute the hot soup among the cups or bowls. Whisk each briefly to combine everything.
4 Pile the chilled noodles onto 4 separate plates and set a piece of warm chashu on top of each pile. Sprinkle with green onions. Nestle a halved half-cooked egg on the plate, if you�
��re using them.
5 To eat, dip some noodles into the soup and slurp them up.
FAT RYE NOODLES
This recipe is a bit difficult to translate to the home kitchen. Flour and water are different all over the country, and very different from what’s available in Japan. Ramen dough is odd—not quite wet and not quite dry—and doesn’t easily come together. Having said that, making your own noodles is rewarding, and you’ll only get better with practice. God knows my first fifty batches of noodles were made with little to no knowledge, and on a hand-cranked pasta machine. If I could do it, you certainly can.
Makes about 1 kilo (2 pounds)
70 grams (½ cup) rye flour
620 grams (4 cups) cake flour
300 grams (2 cups) high- gluten (14 to 15 percent protein) bread flour
10 grams (1½ teaspoons) kansui powder (see note, this page)
430 milliliters (1¾ cups) water
13 grams (1 tablespoon) salt
Cornstarch
1 In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the flours and set aside.
2 In a separate bowl, slowly stir the kansui into the water until it’s fully dissolved (this takes a little time). Then stir in the salt to dissolve.
3 Outfit your mixer with the dough hook attachment. With the mixer running on low speed, add the water in thirds to the flour mixture. After a few minutes, the dough should begin to come together. It will be a bit shaggy—more so than Italian pasta dough. If it isn’t coming together at all, add a spoonful of water. Once it comes together, increase the speed to medium-low and let the machine run for 10 minutes, until the dough forms a ball. Turn off the mixer and cover the dough with plastic wrap. Let stand for 30 minutes.
4 After 30 minutes, the dough should be significantly softer in texture and smoother in appearance. Set the dough ball on a cutting board, flatten it with the palm of your hand, then cut it into four 5-centimeter (2-inch) strips. Cover the dough strips with a damp kitchen towel.