When I was in Tokyo I had a couple of amazing bowls of Ramen, especially at places like Kagari in Ginza and Nagi on Golden Gai in Shinjuku. the thing that these two places have in common is their use of Niboshi dashi as their base. Niboshi dashi is a stock using dried sardines instead of katsuobushi, it gives the soup a distinctive fishy flavour (in a good way).
I've been obsessing over these bowls of Ramen since the moment I came back and I tried to find places in Vancouver and London where Niboshi dashi is used but to no luck, so... I decided to make it myself.
I made three stocks:
-A rich tonkotsu style broth, boiling pig's trotters for 10 hours. It produced a very tasty (even before seasoning) porky broth, very rich and lips smacking.
-A lighter chicken, spring onion and ginger broth. A much lighter and aromatic broth.
-And finally the Niboshi stock.
For the Niboshi, I first steeped dried sardines, kombu, shiitake and katstuobushi in cold water over night at room temp. The next day I heated up the whole thing to 80ºC and let it sit for a while, then passed it trough a chemex filter. I then added some more dried sardines to steep for a couple of hours in the hot dashi, I really wanted the fish taste to come through.
I made a tare with roasted chicken bones, garlic, ginger, soy, mirin and sake.(momofuku recipe)
I ajitsuke tamago. I marinated 6 mins eggs in Soy, sake, mirin, garlic and ginger.
The chashu pork was done traditionally in the oven.
It turned out pretty great. the three broth allowed me to customize the soup for my three guests, some like it more fishy than others, and my girlfriend is not into the tonkotsu style broth.
for me it was 1 part pork, 1 part fish, 1/3 part chicken.
I was greedy with the chashu, I made very thick slices and I have to get new bowls, these are cool, but they are high and not wide enough.
