ChrisLehrer

YES — skim off that fat. Once the stock is cool, the fat should freeze more or less solid, making it much easier to remove.

Just a passing note: they now have these IH-capable do-nabe (i.e. ones you can use on induction burners), and these have to be pre-seasoned before sale. The result is that a lot of the more expensive do-nabe you see in department stores are pre-seasoned, whether they are IH-capable or not. Personally, I’d say make okayu first regardless, just in case.

Second point: if you purchase a Chinese sandpot, you can use much the same method. First soak it in water, immersed, for 30 minutes or so. Dump out the water, wipe dry, and from there proceed as for a do-nabe. You should NOT see cracking with these pots.

A ham bone will impart a very distinctive flavor that I have never encountered in ramen. I’d try it with minimal reduction of the stock: a ham-bone stock is intense. But I think it should be good… if not quite like Japanese ramen!

As for dashi, the problem is the fish (katsuo flakes or niboshi or whatever), which makes the stock quite salty. Once there is significant salt in stock, you should not reduce it or you won’t pee for a week, if you know what I mean.

What you can do, however, is make kombu-dashi, but for this you must get kombu rather than using powdered or instant dashi. To make kombu dashi, there’s the easy way and the perfect way.

Easy way: Put a big piece (about 7cm square, give or take) of kombu into about 2L water and leave it overnight. If your kitchen is very hot, put it in the coolest place, but don’t panic — kombu is durable. In the morning, bring the water over medium heat to a bare simmer: bubbles should be just barely forming around the edge. Cool the dashi with the kombu in it.

Hard way: Put a big piece of kombu in the water, and bring it to 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees C). Hold it at this temperature, as precisely as you can, for an hour. Remove and discard the kombu, then cool the dashi.

If you’re going to make regular stock (chicken, pork, whatever) with this kombu dashi, it must be quite cold before you begin, or you will get cloudy stock. The best way is to cool the dashi at room temperature, uncovered, and when it’s room temperature put it in the fridge, covered or uncovered as you like, until it’s cold. Then use it to make stock. If your kitchen is hot, your first step is to fill two or three 1L strong freezer bags of water and freeze them solid. Drop them into the hot stock and stir until the bags of ice are bags of water. This cools the stock very fast. If you put a pot of hot liquid into a refrigerator, there is a real danger that it will grow bacteria as it cools, and/or pick up unpleasant odors from other things in the refrigerator.

Using kombu dashi will give you a deeper, more complex flavor. Some ramen places do this, but not a whole lot, because (as you see) it’s a pain: you have to make stock twice, in effect.

One trick you might try, though. Soak the kombu overnight. Remove it and reserve. Put in all the chicken and whatnot, and then drop the kombu on top. Bring very slowly to the near-boil, as with regular stock, and when you’ve gotten to a bare simmer remove the kombu with tongs or chopsticks. Because you’re raising the temperature slowly, and have pre-soaked the kombu, you should get 90% of the umami flavor out of the kombu by this means, and you don’t have to disturb the stock much to remove it. (If you don’t remove it, it will get slimy and produce an unpleasant texture in your stock.)

Let us know how it goes, of course. I’m a stock crazy, and always interested in new experiments and attempts. I also like ramen, so inquiring minds want to know!

Please, whatever you do, don’t break down and eat in Porta, the underground shopping area by the station. I have eaten at 5 different restaurants there, for various reasons of convenience, and they were one and all AWFUL. Not cheap, either.

My suggestion is that you take the subway from the station to Karasuma-Oike, which will take about 8-10 minutes and cost 210 yen — within your “walking distance” time-range. Exit the northeast side of the intersection. Walk one block east, then two blocks north, and look for the trees on the left side of the street as you face north. Enter. This is Honke Owariya, which your hosts the Kyoto Foodies do not praise sufficiently — how could one praise it sufficiently? Order Kyo-yasai Ten Seiro, and get a big portion if you’re hungry or eat a lot. Total cost about 1500 yen, and will kick your fundament good and proper: if you don’t like it, you don’t like Japanese food. Alternatively, walk directly north from Karasuma-Oike a block, turn right and immediately left into the restaurant of Tori-Yasu, and eat their Oyako Donburi. But I really prefer Honke Owariya.

I understand, I think. The question is, as a woman alone, is there anything specific one ought to know about eating out, going out, being in places alone, etc.?

Yes.

1. Before you eat at a restaurant of any kind, at an ordinary meal-time, just look inside a bit — a quick glance through the window or a briefly-opened door will do it. Here are your questions: How thick is the smoke? Are there any women? If so, are they young, smoking, dressed “hot,” and with men?

If there’s minimal or no smoking, go ahead.

If there are middle-aged women, go ahead.

If there are women of any age sitting with one another, go ahead.

If the air is thick with smoke and the only women are young, smoking, dressed for “action,” and with men, give it a pass.

Not that anything will happen, probably, but the atmosphere is not going to be super-comfortable. This is a bar-restaurant aimed at men and/or women who (at the moment) want to appear a bit wild.

2. At lunchtime, restaurants divide into three groups: male, female, and mixed. Male means guys bolting ramen and running. Female means OLs (office ladies) or groups of non-working (at the moment, anyway) women having a fun lunch together. Mixed means a family restaurant. If you want good food, go for female: the salary men don’t care. If you’re starving, it doesn’t matter, but a family restaurant will probably be more comfortable. Every terrific lunch at a non-super-expensive place I have had here has been at a place where I am pretty much the only male customer.

3. The thing to watch out for is trains. If on a crowded long-distance train, there is probably a “ladies only” car. Use it. For some reason salary men on trains lose their marbles and grope women appallingly. It’s one of the most disgusting phenomena in Japan, actually, so don’t be on the receiving end. Outside of approximate rush hours, especially evening commutes out to the suburbs, it’s not likely to happen, but keep a wary eye out for guys in suits moving toward you in a creepy way. Rape is extremely unlikely, but I doubt very much that you want to be mauled around.

In general, I’d say this country is an excellent place for a woman to explore on her own. You might want to keep your question in mind as you travel, though, and see whether you spot some of the subtler ways in which discrimination occurs: quite interestingly different from home (wherever home is).

Okay, a couple of suggestions beyond what Miwa has posted.

1. If you want perfectly clear, light soup base, you need to cook slowly. Bring the pot to a near-boil, not a full rolling boil, and do so slowly: it should take about 45 minutes to come up to this heat. When it gets there, turn the heat down so low that you have to look closely to see motion below the surface. When you’ve finished cooking for 2 hours or so, strain coarsely (to remove chunks) and then very fine (to remove little bits of coagulated protein). Let cool to room temperature, and then refrigerate. When cold (12 hours or so later), remove any hard fat from the top. Now bring the stock to a rapid boil and reduce it by half. The result will be different, not necessarily superior, but this is something they talk about in passing in Tampopo.

2. I would definitely add pork bones to the stock: straight chicken isn’t going to get the flavor you’re looking for. Tonkotsu ramen is usually all pork, but not always.

3. Aku is coagulated protein, usually referred to in English as “scum.” It is bitter and must be removed. The easy way is to use an extremely fine-meshed flat skimmer.

4. After the first half hour, there will be very little scum rising, and any skimming will be removing fat. If you’re going to do the cool and chill thing, the fat will freeze solid in a refrigerator and can safely be ignored.

5. Another type of ramen stock is “milk stock,” of which there are two kinds that I know of: with and without sweet white miso. To make milk stock, you must use some fairly large pork bones with marrow, regardless of whether you use chicken. Use twice as much water. Skim all the scum as quickly as you can. Add the floating ingredients, and then bring the stock to a rapid boil — yes, a rapid boil. Put a lid on it. Now wait 1 hour, checking occasionally to be sure that the water level hasn’t dropped below that of the ingredients, which is why you use the extra water. The liquid will be quite foggy, and should be reduced to the end-point, i.e. you should have removed about 3/4 of the liquid. Strain coarse, then medium, and only then fine — and you may have some trouble getting it through a fine strainer. If you chill it, it will turn white and nearly solid. This emulsifies the pork marrow fat into the stock so that it will not separate out: very bad for you, but a wonderfully intense flavor.

6. If meat is inexpensive, use meat as well as — or instead of — bones. A bone stock has a less rich flavor. I would suggest this especially with a miso ramen.

7. Be very sure you are using fresh egg noodles: not everything labeled fresh ramen noodles has egg, and without it the whole thing will taste very unlike ramen.

8. I would advise against the procedure in the recipe as far as adding the seasonings. Mix up the soy and whatnot liquids as their own mixture. Put a generous ladleful into a bowl, add just-cooked noodles, ladle on soup, and then garnish with roast pork, half a medium-boiled egg, and lots of thin-sliced negi or scallion. If you mix the seasoning with the broth in advance, I do not think it will freeze especially well, whereas the broth by itself should freeze admirably.

9. Do freeze the broth, but don’t keep it more than 3-4 months in a home freezer: a home freezer isn’t cold enough to prevent bacterial growth longer than that, and since you’re not freezing under a vacuum there will be oxidation as well.

(In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m sort of a soup wonk.)

Oh, one last thing. NEVER NEVER NEVER stir the stock while it is cooking! This will release a great deal more scum, much of which is lightly stuck to the ingredients in the pot. This is why you don’t want a rapid bubbling: the motion in the liquid releases yet more scum.

A small cautionary note about Kichisen. I have eaten dinner there, and lunch at Roan Kikunoi (the Kiyamachi location). Kichisen adds a 15% gratuity and a small table charge to your check, which Roan Kikunoi did not do. The meal tax is not included, either. If you’re paying 17,000 yen for dinner, per person, bear in mind that that will actually be about 22-23,000 yen per person, including a little inexpensive sake.

That said, the money is very well spent: the dinner was absolutely exquisite.

I do not know whether smoking is permitted at the bar, as nobody but us was at the small bar when we ate. Chef Tanigawa was charming, gracious, and welcoming. From comparing to pictures I have seen, it appears that he made a point of hanging some New York images instead of purist calligraphy simply because he knew that his guests would be foreigners. Everything was done to make us excited and delighted by the entire experience.

And, of course, he’s a big fan of Peko’s!