Feral Cooks

Good food shouldn't be tame

Hiyashi Chuka (Cold Ramen) 冷やし中華

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It’s nice to have a cool meal that’s easy to make in the heat of the summer, and hiyashi chuka is just that: cold ramen with a cold sauce. Literally translated to “cold Chinese noodles,” it’s also sometimes referred to as Japanese cold ramen salad.

A Japanese restaurant reportedly developed it in 1937. Why? Most of Japan gets really hot and humid in the summer, causing sales of traditional ramen to drop during hot season. Enter, the cold ramen option, and sales begin to rise. Like just about everything, it’s all about the money.

There are a variety of toppings you can add to this dish. I’ll present some here, but if you look online, you can find a lot more options. For example, I used the traditional tomatoes and cucumbers but added non-traditional bacon, which goes well with the noodles and sauce. Other traditional options include egg, strips of ham, small shrimp or surimi. Foods with a variety of colors will deliver a nice presentation, such as green onions, strips of nori, beni shoga or even strips of yellow, red or green onions.

Some people bury the noodles under many toppings, and that’s up to individual tastes. I prefer the noodles and sauce to be the stars of the show, so I go lighter on the toppings. However you make it, I’m sure it will be delicious.

What you’ll need for the noodles

  • Per-serving: 4 oz dried ramen noodles or equivalent of fresh Asian wheat or ramen noodles, cooked and rinsed in cold water
  • Your chosen toppings, sliced and ready to use
  • A portion of the cold ramen sauce
  • Sesame seeds (optional topping)

What you’ll need for the sauce

  • 4T (0.25 cups) soy sauce
  • 3T unseasoned rice vinegar
  • 2T stock or broth (or substitute water)
  • 1.5T sugar
  • 1T water
  • 1T mirin or sake
  • 1t sesame oil (don’t omit, it’s key to the flavor)
  • 0.75t grated ginger
  • 0.5t ra-yu (Japanese hot oil) or another chili oil (optional)

What to do for the sauce

Mix all the ingredients in a small bowl, ensuring the sugar completely dissolves. Immediately put in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use it.

What to do for the noodles

Presuming you’ve cooked, drained and rinsed the noodles with cold water, add a serving of noodles to a shallow bowl or a small plate with edges. Arrange the toppings in sections over the noodles, then pour a portion of the sauce evenly across the noodles in a spiral motion. Sprinkle with sesame seeds, if using, and serve cold.

Gamja Salad (Korean Potato Salad)

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Korea, like Japan, has their own versions of potato salad, and they’re delicious. Today’s recipe is a different take on the mashed-style of gamja salad you may have had at Korean restaurants.

This version, besides not being mashed, uses sour cream as a dressing, to very good effect. It feels less heavy than a mayo version, and the bacon, English mustard and raw garlic give it a distinct flavor.

Gamja salad is easy to make, and it goes with anything traditional American potato salad does, including the stunningly delicious Korean meatloaf recipe I’ll be posting next week.

This recipe is based on one from the superb K Food cookbook.

What you’ll need

  • 2 lbs. new potatoes
  • 1T kosher salt
  • 4 slices bacon, finely chopped
  • 2 scallions, thinly sliced
  • 1 cup sour cream (in this case you could get away with using “lite” sour cream)
  • 1t English or another type of spicy mustard
  • A pinch of pepper
  • 2 small garlic cloves, minced

What to do

Prep the potatoes by cutting each in half, unless they’re really tiny. Bring a large saucepan of water to a rolling boil before adding the potatoes. Reduce the heat to a rapid simmer and cook for about 15 minutes. The potatoes are done when they can be easily pierced by a fork. Drain and rinse the cooked potatoes with cold water before letting them cool in a large bowl.

While the potatoes are cooking and cooling, cook the bacon bits in a frypan over medium heat until they’re slightly crispy and the fat is rendered. Remove from the heat when done and set aside.

Now for the final assembly: Add the bacon to the bowl of potatoes, including the rendered fat. If there’s a lot of fat, maybe include only half of it. Mix in the bacon and then add all the remaining ingredients thoroughly mixing them in, as well. Gamja salad is best served at room temperature.

Two Dumb Things: 1) Garlic & Maple Syrup Sauce and 2) Fake Sushi and Ikura/Tobiko over Rice

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Garlic & maple syrup sauce on the book that inspired it.

I was going through my Momofuku cookbook by David Chang, reacquainting myself with some of his unusual uses and treatments of common ingredients. So I got to thinking about two things we cook with at the Feral Cooks headquarters: garlic and maple syrup.

What if you braised garlic in maple syrup and then took an immersion blender to it? So I did that. The results are mixed, and mostly just meh. It was an easy experiment, though.

What I specifically did was braise 9 cloves of garlic in 0.5 cups of syrup for about 10 minutes. After letting the syrup cool to about 120 degrees, I took an immersion blender to the concoction to make a sweet garlic sauce.

What to use it for? Who knows. Maybe in a stir-fry with lots of bitter vegetables. Over ice cream?

The other dumb thing is fake sushi. Pretty easy to make. Just make some rice Krispie-style bars and top them with fruit gummies and different sizes of tapioca pearls. Ridiculous, but fun.