Paku Pakus

How to make homemade ramen noodles from scratch. These firm yellow Chinese style noodles are made with flour, kansui and water. If you’ve been following along for any length of time, you probably know I’ve been working on concocting the perfect bowl of ramen for quite some time. With the soup improving with each batch I made, I was starting to feel like the store-bought noodles were the weak link holding the entire bowl of ramen back. It was time to tackle the noodles, but given the decade of trial-and-error it took to get the soup right, I figured I was in for another dozen years of experimentation before I’d turn out a decent batch of noodles. Part of the problem is that there isn’t much information out there in English on making ramen noodes. Even in Japan, noodle making is a closely guarded secret and you don’t see ramen shops parading around their recipes on the web. From the information I was able to glean, I knew that the noodles are made with wheat flour, and get their

Chicken Karaage (Japanese Fried Chicken Karaage (唐揚げ), or Japanese fried chicken is made by marinating bite-size pieces of chicken in sake, soy sauce, ginger and garlic before coating them generously with potato starch. When fried, the starch turns into an ultra crispy shell encasing a flavorful juicy bite of chicken. Fried chicken, whether it’s Southern, Japanese, or Korean, is one of my favourite foods of all time. Put simply, it would be on the menu for my last meal. It’s one of those dishes that strikes the perfect balance between flavor, texture and richness. The only downside about a really great  fried chicken (calories aside), is that it takes about a day to make. Karaage (唐揚げ), pronounced kah-rah-ah-geh, literally means “Tang fried” (Tang as in the Chinese dynasty), and is an umbrella term for any chicken that’s coated in either potato starch or flour and fried. Like Gyoza and Ramen, Karaage is an example of Wafu-Chuka (Chinese-style Japanese) cuis

Tebasaki (Japanese Fried Chicken) These Nagoya-style Tebasaki (Japanese chicken wings) are crisp on the outside with a sweet and savory glaze that's that's redolent of garlic with a spicy black-pepper kick. Tebasaki(手羽先) literally translates to “wing tips” and refers to the cut of chicken as well as to a dish popular in izakayas around the city of Nagoya. Unlike the other Japanese fried chicken , Tebasaki is always made with bone-in chicken wings, has little to no breading, and is seasoned after it’s fried. Despite the absence of any significant crust, the wings are fried until the skin is rice cracker crisp before being dunked in a sweet and peppery soy sauce based glaze. Think of it as the Japanese cousin of Buffalo wings, and Korean fried chicken. So how does one go about making chicken so crispy without a batter or breading, and then maintain the crisp crunch after being drenched with a glaze? There are a few tricks to getting these restaurant-good without an indus

Chicken Chashu The chicken version of the classic ramen topping. Flavorful round slices of chashu made by rolling marinated chicken thighs around chicken tenders and steaming. This Chicken Chashu is rolled into a roulade making it easy to slice into beautiful rounds to top your favorite ramen recipe . It also make for a great side to a bowl of hot rice, or other Asian noodle soups . Chashu is the Japanese version of Chinese Char Siu . Unlike its grilled Chinese counterpart, the Japanese version is typically made by rolling pork belly into a log and braising it until tender. It’s then unbound and sliced before being used to garnish bowls of ramen. When served on hot rice, or over a bowl of steaming noodle soup, the fat in the pork melts, making the meat literally fall apart in your mouth. It’s a sublime experience that 20% of the world’s population can’t experience because of their religion. Recently I was working on creating a recipe for chicken ramen for those that can