Japan's Edo Era Noodles (1643)

It's finally here after numerous requests. Today is Tasting History's very first Japanese episode, and we are going all the way back to the early Edo period with a recipe for simmered noodles called Nyumen. So thank you to Vite Ramen for sponsoring this video as we explore the history and myths of Japanese noodles, this time on Tasting History. Today's recipe comes from the oldest surviving cookbook ever published in Japan, Ryori Monogatari from 1643, and a huge thank you to the people over at Sengoku Daimyo for the translation of this work as well as a lot of information about it and Japanese culture from the time. I will actually put a link to their website in the description if you want to go check it out yourself. The Ryori Monogatari was written in the early Edo period during a time that food was really changing in Japan. The work has recipes that are most definitely old Japan, but it also has recipes that have newer influences, newer being the 17th century, from Korea and the Portuguese. It's broken into 20 chapters which include a lot of meat dishes featuring things like bear and otter as well as a lot of vegetarian and mushroom dishes. There are recipes for sweet dishes and teas and sake as well as a lot of recipes for seafood including things like whale and shark and the infamous and poisonous fugu or puffer fish. Poison, poison, tasty fish. The one that nearly took out Homer Simpson. Fan-fugu-tastic. Then there are two chapters which I use to recreate today's dish. One is for broths and condiments and the other is called godan no bu which literally means later foods, and these dishes would have been served after the main dishes which were served with rice. Yumen. To start with cut short pieces of somen, boil, gently dry, and put it aside. Add dashi to tare miso, and when it is steaming put in the noodles. Add such things as young mustard greens, nebuka, and eggplant. It is also served with usu miso. Add black pepper, and sansho powder. So there are two ingredients in there that we actually have to make ourselves, and luckily Ryori Monogatari has recipes for both. Dashi and tare miso. Both have modern equivalents but the older versions are definitely simpler and so that's what we're going to be making today. First we will make tare miso. Now that is a simple ingredient of miso or fermented bean paste mixed with water and then simmered at a very low temperature until it is reduced. The trick is you cannot let this boil because it will get rid of a lot of the aromatic flavors of the miso so you have to keep it at a fairly low heat and just let it steam away. It can take a while but it is worth it. So for this what you'll need is four tablespoons or 60 grams of miso paste. Now you can use red, or white, or any other kind of miso that you want but you want to make sure that it doesn't already have dashi added which many do because we're going to be making dashi and it will just end up tasting fishy. So pure miso is what you want, and one cup or 250 milliliters of water. So add the miso to the water and stir. You'll probably have some clumps in there because it doesn't dissolve very well. There are ways to make it dissolve but we don't need to do that because we're going to be straining it later. Then set it over low heat and let it steam until it's reduced to about two-thirds of a cup again making sure it never boils. Once reduced strain it through a piece of cloth and let it cool. You can use cheesecloth for this but if you are going to put three or four layers on top of each other because it's not going to really be fine enough to get out all of the miso that you want to get out, and while that cools we can make our dashi which is a condiment or a broth really that dates all the way back to the 600s. Now by the end of the Edo period dashi had become very complicated to make, even more complicated than most recipes today but since we are cooking from the early Edo period our recipe is actually quite simple. So for that what you'll need is two cups or 40 grams of kombu, that's dried kelp. There's going to be some white powder on top of it. Keep that there, that's actually where most of the flavor comes from, and two cups or 12 grams of katsuobushi or bonito flakes. It's dried, fermented, and smoked bonito tuna and it does not smell great however it imparts this wonderful complex umami flavor to anything that it goes into so just deal with the smell you'll be happy that you did. Two quarts or two liters of water, and an optional two to four tablespoons of sake. So add the kombu to the water in a saucepan and let it sit for about 30 minutes so it can soften. Once soft place the saucepan onto the stove over medium heat and slowly bring to a simmer, but just before it comes to a full boil remove the kombu. You don't want to let it boil because it adds kind of a sliminess to it and that's not that's not pretty. Once it's removed go ahead and add the katsuobushi, then bring it to a boil for 30 seconds, then remove the pot from the heat and let it steep for about 10 minutes or until most of the flakes have fallen to the bottom of the pot. Then pour the dashi through a strainer into another pot. You can also strain this through a cloth just like we did before with the tare miso. It'll make it just a little bit clearer. Then add the sake and return it to the heat and bring to a simmer for about a minute, and then your dashi is ready. Next up the noodles which brings us to today's sponsor Bite Ramen. Bite Ramen is premium ramen because it's actually healthy. It's made with quinoa which is high in protein, high in fiber, and filled with micronutrients and vitamins. They use real quality ingredients including white miso imported from Japan. It also has about 50% less sodium than your average ramen that you would get at the store which means less bloating. I also find it very hard to make a healthy yet filling meal without spending a lot of time in the kitchen, but the nice thing about Bite Ramen is that it's done in like three minutes, but personally my favorite thing about Bite Ramen is that they are a small company that actually listens to their customers. So once you eat the ramen you can give your feedback and they actually take it and will change the recipe for future versions. I think they're on like version three right now and it's just always getting better. Also if you really want to elaborate on the meals their website has lots of recipes for how you can use them to make everything from gumbo So to give Bite Ramen a try just click the link in the description biteramen.com tastinghistory and use my affiliate code tastinghistory to get 10% off along with free spoons, free chopsticks, and free stickers which you should check out the stickers because they made me laugh, but of course in the 17th century Japan did not have ramen noodles so we're going to be using 100 grams somen noodles. So the Ryōri Monogatari gives us some instructions, vague, but some instructions on how to actually make certain noodles. Ones with yams, ones with arrowroot, barley, as well as soba noodles from buckwheat and udon noodles from wheat, but it doesn't give any instructions on how to make somen noodles even though it references them and that could be because the term somen may have just meant kind of a generic noodle at the time, but it could also be that it expected you to just go ahead and buy them because you could buy them and they are not easy to make so that's what I did. You'll also need any mixture of mustard greens or another leafy green, nebuka or green onion, and eggplant all cut up as well as some black pepper and sansho pepper ground into powder. So take your somen which should be pre-cut, we'll discuss that later, and put it into a pot of boiling water and boil for about two to three minutes. Then quickly strain it and rinse in cold water, then set them aside. You'll also want to cook the eggplant and greens just a bit by either steaming or boiling or grilling them because they're not actually going to get cooked when we put everything together, and before we put everything together let's talk a little bit about that history and myth of Japanese noodles. So Japan has lots of different types of noodles but there are four main ones. There's somen, udon, soba, and ramen but ramen is actually fairly new so ignore that one for today. The other three have rather convoluted histories partly because for different times in history in different parts of Japan their names are synonymous, or can mean different things and it gets confusing but for the most part their histories are similar, at least their older histories. For instance one thing that they all have in common is that either they all came from China in the 8th century or more likely one noodle came from China in the 8th century and spawned all of the other noodles. Now most of the stories involve some monk going to China and bringing back a noodle but there are so many different stories of different monks bringing back noodles that unless there was some huge exodus of noodle bearing monks coming to Japan I think that it was probably just one monk and everybody just kind of claimed him. Also the noodle that was brought back was probably more like a flat lasagna noodle than the kind of round noodle that we eat today. Even today in some parts of Japan udon noodles which are the thickest of the noodle can be served really thick like almost strips of dough. It's not common but it is still happening in parts of the country. Now most sources, not all, but most sources do agree that those original Chinese noodles were actually made of rice flour that was sometimes mixed with other flours, and it wasn't until the 12th and 13th century during the Kamakura period that we get full-on buckwheat and wheat noodles. It's also around this time that we start seeing depictions of noodles in art that look like modern day Japanese noodles. Now one of the earliest references to somen in particular, that's the one that we're making today, comes from 1343 and it likens it to sakube or muginawa which literally means wheat rope, and it was like a wheat rope. A late 13th century document describes making the dough thinner by stretching it with oil applied to its surface, and finally making it still thinner by hooking it on rods, and even today somen can reach lengths of 5 feet, 10 feet, even 20 feet long, and that's not very practical which is why our recipe calls for it to be cut before cooking, but there were ideas of leaving the noodles very long as kind of a wish for long life, but I figure a 10 foot noodle caught in your throat is going to choke you and kind of make that wish moot. Now there are rakugo routines which is a type of comedic monologue that tell of people draping these long noodles over their necks and around their ears, and some hanging them from the upstairs windows, and letting them dangle down then they would go downstairs and eat the noodle from the bottom up which I kind of wish I could do but my noodles are like that long so it's not gonna work. Anyway back in the 14th century when they first get mentioned they were being served at the imperial court during sumai no sechie, which was an early form of a sumo wrestling competition and banquet. I guess it'd be kind of like eating a big bowl of pasta before a marathon. Time to carbo load. Now these noodles also made an appearance at the Tanabata Matsuri or festival as a way to originally ward off diseases specifically malaria, and even today somen is still eaten during the festival usually held on July 7th, but today they're typically eaten cold with a dipping sauce. Very different from the recipe that we're following. Similar noodle eating traditions during festivals have grown up around soba and udon as well. Now all three noodles are eaten throughout the year, but there are particular festivals where they are significant. For soba it's the New Year's festival and it's been that way for centuries. See due to their being made all of buckwheat they break really, really easily. I'm actually going to put a link to a video where he's making these noodles completely from buckwheat. It's really, really like meditative and it's amazing to watch him do it. Truly an artist, but he talks about how even in Japan a lot of people add in non-buckwheat flours because it's so hard to deal with. Anyway they break so easily that that's supposed to signify the breaking from this year to last year. Anything bad that happened last year you break it off and leave it in the past. The noodles are also supposed to bring prosperity which has something to do with old goldsmiths using buckwheat powder to gather up gold dust. I don't know how that works. I tried to find out. I couldn't find anything so if there are any goldsmiths out there let me know how that works. How cool would it be if anyone out there is a goldsmith by the way? So Japanese noodles made of rice wheat and buckwheat came from China, but where did that rice wheat and buckwheat come from? Well to find that out we get to go to one of my favorite Japanese myths. The Nihon Shoki completed in the year 720 chronicles the early history of Japan, and there is a lot of early real history in it but then there's also a lot of myth, and that's my favorite part. It includes the Shinto myth of Tsukiyomi and Ukemochi. It starts when the sun goddess Amaterasu sends her brother Tsukiyomi to visit the deity Ukemochi which he was happy to do. Even better when he arrived she had laid out a feast for him on a hundred tables, but the fly in an otherwise unsullied ointment was where that food came from. Ukemochi turned her head toward the land and from her mouth spewed boiled rice. She faced the sea and again there came from her mouth fish and sea creatures. She faced the mountains and again there came from her mouth animals rough and soft of hair. A later version of this myth has the food coming from other holes on her so I guess it could be worse but the fact that I don't even like people drinking out of the same straw as I do because you know backwash and all I kind of understand why Tsukiyomi became flushed with anger and said filthy, nasty that thou shouldst dare to feed me with things disgorged from thy mouth. So he drew his sword and slew her which was very wrong of him to do but I kind of understand. Anyway Tsukiyomi goes back to his sister and tells her what happened and however he told it he came out looking like the bad guy so she yelled at him and turned him into the moon god so that her being the sun god would never have to look on him again. Nobody tell her that the sun and moon are very often in the sky together. Now with her brother handled Amaterasu sends a messenger made of clouds to Ukemochi to make sure that she's okay after being stabbed. She was not. She was dead but on the crown of her head there had been produced the ox and the horse. On the top of her forehead there had come millet. From her eyebrows came the silkworm. Within her eyes there had been produced panic grass. In her belly there had been produced rice and from her groin had sprung wheat and beans. I'm really going to try not to think about that while I eat these noodles which we should finish up right about now. So take the dashi and add the tare miso and warm it to just before simmering then add the noodles. Heat the noodles in the broth for about 30 seconds and then serve them in a bowl with the broth as well as the vegetables and a sprinkling of the ground black and sansho pepper. The recipe also says that you can serve it with a light miso but there's already quite a bit of miso in the broth so I'm not going to add any more. And here we are, nyumen or simmered noodles from 17th century Japan. Now I opened a whole bottle of sake for this and I'm not going to let it go to waste so I'm going to pour myself a little bit more. I don't think you're supposed to pour your own. I'm supposed to have somebody else do it but I'm alone so it's either me or the cats at the moment. Kanpai! These smell really good. They smell like, they smell like my trip to Japan. I mean it really brings a flood of memories back and that was a very long time ago. I really want to go back now that I'm an adult but this smell, it's one of those smells. I love it. Noodles that were served hot and still are you're supposed to slurp. That's the proper thing to do and that's a way to cool them off. Cold noodles you don't slurp. These are hot still but all right I'm gonna try to slurp them. I'm not very good at it. I usually just make a mess. I love that. I love that flavor. It's not fishy and it's not super miso flavored but it's just such a complex layer of flavoring. I think I probably should have put a little bit more of the pepper in there because I'm not getting that much of it. It's more of the miso but it's not, it's not overpowering. Sometimes I don't like miso soup because it's just too much. This isn't like that because we didn't add extra miso at the end. What's really wonderful though is the texture of these noodles. They're like silk. They're so smooth and it's because of how they're made. They actually put oil on them and that helps to keep them nice and silky soft. Wish they are. I do think these would actually be really good cold and I'm looking forward to I'm trying to let some of the juice here soak up into the eggplant. Let me try this eggplant. That flavor is so Japanese. That's the only way I can put it. You know so many Japanese dishes that I eat now have soy sauce and they and that ends up being kind of a dominant flavor. This doesn't have that so you're really just getting this other umami flavor without the saltiness that soy sauce is going to bring. Anyway this was a really fun dish to make. Kind of a lot of work. A lot of steps in this one but really fun to make and I hope to do some more Japanese dishes very soon and learn some more about Japanese history. So let me know what your favorite noodle dishes are either contemporary or from the far past like this one and make sure to follow me on Instagram Tasting History with Max Miller. Thank you again to Vite Ramen for sponsoring this video and I will see you next time on Tasting History. I'm gonna finish the sake. Don't judge me. I got a lot of noodles to go through.