Has any singular food been made to look more great more often in anime than ramen? Naruto, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Ponyo, Ramen Akaneko, Food Wars!—the list of anime that are notable for having excellent looking ramen can go on, and on, and on. And even if we want to talk quantity over quality, I don’t know if numbers even go high enough to count the number of times I’ve seen cup ramen in anime. But before I start rambling about how we’ve surely all dreamed of going to Ramen Ichiraku and which anime ramen I most want to eat, my point here is that arguably no food is consistently more associated with anime than ramen. With this context (slash pre-emptive answer to the question, “Why is ANN reviewing a ramen cookbook that’s not associated with any particular anime?”) in mind, enter Kawaii Café Ramen by Amy Kimoto-Kahn: a cookbook that teaches you how to make ramen, as well as a number of accompanying side dishes to go with it.
As far as the ramen goes, these are far from instant. This book includes instructions for how to make the broth, the noodles, and a number of toppings that you can put in your ramen such as (but not limited to) poached eggs and charsiu (braised pork). Depending on how few or many items you want to prepare for your ramen, it has the potential to take anywhere from a few hours to all day. Either way, while you can definitely get more than a few servings out of them, these aren’t exactly recipes I’d readily recommend to someone trying to learn how to make something quick. And while you can use the information this book gives you to construct your own ramen based on what sounds good to you, it also includes several particular ramen recipes—some more on the traditional side of things, others not so much.
Kimoto-Kahn is a fourth-generation Japanese-American, whose ramen making style, in her own words, “is not 100 percent traditional, but with a big family to feed, I’ve needed to adopt a more practical approach for making delicious meals with ingredients that are accessible to me.” This is to say that if you’re looking for a totally strict, by-the-books, traditional Japanese ramen, this cookbook probably isn’t what you’re looking for. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not good, or that it lacks character. In particular, the adventurous eater will probably be excited to hear that there’s a number of unconventional ramen dishes in this book—so naturally, I had to try making one. And the one that sounded the best to me on paper was the book’s Ohayogozaimasu ramen: a ramen with a miso base, poached egg, bacon, enoki mushrooms, avocado, tomato, and more butter than I expected.
To be clear: there’s a decent variety of ramen recipes in this cookbook, both in terms of ramen that err more traditional, and others more unorthodox. The only big shortcoming in the recipe selection is that it definitely feels like vegetarians (much less vegans) were an afterthought. Most of the ramen in this cookbook contain a meat element. Meanwhile, the section containing veggie-centric ramen recipes is the shortest of the ramen chapters. And while this doesn’t apply to all of the veggie-centric ramen dishes, a number of them contain some manner of fish, chicken bouillon cubes, or chicken stock. In fairness: the veggie-centric ramen section isn’t billing itself as the vegetarian section. Even so, that doesn’t exactly negate how shortchanged vegetarians get by this book. Even if it was just amongst the veggie-centric ramen, it would’ve been really useful for this book to make some substitution suggestions for what vegetarians and vegans could use to make their own versions of these dishes, but alas, there’s no such thing in this book.
For the sake of getting a better perspective on the optimal skill level for making the recipes in this cookbook (and because, let’s be honest, this sounded like something that would be really fun with friends) I turned the ramen-making into a group activity with some friends. Said group of friends and I represent more or less a full range of culinary experience: beginner, intermediate, and excellent home chefs whose guacamole has become a staple at our gatherings because it’s so addictive and delicious (just typing this makes me wish I had a bowl right now). None of us, however, had any prior ramen-making experience that went beyond the realm of Maruchan.
Beyond our varied levels of culinary expertise, the only other thing you need to know about the group I did this in is that we had some people with allergies in our midst—specifically, seafood and apples. So naturally, the first question we wondered was what we were going to do substitution-wise; does the book make any suggestions? And as mentioned earlier, the answer to that is a big no—for apples, or otherwise. So we ended up having to use our own apple substitution, namely pears. Similarly, we substituted the miso broth that the recipe calls for with the shio base sans dashi granules and kombu. Luckily, both of these substitutions seemed to work out.
So bearing that in mind, we decided to try our hands at making the Ohayogozaimasu ramen with a cucumber salad on the side. And you can’t start making the ramen without, of course, the broth and the noodles. Or rather, just the broth—we ultimately decided against trying to make the noodles from scratch in the interest of time (the book estimates the noodles alone take 3 hours).
The book was mostly clear in its instructions, meaning that making the broth wasn’t anywhere near as difficult as I, at least, expected. Still, the key word is “mostly.” There were a few times we weren’t terribly sure about what the book was trying to say. This is an issue many other cookbooks are able to sidestep, or at least lessen, by way of directional pictures. But the only pictures in this book are (very cute) illustrations of finished products—and even then, not every recipe gets that. What I’m getting at is that there aren’t any visual guides, photographic or otherwise, which some might find makes the process a bit more difficult than it otherwise could be. Still, though, I don’t want to make it sound like this makes the process impossible. Most of the instructions are clear enough, and when in doubt, reading ahead at least a bit might make things clearer.
After you’ve prepared your broth and the noodles, it’s more or less all downhill from there—or at least it was for the Ohayogozaimasu ramen. Some ramen recipes in this book call for more toppings (and thus, more time spent preparing them), but this one didn’t require as much of that. Bacon and eggs notwithstanding, from there you just cut and prepare your enoki mushrooms, avocado, and tomato. I must say: I’ve never had either avocado or tomato in a bowl of ramen, so I was unsure how well they were going to work at all, let alone in a bowl of ramen made by a bunch of people who’ve never made ramen that didn’t involve the use of a microwave or kettle. But to my surprise, they were quite good—the tomato in particular. Overall, it was a delicious and fun bowl of ramen with as much personality as a bowl of soup can have that I’d be happy to make and eat again.
Although I love any reason to get to hang out with my friends, on a more practical level, I’m glad we did this as a group because the portion sizes in this book definitely seem to have been made with serving several people in mind (the recipe says that the shio broth recipe feeds 12, which seems about right). There were five of us, and we still had plenty of leftover broth, prime for second helpings and later reuse. I know I mentioned earlier that this isn’t the cookbook for someone just trying to make something fast, but if you don’t have a large group to feed, you’re sure to be left with plenty of leftovers to keep eating later.
As for the cucumber salad, this was one of the more simple side dishes in the book, but that didn’t make it any less delicious. Essentially, it’s sliced cucumbers in a sort of vinaigrette. It’s neither complicated nor time consuming to make, and it came out crispy and delicious. I’m usually not too big a fan of cucumbers, so I was surprised at how often I found myself reaching for more of them.
The number one thing this book taught me was that making homemade ramen isn’t nearly as difficult as I always assumed it would be. It is butter-ier though. In any case, as far as skill level goes, most of the ramen dishes in this book can be done by intermediate-level home cooks, although I think there’s a few toppings and side dishes that even beginners could handle by themselves. Still, as cool as I think that is, this book has some obvious places where it has room to improve, and for that reason I can’t find it in myself to give this book a higher score than a B-. But if those issues aren’t dealbreakers for you and you want to demystify the ramen-making process—and also, especially if you’re the adventurous type with your food and you’re open to trying some unusual ramen—this book is a good place to start your delicious journey.
