Black Garlic Mayu

Mayu is burnt garlic oil, and the word burnt is doing honest work. Garlic goes into cold sesame oil, over a low flame, and stays there for roughly fifty minutes while somebody stands over it. It goes gold, then bronze, then a brown you would send back in any other context, and then it goes black and the kitchen smells like an ashtray for ten minutes.

That is the window. Pull it a minute early and it is sweet and slightly medicinal. Pull it a minute late and it is a flat, bitter smear that ruins twenty litres of broth.

Why belly instead of shoulder

The shoulder chashu on the plain tonkotsu is lean enough to taste of pork. Against mayu it disappears. Belly holds its own, and the fat cap picks up the burnt-garlic edge and carries it into the second half of the bowl.