Cold-Steeped Kombu Shio
A vegan bowl that is not an apology. Kombu steeped cold overnight, dried shiitake, roasted barley, and a salt tare with three kinds of salt in it.
- Price
- $18.00
- Section
- Ramen
- Served
- Nightly
- Heat
- Not hotSpice level 0 of 5 — Not hot.
Vegan — separate pot, separate ladle
Rausu kombu steeped cold for eighteen hours, then shiitake and roasted barley at 60°C for forty minutes
Most vegan ramen tastes of the thing that was left out. This one is built from the other direction: cold water, kombu, and eighteen hours of doing nothing at all.
Heat is the enemy of kombu. Above about 60°C it starts giving up alginates instead of glutamates, and you get a broth that is slick and faintly of the sea in a way nobody enjoys. So the kombu goes into cold water in the walk-in at close and comes out before service the next day, and it is never boiled. The shiitake and roasted barley go in after, held at 60°C for forty minutes, and that is the whole extraction.
Three salts
The tare is flaked sea salt for brightness, a little rock salt dissolved into kombu water for depth, and a pinch of smoked salt that does the job the pork does on the other bowls. Together they read as savoury rather than salty, which is the difference between this bowl working and this bowl being a cup of hot seawater.
The mushroom
King oyster, scored, confited in rapeseed oil with garlic and thyme for two hours, then seared cut-side down to order. It has the bite of chashu without pretending to be chashu, which is a line we are careful about.