Amochinmi Onomichi Ramen 阿藻珍味の尾道ラ一メン

A girl friend of Mrs. A sent her a present recently.  It was two boxes of Onomichi ramen (尾道ラ一メン) manufactured by Amochinmi (阿藻珍味).  Inside each box were four packs of nama ramen (熟成生麵) and four packets of concentrated soup stock.  

                     

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Onomichi is a small scenic port city on the Seto Inland Sea side of Hiroshima Prefecture.  It has its own ramen style -- the noodles are straight, moderately skinny with smooth surface; the soup is shoyu (soy sauce) based, clear, made with stock of chicken and fish from the Inland Sea, and loaded with lard.

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Amochinmi’s nama ramen is made with flour and egg white, and processed with kansui (lye water) to be chewy and resilient.  It has not been dried by heat and can be kept in a cool dark place for up to forty days.  Its ramen soup contains pork extract in addition to chicken stock.  It is blended with a broth of katsuo (鰹節 dried bonito), saba (鯖節 dried mackerel), konbu (昆布kelp) and local hirako iwashi (平子鰯 young sardines) for depth and flavor.  The soup packet also contains the secret weapon of lard and small pieces of solid pork back fat (see the pictures below).

       

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I emptied the soup packet to 300 ml of boiling water and to melt the lard.  In a separate pot I cooked the loosened ramen in boiling water for a little over a minute.  Instead of the usual ramen toppings, I added just some nama wakame (塩蔵生わかめ a kind of raw seaweed packed with salt) to the assembled bowl of ramen.  Despite the simplicity, It tasted very good because of the lard and pork fat pieces (the little pieces floating in the soup in the picture).

      

Mr. and Mrs. A finished the box of ramen within days.

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Besides its ramen, Onomichi is well known to many Japanese as it has appeared in novels, such as Anya Koro (暗夜行路) by Shiga Naoya (志賀 直哉), as well as movies that include the famed Tokyo Story (東京物語) directed by the great Ozu Yasujiro (小津 安二郎). 

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Note: 1 Typical ramen toppings are

·         a couple of slices of chashu (叉焼 Japanese pork filet, not the Chinese BBQ pork)
·         menma (麺碼 seasoned fermented bamboo shoot)
·         a slice of kamaboko (蒲鉾 fish cake)
·         a sheet of nori (海苔 a kind of seaweed)
·         thin slices of negi (葱 Japanese scallion with long and thick white stem)
·         an ajitsuke tamago (半熟味付け卵 soft boiled egg marinated in a soy sauce mixture)

Note 2: Amochinmi has recently introduced a healthier version of Onomichi ramen with reduced amount of lard for customers who are conscious of calories intake.