"You call yourself a samurai, but what did your dad ever have? Three acres and two servants! Then the moron tried to fight the revolution and got killed! Your mother had to sell her body in a brothel and died of syphilis! Which do you take after? The fool or the whore?"
Book: Rurouni Kenshin by Nobuhiro Watsuki
Recipe: Basic Japanese Cooking by Jody Vassallo
Glazed Salmon Soba Noodle Soup
1 tbsp sunflower oil
4 salmon fillets with the skin still on
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 tbsp mirin
1/2 tbsp sugar
7 oz dried soba noodles
8 cups of soy ramen broth
1 3/4 oz enoki mushrooms
2 hard boiled eggs, peeled and halved
1 3/4 oz bok choy, separated into leaves
Heat the oil in a frying pan and cook the salmon over medium heat for 5-7 minutes, or until golden brown on both sides. Remove from the pan and keep warm. Add the soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar and stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil and cook over high heat until the sauce reduces by about half. Add the salmon back to the pan and cook until the fish is glazed and reaches the desired level of doneness.
Cook the noodles in a pan of boiling water until they are just tender (I followed the timing on the box). Rinse in cold water to keep the noodles from sticking. Drain them well and divide into 4 bowls.
Bring the ramen broth to a boil in another sauce pan. Ladle over the noodles and top with the salmon, mushrooms, and bok choy.
Here are some snags I've run into cooking Japanese in Harlem: I couldn't find enoki mushrooms, so I used baby portabella mushrooms. I couldn't find bok choy, so I used kale. I have no idea what soy ramen broth is, so I just used some vegetable bouillon. Because of all the changes, I boiled the vegetables in the water for a few minutes to soften them more.
In the end, it looked and tasted great, despite my substitutions.
About the book:
Apparently the Meiji era of Japan saw the last of the great Samurai rebellions before the modernization of the Japanese army. In Tokyo, there was a ban on wearing swords to prevent the surviving samurai from fomenting more dissent. Our Rurouni Kenshin was a hitokiri, one of the "manslayers" who were thought to be unkillable.
He fought on the side of the government to bring about a modern world. Currently, our friend Himura has discovered that the government he fought to put into place is corrupt, brutal, and immoral. He has become a rurouni, a traveling swordsman, who only carries a training sword. He will no longer fight for the government; only for those who cannot defend themselves. In Act Three of the book, those who cannot defend themselves includes one young thief who is touched by Himura's faith in his honor. The boy decides he will no longer be a thief and he becomes the first student in Kaoru's father's Dojo.
There are a few things about the artwork of this Manga that I'm not sure I like. One, whenever the characters do something silly, their eyes turn into spirals as though they are comical, but in the very next scene, they will be engaged in a serious fight. The second thing that bugs me is the way the fight scenes become so iconic as to be mostly incomprehensible. I guess it's meant to convey speed, but a whole page of panels will go by and all you see are flying lines and an occasional sword grip. At the end, there are fingers and ears on the ground and if it weren't for the Hollywood assumption that the "hero always wins," I'm not sure I'd even know who was winning until the end. It almost makes it pointless to read those scenes.
But it is a good, old-fashioned hero story. A bit predictable, a bit tender and sweet, a bit nauseating.
Special thanks, once again, to Ben Killen for his food photography.
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