Mentaiko Mazemen: Brothless Ramen With Spicy Cod Roe

Most people meet ramen as soup. Mazemen is the version without any, and once you understand why that is harder rather than easier, the dish makes more sense.

What Mazemen Is

Mazemen is brothless ramen. The name comes from mazeru, to mix, and that is the instruction: everything arrives in the bowl and you toss it together yourself.

With no soup, there is nowhere for a weak sauce to hide. In a bowl of ramen the broth carries the seasoning and the noodles ride along. Take the broth out and the sauce has to coat every strand and still taste like something by the last bite. It is less forgiving, not more.

What Mentaiko Is

Mentaiko is cod roe cured with chilli. It is closely associated with Fukuoka, where it arrived from Korea after the war and became the thing the city is known for, and it does a specific job in cooking: salt, gentle heat, and a deep savoury weight that is hard to get any other way.

It is also delicate. Cook mentaiko hard and it seizes up and goes grainy. It wants to be folded into something warm rather than heated directly, which is why it turns up so often in pasta and so rarely in a wok.

Where Ours Comes From

During his apprenticeship in Tokyo, Kiyo used to treat himself to mentaiko pasta when he could, which on an apprentice's wage was not often.

Mentai pasta is its own small genre in Japan, spaghetti with mentaiko, butter and cream, and it is one of the clearest examples of yoshoku cooking: a Western dish absorbed into Japanese kitchens and rebuilt around Japanese ingredients until it stops being borrowed.

Our version puts it back onto ramen noodles, which is where the whole idea started from anyway.

What Is In It

Ramen noodles tossed with butter, mentaiko, cream and soy, then finished with shredded nori and fresh shiso.

The butter and cream are not there to make it rich for the sake of it. They carry the roe, which is intensely salty on its own and needs fat to spread across the noodles instead of clumping. The nori adds a second, seaweedy layer of savouriness, and the shiso cuts through the whole thing with something green and sharp so the bowl does not sit heavy.

Thick, chewy noodles matter here too. A thin noodle cannot hold a sauce this rich.

What to Drink With It

Something crisp that resets your mouth between bites. A Japanese lager does it, and so does a shochu highball. Avoid anything sweet.

It is on the menu year round. Mix it properly before your first bite, all the way to the bottom of the bowl.