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Emily Dorio
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Food has the magic to transform a person. In Sarah Gavigan’s case, it caused her to reinvent her life. In the process, her reinvention became part of our city’s food revolution.
When she returned to Nashville in 2010, after having lived and worked in Los Angeles for over 20 years, Gavigan felt displaced and adrift. She deeply missed its food culture, wherein ramen shops play a big role. For her, a bowl of ramen—its rich broth, unctuous meat, spiced oil, and springy noodles—offered more than sustenance. It soothed, comforted, and imparted a sense of well-being. For Gavigan, ramen equals magic.
“As a chef, I’ve come to understand the power of umami: It creates emotion,” she says. “A bowl of ramen makes you feel better.”
Seeking to recreate that happy place, she became otaku—that’s “obsessed” in Japanese—about learning everything she could around making her own umami-filled bowl. She bought bones from Porter Road Butcher, eggs and vegetables from the local farmers’ markets, and shipped in fresh noodles from famed Sun Noodle in Hawaii, to begin her process.
Word traveled quickly throughout Nashville’s burgeoning food community and those intrigued by this ramen obsession reached out for samples. Chef Erik Anderson, then of The Catbird Seat, was among the curious. In late summer 2012, he visited her and tasted her tonkotsu, a pork-based ramen. It was a game changer.
“He knew it was good and he knew I could make it better,” Gavigan says. “He mentored me. He gave me courage, and a push out of the nest.”
Over the next year and half, she launched Otaku South, a series of roving pop-up ramen shops and dinners, including a stunning one-night stint with chefs Anderson and Habiger at The Catbird Seat. That led to POP, her first bricks-and-mortar space, which she and her husband Brad opened in East Nashville. The biggest leap came in December 2015, when the Gavigans opened Otaku Ramen in the Gulch, done in the style of a 1970s Tokyo ramen shop. Indeed, Gavigan’s passion for ramen introduced Nashville to the art and magic of the slurp.
Now, to further her mission to share the magic, she’s written Ramen Otaku: Mastering Ramen at Home.
“I want to show the home cook how to do things the right way,” she says. “Eight years ago, I didn’t have anything like this. I wish I had.”
In Japan, ramen is enshrouded in mystery. Those who learn the craft learn it by apprenticing in a ramen shop. A master passes on the particular, guarded secrets of his own shop to a pupil, never to be shared outside that realm.
“But here I am, demystifying. I’m the first to do this. If I were an Asian man,” she says with a laugh, “I’d be voted off the island.”
She’s structured the cookbook in a progressive fashion, with invaluable instructions on stock-making—the stock is the foundation of the ramen bowl—and tares, or sauces and seasonings, which add nuanced spark.
“But no noodles!” she exclaims. “That would entail a cookbook all its own.”
She’s mindful of the limits of the home kitchen, which often lacks the capacity to cook at a controlled temperature for up to 48 hours. Home cooks will appreciate her simplified methods that don’t sacrifice quality. Her recipes include the use of instapots and pressure cookers, readily accessible, and manageable for anyone.
There are infinite possibilities, she notes, even with one or two basic stocks in your culinary arsenal. Her recipe for basic Japanese chicken stock is a revelation. It has beautiful clarity, and tastes as rich and pure as it looks.
“Once you make it the Japanese way, you’ll put aside your French method of using mirepoix and roasted bones,” she says. “Compared with the Japanese, it tastes burnt.”
Making ramen will stretch you, in a good way, Gavigan asserts. It can heal you, too; her own life change attests to that. And, it will teach you. She’s always learning about its properties, which she really does consider magical. Her cookbook shows you how to make that magic at home.
Sarah’s Tantan Sauce
TANTANMEN is a style of ramen with the flavor profiles of chili and sesame. I took that idea and made it into a sauce with a funky twist. I always have this sauce in my fridge. It's great on noodles (cold or hot), [as] a sandwich spread, or an everyday condiment (enter dipping of anything fried).
Ingredients:
- 1 cup white miso
- 1 cup dashi broth
- ½ cup gochujang (Korean chili paste)
- ¼ cup tahini
- ¼ cup Rayu (Japanese spicy sesame oil)
- ¼ cup sambal (Indonesian chili paste)
- Place all of the ingredients into a large bowl.
Directions:
- Using a whisk, mix well until the ingredients incorporate.
- Spoon into a lidded jar.
- Keeps indefinitely in the refrigerator. Makes 3 ½ cups
Reprinted from Ramen Otaku: Mastering Ramen at Home by arrangement with Avery, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2018, Sarah Gavigan with Ann Volkwein.