Koufuku Bonkler Week 1 – Kitsune Udon

Inspired by new food porn anime Koufuku Graffiti, I’ve decided to try my hand at cooking a dish from each week’s episode. Then, I’m gonna eat the dish lewdly.

Not porn.

This week, I’ll be making Kitsune Udon, which Ryou makes for Kirin when she catches a cold. It’s udon noodles in a fairly sweet soy sauce-based broth with “aburage” (sweetened fried tofu pouches) on top. It’s called “Kitsune” Udon because kitsune (Japanese foxes with supernatural powers in this case) are said to love aburage. If you ever read the manga Aria (and you should), there’s an early chapter which talks about this a bit.

Kitsune Udon ala Koufuku Grafifiti

Kirin x Udon

(Notice the little bit of drool on Kirin’s mouth?)

For the most part, I’m going to be adapting my recipe from the very excellent YouTube cooking series: Cooking with Dog. The main difference is that I will be extremely lazy and use pre-made ingredients for the dashi stock and aburage tofu. This laziness makes this particular recipe incredibly easy to make, maybe about 30min of work where 10min is actual effort and the other 20min is waiting for things to boil/cook.

Why wouldn’t you cook with dog?

Ingredients (1 serving):

Dried udon noodles – 1 serving

(note: The dried udon noodles weren’t quite what I was expecting (too flat), were I to do it again, I’d get frozen udon as per the above video)

Sweetened Aburaage – 2 pouches

(I just bought pre-made sweetened aburaage from my local Chinese grocery. They’re meant for making inarizushi but work well for kitsune udon too. They’re already marinated and don’t require further preparation.)

Green Onion – 1 bunch

Broth:

Water – 2 cups

Hondashi (instant dashi stock crystals) – 1 tsp

Mirin – 1/2 tbsp

Salt – 1 tsp

Sugar – 1 tsp

Grated Ginger – 1 tsp

Optional toppings:

Dried seaweed (soak it in some water or dashi stock as you make the udon)

Egg

Shichimi pepper

Recipe:

We’ll need two pots for this recipe.

– Take one of these pots and start boiling water for the noodles later.

In the mean time, we’ll make the broth. It’s actually really easy, especially compared to the ridiculous complexity of something like ramen broth. Straight from Ryou’s mouth:

Easy-peasy.

Again, instead of making dashi stock from scratch (which is actually pretty easy to do but requires more ingredients and time), we’ll make lazy dashi stock using Hondashi, a brand of instant dashi stock crystals).

– Combine two cups of water with 1 tsp of Hondashi crystals. Mix thoroughly.

Dashi stock for the busy person

– Add this dashi stock to another pot and then add the following and mix thoroughly:

• Mirin – 1/2 tbsp
• Salt – 1 tsp
• Sugar – 1 tsp
• Grated Ginger – 1 tsp

The ginger isn’t a normal part of kitsune udon, but we’re going to add it because Ryou did for Kirin. Why?

Among other things.

Personally, I have a hard time using up ginger before it goes bad. So, I just keep it in the freezer and use a microplane to grate it whenever I need it (which is a lot in Chinese cooking).

Just grate that thing right in there

– Now turn the heat to high until the broth starts to bubble, then turn the heat off and cover. Do not let it boil.

I actually don’t know why exactly, but anything with miso or dashi you don’t let the stock go to a full boil, you always stop right before.

– In the first pot, whenever it goes to a full boil, add in the dried udon noodles. Let it cook for 10-12 minutes. 

At around 10 minutes, you’ll want to taste one of the noodles and make sure it’s soft yet chewy. Apparently in Japanese this is called koshi (Italian is al dente, Taiwanese is kyu as in QQ). You don’t want the noodles to be overcooked and therefore too soft.

– While the noodles are cooking, chop up a single bunch of green onion and open the aburage package and remove 2 pouches. 

Preparing the toppings

For this, we’re using pre-made sweetened aburage. Take 2 pouches and wash off the marinade and set aside.  The aburage and the green onions will be topping for the udon when we’re done.

– When the noodles are ready, remove from pot and place into a colander. Use this to strain excess water from the noodles. 

Straining the noodles

Doing this isn’t strictly necessary (can just put noodles straight into your bowl) but is nice to prevent watering-down of the stock.

– Before placing noodles into the bowl, warm the bowl with hot water.

Heating the bowl

I’ve never actually done this before until making this kitsune udon, but the video above did it. I’m assuming it’s to make the bowl nice and warm for whoever’s eating it. Kinda like a presentation thing? Also probably not strictly necessary (but it’s nice especially when it’s cold out).

– Place the udon noodles in the bowl and pour the broth over it. Top with aburage and chopped green onions.

Finished!

…and that’s it! Pretty easy right? Now go off and try this for yourself and then eat it as lewdly as possible.