Japanese Beef Noodle Soup

choi

J Kenji López-Alt, Simple, Satisfying and Easy to Cook; A Japanese beef noodle soup is an ideal weekend dinner. New York Times, Oct 26, 2022, at page D5 (D is Food section in Wednesdays).
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/ ... n-soup-for-now.html
https://dnyuz.com/2022/10/19/wha ... -family-for-dinner/

Note:
(a)
(i) J Kenji López-Alt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Kenji_López-Alt
(1979- ; "Born James Kenji Alt, López-Alt is the son of Harvard University geneticist and immunologist Frederick [W] Alt [1949- ;], and on his mother's side, the grandson of chemist Koji Nakanishi.[ López-Alt attended the Dalton School['a private, coeducational college preparatory school in Manhattan (K-12)] and graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002, where he majored in architecture")

I was a trained biologist -- immunologist, actually, So I heard and read Alt the father.
(ii) His own website says of himself: "People ask me about my name. My mother is Japanese and my father is American of German descent. My parents named me James Kenji Alt. I have always gone by Kenji. When my wife, Adriana López, and I got married, we both changed our last names to López-Alt. I am not latino [which is the same as Latino] in any way, though I do visit Colombia [his wife was born in Bogotá, capital of Columbia] at least once a year."
(iii) Elaine Ikoma Ko, Kenji Lopez-Alt: Seattle's Famous Japanese American Cooking Star — Part 1. Discover Nikkei, Oct 10, 2022.
http://www.discovernikkei.org/en ... -kenji-lopez-alt-1/

two consecutive paragraphs:

"My mother, Keiko Nakanishi, is Japanese, born in Nagoya and grew up in Nagoya and Tokyo. She came to the US when she was a teenager to finish junior college. She moved to California (yes, all by herself) and went to the Mills School of Design. My father, Frederick Alt, grew up in rural western Pennsylvania and his father was a steel worker.

"My parents met when he was in graduate school at Stanford University [probably Keiko did not attend] where my father wanted to study science and then later, became a geneticist in immunology. They were married in 1974. I think they were both kind of hippies. They’ll deny this, but I’ve seen the photos!

Ikoma is a Japanese surname represented by many kanji combination. I guess Elaine Ikoma Ko got "Ko" when she married one with that surname.
Japanese-English dictionary:
* nikkei 日系 【にっけい】 (n): "(1) (of) Japanese descent; (n) (2) (abbr) (See 日系人) non-Japanese of Japanese descent"
(iv) J Kenji López-Alt "is a stay-at-home dad at Seattle, Washington." from the Web.
(v) Adriana Lopez-Alt. Principal Security Engineer at Square, Seattle, Washington.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriana-lopez-alt-81903b78

(b) Namiko Chen
https://www.justonecookbook.com/about/
("Namiko Hirasawa Chen (Nami) * * * is the home cook, recipe developer, world traveler, and inspiration behind Just One Cookbook.  Nami was born and raised in Yokohama, Japan, and came to California as a foreign student when she was 20 years old. She loved studying geography and geology and worked at a digital map company where she met her Taiwanese-American husband")

The surname Hirasawa is 平沢.


(c) "THE FIRST TIME I had niku udon [肉うどん, meaning beef udon] was at a Japanese convenience store, now long closed, near Columbia University in the mid-1990s. * * * simmering beef, thin-sliced onions and scallions in a mixture of dashi, soy sauce, mirin and sugar for 10 to 15 minutes * * * the earliest beef dishes originated in her native Yokohama in the 1860s, some time after a countrywide ban on beef consumption was lifted. * * * Gyunabe [correct romanization: gyūnabe 牛鍋 (which is dated (out-of-date) form of sukiyaki 鋤焼 (which is same as what Chinese calls 火鍋] (literally 'beef pot'), a simple stew of sliced beef, onion and miso paste quickly evolved into more well-known dishes like sukiyaki ('spade grill,' so named because farmers used their spades as makeshift simmering pots while working in the fields) and gyudon [gyūdon 牛丼 (where 丼 means porcelain bowl)] ('beef rice bowl') * * * Niku Niku Udon [肉肉うどん] in Fukuoka [福岡(市)], which has served niku udon for more than 45 years. Niku Niku's version is made with chunks of beef cheek stewed in a soy-mirin mixture, but Mrs Chen says the dish's recent popularity as a home-cooked meal stems from the increasing availability of inexpensive kiriotoshi, thinly sliced beef trimmings."
(i) Japanese-English dictionary:
* The niku is the Chinese pronunciation of kanji 肉.
* The udon is thick Japanese wheat noodles.
* dashi  出汁
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashi
   ^ The ja.wikipedia.org says is 出汁 is " 「煮出汁」（にだしじる）の略."
* mirin  味醂 or みりん
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirin
* ontake kyō 御嶽教; 御岳教 【おんたけきょう】 (n): "Ontake-kyo (sect of Shinto)"
* gyōja 行者 【ぎょうじゃ】 (n): "ascetic; pilgrim; devotee"
("is a type of rice wine and a common ingredient in Japanese cooking. It is similar to sake but with a lower alcohol content and higher sugar content")
(ii) "the earliest beef dishes originated in her native Yokohama in the 1860s, some time after a countrywide ban on beef consumption was lifted"
(A) ISHI Hiroyuki, Human-Animal Ties: Japanese Takes in Both Life and Death. Nippon.com, Feb 27, 2018.
https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c03911/

four consecutive paragraphs:

"The Japanese and the Eating of Meat [which is sectional heading]

"Emperor Tenmu [天武天皇] (r[eign]. 673–686) was a devout Buddhist who in 675 banned the consumption of animal meat—including cattle, horses, dogs, chickens, and monkeys—launching a policy that continued in some form for nearly 1,200 years.

"By the late Edo period (1603–1868), enforcement of the ban on eating meat had become quite lax. In fact, the last shōgun [将軍 ], Tokugawa Yoshinobu [徳川 慶喜], was so fond of pork he had it specially transported from the Satsuma domain [薩摩藩] where the best pork was to be had. His taste for the meat was so well known he was given the nickname Ton'ichi-sama [豚一殿], with the ichi (one) coming from his branch of the Tokugawa family, the Hitotsubashi ('One Bridge') clan, and ton [Chinese pronunciation of kanji 豚] signifying the pig.

"The traditional ban on meat was lifted after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. In 1872, Emperor Meiji issued an edict formally rescinding the ban, and himself became an avid eater of meat. He is said to have explained to Ōkubo Toshimichi (1830–78), one of the early Meiji statesmen, that he needed to eat meat to socialize with foreigners rather than for nutrition.

"Surprisingly, the edict sparked a violent protest a month later when a small group of 10 ontake gyōja mountain ascetics dressed in white stormed the imperial palace. Four of the group were shot dead by security guards, one was seriously wounded, and the remaining five were arrested.

(iii)
(A) sukiyaki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukiyaki
(photos; section 4 Related dishes: "Shabu-shabu is similar, but whereas sukiyaki is considered sweeter, shabu-shabu is more savory. Shabu-shabu meat is even more thinly sliced and the individual slices of meat are cooked by dipping into simmering liquid at the table, while sukiyaki is cooked in a more casserole style [all ingredients, including thick meat, are put in little broth and cooked at the same time]")
(B) "The term is onomatopoeic, derived from the sound – 'swish swish' – emitted when the ingredients are stirred in the cooking pot.[2] The food is cooked piece by piece by the diner at the table. Shabu-shabu is generally more savory and less sweet than sukiyaki. * * * Shabu-shabu is most similar to the original Chinese version when compared to other Japanese hot-pot dishes (nabemono [鍋物]) such as sukiyaki." en.wipedia.org for "shabu-shabu."


(d) "finding ingredients like kiriotoshi outside Japan are the biggest barrier to entry. If you live near a well-stocked Japanese, Korean or Chinese supermarket, you can most likely find beef cuts (rib-eye or chuck are common) thinly sliced for hot pot, Korean barbecue or Japanese sukiyaki or shabu-shabu. * * * Though the meat for niku udon is often prepared with just negi (Japanese spring onions), I like to include a combination of scallions and Spanish or yellow onions * * * Making dashi is simple once you have katsuobushi [鰹節, where 鰹 is skipjack tuna] (shaved, dried bonito flakes) * * * There are also shortcuts you can take. Powdered dashi (like Hondashi [trademark of Ajinomoto 味の素(株式会社)]) makes an instant broth but sacrifices some flavor. Tea bag-style dashi kits are a better quick choice. They pack katsuobushi, kombu and often other ingredients, like dried baby sardines (niboshi) * * * I like to look for Sanuki udon * * * My final tip comes from those teenage memories of the chafing dish beef served at that convenience store""
(i) Japanese-English dictionary:
* kiriotoishi 切り落とし 【きりおとし】 (n): "leftover pieces (when slicing meat, fish, cake, etc.); shaved meat; end pieces"
   ^ In this food review, "shaved meat" is the right definition.
* niboshi 煮干; 煮干し 【にぼし】 (n): "(small crunchy) dried sardines"
   ^ hosu 干す is to dry, and hoshi 干し is its corres[pding noun, equivalent to gerund in English. The h in hoshi turns into boshi because 干し is not at the beginning (but rather in the middle or end) of a combined word.
(ii) The negi is Welsh onion, whose binomial nomenclature is  
Allium fistulosum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allium_fistulosum
(iii)
(A) Sanuki udon  讃岐うどん
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanuki_udon
(B) Sanuki, Kagawa  香川県 讃岐市