Sohla Cooks Ninja Stealth Food from the 1400s | Ancient Recipes With Sohla

in this episode we're making the food that made it possible for the ninjas to be so stealthy it gives you energy you can eat it quietly and it doesn't cause bad breath or flatulence [Music] hey there i'm sola el whaley and this is ancient recipes with sola in each episode we take a dish you may recognize and attempt to recreate one of the oldest versions of it to ever exist so it's a little cooking a little history and a whole lot of me what's not to love [Music] we're all familiar with modern depictions of ninjas right stealthily flipping onto the scene in baggy pajamas but in reality ninjas were guerrilla fighters in feudal japan with origins dating as far back as the 12th century we're pulling our knowledge of ninjas from the ban sanchukai a series of scrolls written in 1676 by ninja fujibayashi about their culture and tactics we have to throw out a big historical caveat here there are very few written accounts of ninjas even these scrolls were written years after their height of power it makes sense i mean what society of secret spies would want anything written down so just know that anything about ninja culture nowadays is a blend of a bit of fact and a bit of legend [Music] ninjas sometimes called shinobi were said to have lived in japan's mountainous mia prefecture between about 1487 and 1603 in order to keep as stealthy and soft-footed as possible ninjas needed a travel light meaning they couldn't carry large quantities of food or supplies enter these small food balls to give them the nutrition they needed in the smallest possible package first there's the hirogon pills also known as power or energy balls these were packed with rice and ingredients high in sugar and were meant to provide energy for quick missions second there are suikatsu gun pills also known as thirst balls these were made of plums and either rye fungus or mint which would help quench your thirst and keep you hydrated and last but not least there's kikatsugan pills also known as hunger balls these were made of buckwheat flour and yams they were meant to tackle hunger and keep ninjas fed on longer missions okay so all of these ninja balls are made kind of the same way we're gonna mortar and pestle a bunch of ingredients you knead them together with water and roll them into balls and then we're gonna steam it [Music] we're gonna start with the hirogan these are the powerballs for quick energy so i'm gonna start by smashing [Music] there will be a lot of smashing so what we're gonna smash together for this one is asiatic ginger some purple yam lotus pips jove's tears rice and rock sugar and i'm gonna kind of do it in batches so we can make sure we get everything really nice and fine okay ooh smash [Music] so i'm gonna roll each one of these balls to be about 10 millimeters in width it's said that each ball is about 50 calories if you eat five to seven it'll keep you alive and 30 or more will keep you very well fed now that i got these a little bit cracked i'm gonna get in here with a few more things my job seed my yams and let's put some of that sugar and rice in here we're just gonna do a little bit at a time we want it to be really nice and fine so that this can all like come together into these little balls i can see how this would give you quick energy we've got lots of carbohydrates simple and complex so the book or series of scrolls this recipe is pulled from the ban sanchukai also has really detailed descriptions of their weapons and fighting techniques it breaks down how they would make and use weapons it also describes a secret way that they would ride horseback that would allow them to eat their hunger balls called the seven sons way okay so all of our ingredients are ground up and now i'm gonna add enough water to knead this together and then we're gonna roll our tiny balls so this was the ninja staple food on the go for quick operations its ingredients also allowed it to last for a really long time so i'm gonna start with a little bit of water i don't know how much we're gonna need and hopefully we can form some tiny tiny powerballs i actually think that there's enough water there maybe i went a little too far with the water gloves you know i just uh i went a little wild here whoops so you have to be a little bit careful about how much water you add i went a little bit crazy so we off camera we had to make a little bit more this is kind of the texture we're going for it's like uh a little bit more wet than wet sand so it holds together but you can you can ball it you know what i mean before it was just mud to help with the stickage i'm gonna add a little splash of water here to keep my hands nice and moist as we roll these tiny balls there's nothing more fun than rolling tiny balls right okay here we go so we want about 10 millimeters which is pretty small and this is 50 calories that's like it's a lot there's a lot going on in here itty-bitty so much time and energy just goes into making these pretty wild wouldn't it be better if i put this here whoa prop style in yeah all right i'm just gonna keep rolling texts dating back to the late 17th and 18th century suggest that ninjas avoided particularly pungent foods to avoid being sniffed out by enemies so anything with chives garlic and leeks were off the menu carrying stinky foods wasn't the only concern it is believed that ninjas were mindful as it pertains to ingredients when it comes to all kinds of body odors from bad breath to flatulence [Music] if i had to guess i think they would store these in one of those like fabric pouches you know the ones where you go you know because you want it to stay quiet and that you can just like have it you know in your ninja backpack and it won't rustle around right so now we're going to set these aside and move on to making our sweet katsu gun pills or thirst balls [Music] and for this one same deal smish smash roll it into balls three ingredients really simple we've got some rock sugar once again bloop and then fresh mint going in and some umaboshi plum this stuff is really great it's got like its own electrolyte situation so it's almost like ancient gatorade and it's a great hangover cure used even today and we're gonna smash this all together there are some pits in here so i'm gonna just like smash and get as much of that uh flesh off of here before i remove the pits it is said that if you have three of these pills you could avoid drinking water for 45 days but that might be a bit of an exaggeration humans can only go three days without drinking water it is true that the swigatsukan pills encourage saliva production so maybe it just makes you feel like you're not thirsty i really love you know learning about how these ancient warriors ate we did samurais we did gladiators now ninjas so let us know in the comments if there's any ancient warrior culture you want us to dig into to see what they ate i'm just trying to get the plum and the mint really smooth and grind that sugar down and it says to add very little water to bring it together but the plums we have are really nice and juicy so i don't know if we're gonna need any moisture but we'll see so after some smashing our umaboshi mixture does not look like it's going to come into balls the recipe doesn't say to use any rice but we feel like it's the only way to bring it together so we're gonna go for it here's some pounded rice that we're gonna add to this to help us bring it all together [Music] okay so i'm gonna blend this together and then i'm gonna add carefully add a little bit of water and time to bring it together i'm gonna be more careful this time now back then the ninjas would have added rye fungus to this you know that rye fungus we talked about that could have caused the salem witch trials so the hallucinations caused by the rye fungus are literally the same thing as lsd lysergic acid diplomide is extracted from rye fungus we'll add a link below if you missed it but it's a little bit crazy to think that the ninjas could have been tripping on lsd while out on their missions i'm going to transfer to a larger bowl so i have a little bit more room to groove for my adding of water but this was a great way to get all of that like sticky plum stuff i'm gonna use the dry flour to like help make sure no um boshi gets left behind [Music] a little bit of water just to bring it together carefully whoa don't go crazy okay [Music] it almost feels a little bit like it's gonna steam up and be a little bit like mochi but like maybe not so bouncy remember we made some mochi a while back it's actually pretty smooth and chewy on the inside it came out a lot better than i thought um and it was made by cooking the rice first and then pounding it so we're kind of doing the reverse pounding first and then steaming so i'm interested to see how this texture is okay that little bit of water did a lot so i think i just need another like teeny tiny splash because the umaboshi is so moist that gave us a lot of moisture whoa that might be it i'm just gonna go until it comes together yeah i think that's it it's kind of like a streusel you know when you're making a streusel you mix up your dry the flour the sugar the salt and then you add just enough butter so it holds into clumps it's kind of the same deal because it's gonna get a lot more hydration and cook through as it steams so it makes sense this is more just like to help bind it okay i just a little bit more now i'm like being a little too scared about it but we can't mess up guys well maybe that's it maybe that's it yeah a little bit of that wet sand vibe this is um it is kind of interesting these are like really this is like a lot of work not just the pounding but also forming the tiny balls so they really put a lot of thought into the food that they took with them on these missions it seems like it was an important thing because they would they would have spent a lot of time working on this i wonder what they did while they were doing it do you think as they roll tiny balls they just think about their enemies you know just meditate on who they're ready to getting ready to murder channel that energy and fear power balls okay we're ready to roll when i gather it all together we get clumpage whoa that's fun just like a little bit better than wet sand okay let's get rolling same kind of deal as our last powerballs we're gonna roll these into little balls and then they're gonna get steamed along with the others a little dunk in the water to help me get going once again we're going for that 10 millimeter size itty-bitty buddies oh boy that just fell apart these are uh a little tedious to roll i was so scared about making it too wet that i may have made it too dry but i think this is it this is really it this is the moment yeah look at that okay a little rinse they are quite fragile rolling them you know it's like you're trying to make a tiny ball out of sand okay whoa we got one we're getting somewhere so these used to have lsd in it maybe that's what made them think that they were not dying of thirst like how can you tell if 45 days have gone by if you're just high the whole time maybe it was like 45 minutes i don't know [Music] on its own is really really tart and it just makes you like pucker it's like a gushers but like fruit so i imagine that this is gonna be really like punchy really tart that kind of like tartness just makes your mouth water so i think that's what's going to happen here and then maybe the mint gives us like a fresh vibe it's interesting that umaboshi is had as like a hangover cure because i've had it in a lot of cocktails because it helps balance out that like alcohol you know smash a little umaboshi in there and it's like a umaboshi whiskey sour whoa that's good but i like that it could cause the hangover and i'll secure it [Music] now that i've rolled my suikatsu gun i'm gonna move on to the kikatsugan or hunger balls so i'm just gonna set this aside and we're gonna steam it all together later [Music] so now we're gonna smash together rice japanese yam jobs tears ginseng those are all familiar from our first powerball and in addition to that we're also going to have some licorice root and buckwheat flour and once again i'm just going to grind it all in batches so we can get it really nice and fine ninjas would also use food as a way to send secret messages to communicate a date they would send fish with the size and number of pieces to indicate the month and day if you were to commit arson you'd send a dried fish sweet cakes were a call for reinforcements bread rolls were a call for forces to attack an enemy from the rear and rice cakes meant that they needed provisions if that is true it is really cool and clever who would have thought military messages could be sent with food all right so i got my last batch of stuff finely ground and i'm gonna add it to this big bowl and we're gonna mix it together with a buckwheat flour and same kind of deal enough water to just bring it together and then we're gonna roll our little balls finger fork bring in together the dry and the dry this is already gonna be heartier because we got the flour and the rice and the yam so many things to like you know carbo-load gladiators they did that too interesting okay a little bit of water at a time this one feels really different because the other two were more about the rice holding it together since they've got this buckwheat flour it feels more like a dough i really like buckwheat flour it has a really nice nutty taste you see it it's what you use to make soba but nowadays you're seeing it more for like bread and stuff like that okay is this ballable whoa i think it is okay now i'm gonna rinse off my hands and set up my ball rolling station with the cooled water with the cold water once again to prevent it from sticking to my hands okay one more massage i lied i just want to make sure oh yeah everything's coming together the texture of this dough feels really different than the other two you want to take a look if this feels like more like a dough the other ones were more like wet sand this feels more like a stiff dough [Music] okay same deal i'm going for those little 10 millimeter sized balls this one feels a lot easier to roll because thanks to that buckwheat i imagine it's gonna be like heartier i think this one might be a little bit dense which makes sense because these are the hunger balls these are the ones you eat when you're like really hungry when you need like long-term sustenance not not not quick energy it does make sense the way they thought about it you know like the the ones the balls that are for quick energy it's more like white carbohydrates rice and sugar and here we have like a whole grain which is supposed to be like more slow release yeah the ninjas they know what they're talking about [Music] so in the recipe after they ball these up they actually soak these balls in sake for three years we don't have that kind of time so we're gonna steam these like the other two but maybe i'll take a few home throw it in some sake and check it out in three years that sounds really interesting i wonder if it's gonna like pickle somehow i don't know i wonder what the alcohol from the sake is gonna do to the like the carbohydrates and the rice and all that kind of interesting but okay so their thirst pills made them high and their hunger balls made them drunk maybe they just didn't feel that they were hungry and thirsty because they were just like kind of out of it all the time i don't know [Music] so now that we've made our powerball thirst ball and hunger ball we're gonna take them over to the seamer all right our ninja power thirst and hunger balls are ready to go i'm pretty excited to taste these because i think it's gonna be like nothing else i've ever had ninjas were said to have kept a close eye on their weight adhering to the commonly cited ironclad rule which stated that they couldn't weigh over 130 pounds or 60 kilos which was the standard weight of a bag of rice at the time and that makes sense if all you were eating were these teeny tiny balls i think that uh this could be a trend you know the tiny ball diet count out your tiny balls five to seven to stay alive i guess i want to start with the first one we made the powerballs that's these guys so this is the one that's supposed to give me quick energy it also has cinnamon which i can really smell and that's gonna be gotta be what's giving it this kind of brown tinge let's pop it in let's go for it hmm that's pretty much just candy super sweet it's a lot like mochi but with some texture you got a little bit of a bounce but a lot of grit from the ground rice i get a lot of sugar very very sweet this would definitely like one of these bouncing off the walls for sure 30 of these they said 30 of these would keep you alive 30 of these might kill me they're very very sweet it's like pure sugar but it is really tasty i really like the cinnamon i'm getting some of that ginseng earthiness it's tasty yeah that one's good thirst balls okay so these this is the umaboshi with the mint and the rice that we added to bind it and traditionally this would have had that fun rye fungus that kind of gets you on a trip totally different vibe here complete opposite the powerballs were like sweet and like candy these are really tart and salty salty is the first thing that hits my palate and you get a little bit of the mint but it's like that umaboshi salty funky sour thing is right at the forefront i don't know if this would quench my thirst though like it's kind of making me thirsty salty things just make me thirsty but they're both like really tasty surprisingly all right so now let me try the hunger balls this one has the buckwheat flour ginseng licorice root rice and some of that yam this color is coming from that buckwheat flour it already feels really dense it has more buckwheat flour than rice so i'm expecting this to be a little bit dense and maybe even a little chalky well let's see mm-hmm i don't like this one i've never had such an intense hit of ginseng it's like bitter clears out your nostrils whoa but i think that something about this bitter chalky texture it would make me not want to eat anymore i can see how this being like an appetite suppressant because i'm glad that was the last one because i feel like my palette is a little bit stripped from that ginseng very dense very heavy i can see how you would be full from like just a few of these that buckwheat flour it just like sits in your belly but you know i didn't realize how different these were all gonna be because it's all just like smash smushed together and steam but each ball is totally unique in texture and flavor which is super cool because they're just using one cooking technique to do such like a variety of things this was super interesting to taste one thing to remember though in the original recipe you're supposed to soak these in sake for three years so maybe that would have balanced out this like very intense acrid ginseng taste i think that maybe this is one of those things where cutting out that step could have really greatly affected the recipe i also think these are super super dense and i imagine soaking them in sake would soften them up maybe even like plump it up i'm really interested to try it now taking it all the way i think we ended up cutting out a really important step but next time let's soak some now and maybe three years from now we'll do this episode again who knows guys i think that the one that i might make again are the powerballs because it is it's like mochi it's really sweet chewy it's just a nice little candy treat and i like the cinnamon it really feels like a little holiday treat and they're they're kind of pretty they like listen a little bit from all that sugar i love mochi so yeah i'll probably continue eating these if you like this episode be sure to like and subscribe and if there's an ancient or vintage recipe you want to see me try out let us know in the comments and i'll see you next time you

Channel: HISTORY

Views: 285,198

Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, the history channel, documentary history channel, history documentary, documentary, documentaries, history channel documentaries, sohla, sohla el-waylly, ancient recipes, cooking shows, cooking, cooking history, historical cooking, culinary history, recipes, how to cook, Ninja, stealth food, 1400s food, Sohla ninja food, ninja food, Sohla 1400s, Sohla ninja, Hyourougan Pills, Suikatsugan Pills, Kikatsugan Pills, 1400

Id: F4UUlA1h0co

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 15 2022