noodles

Basics: Cold soba noodles with dipping sauce

maki — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:06:51 +0200

I’ve updated this very popular article a little bit and pushed it up from the archives, since it is the season for cold noodles now. I’ll also have a followup recipe soon for the perfect accompaniment to zaru soba. Originally published in May 2007.

Most of Japan gets very hot and humid in the summer. To combat the heat, a number of dishes meant to be eaten cold have been developed. One of the main cold summer dishes is cold noodles.

Soba noodles, made of soba (buckwheat), are available all year round but are really popular when the heat turns unbearable. As with other cold noodles, they are prepared in a way that may seem strange if you’re used to pasta and other Western-style noodles. Unlike pasta, most Japanese noodles, including soba, are rinsed rather vigorously in cold running water. This not only cools them down but gets rid of excess starch, which adversely affects the flavor of the noodles. Many recipes written in English omit this critical rinsing step: you don’t just plunge it in cold water, as many directions incorrectly state, but you actively wash the noodles. Once you’ve done this once, you will definitely notice the difference. I’ve given detailed instructions for this procedure below.

Dipped into a properly made sauce or soba tsuyu, with plenty of spicy condiments or yakumi, there’s nothing more refreshing to eat on a hot summer evening.

Cold soba noodles with dipping sauce (Zarusoba)

Note: zaru means basket - so these are soba served in a basket.

To serve 4 people

For the sauce (soba tsuyu):

1/2 cup of kaeshi
1 1/2 to 3 cups of dashi stock or vegetarian dashi stock

Combine the two in a pan and bring up to a simmer. The less dashi you add the more intense the sauce will be, so add the dashi a little at a time, and start tasting after you’ve added about 1 1/2 cups: keep adding if it’s too strong. Simmer for 2-3 minutes, then let cool. You can do this a day ahead of time, and refrigerate the tsuyu.

Quick and easy version: Buy a bottle of concentrated tsuyu or mentsuyu, such as this one from Kikkoman, and thin out with water.

The noodles:

400g soba noodles, or about 100 grams per person (See note below about selecting soba noodles). Most soba comes in 100 or 200 gram packets.

Condiments, or yakumi:

Select at least one from:

Finely chopped green onions (this for me is essential)
Grated wasabi
Seven-flavor pepper (nanami tohgarashi = see this list for a description)
Toasted sesame seeds
Finely shredded green shiso leaves (another favorite for me, if it’s available)
Finely cut nori seaweed (cut with a pair of kitchen scissors, or just shred with your hands)
Grated fresh ginger
Finely julienned myouga (a kind of onion-like bulb: hard to find outside of Japan)
Finely grated yuzu peel

Cooking the soba noodles

Bring a large pot of water up to a boil. Unlike Italian pasta, you do not need to salt the water. Once it’s boiling, hold the noodles over the water and sprinkle them in strand by strand.

Once all the noodles are in, stir gently so that they are all immersed in the water.

Bring the water back up to a gentle boil, then lower the heat so that the water is just simmering. (This differs from the ‘rolling boil’ that’s recommended for pasta.) If the water threatens to boil over, add about 1/2 cup of cold water (but if you lower the heat to the gentle simmer, and have a big enough pot, this shouldn’t be necessary). Cook for about 7 to 8 minutes, or following the package directions (for thinner noodles 5 to 6 minutes may be enough. Test by eating a strand - it should be cooked through, not al dente, but not mushy either).

At this point, you may want to reserve some of the cooking water. This is called sobayu (そば湯), literally ‘hot soba water’, and many people like to add it to the remaining soba dipping sauce at the end of the meal to drink like soup!

Drain the noodles into a colander. Immediately return them to the pot and fill the pot with cold water. When you’re draining the hot water you may notice that it smells quite ‘floury’. This is what you want to get totally rid of.

If the noodles threaten to flood out over the pot, put the colander on the pot to hold the noodles down. Leave the water running for a while over the noodles.

Once the water and the noodle are cool, start to ‘wash’ the noodles. Take handfuls and gently swish and rub them in the water. Your goal is to wash off any trace of starchiness or gumminess on the noodles. When you’re done the water should run clear.

Make ready a flat sieve - a bamboo one is ideal and looks pretty. (You can use a nice looking colander instead, but flat sieves like this aren’t expensive - look in Asian markets.) Take a few strands of the noodles at a time.

Loop the strands onto the sieve to make a nice little bundle. This is one portion.

Allow for about 10-12 portions or so per person, if you’re using individual sieves. Arrange each bundle separately, to allow for easy pickup with chopsticks.

To serve the noodles: place a plate under the sieve or sieves to catch any drips. Put out small bowls filled with the condiments of your choice, which each diner can pick from. (Remember to put out small spoons and things if needed for the sesame seeds etc.)

The dipping containers can be anything that can hold about a cup or so of liquid. A rice bowl or a small soup bowl, or even a tumbler, can be used. Here I’ve used some small pudding molds that were a flea market find. (In Japan you can get special soba bowls or sobachoko.)

Fill each dipping bowl halfway with the cooled dipping sauce or soba tsuyu.

To eat, each person puts in the condiments of their choice, take a portion of the soba, and dips it in the sauce briefly - then, immediately eats the soba. Don’t let the noodle soak in the sauce or overload it with condiments, otherwise the delicate flavor of the soba will be overwhelmed.

At the end of the meal, you can add some of the reserve sobayu to the rest of your sauce (see above) to finish your meal.

Types of soba

The purest kind of soba noodle is made of 100% soba or buckwheat flour, plus water and salt. That’s really my favorite kind. There are other kinds of soba noodles though. Here I’ve used one made partly with konnyaku powder (which makes it quite sturdy, and supposedly lower-calorie).

Another popular kind of soba noodle has some green tea powder in it, which makes it a pleasant green in color. You don’t really taste the tea much though.

The best kind of soba noodle is freshly made (te-uchi), but this is a bit tricky…I haven’t actually mastered it yet. Maybe one day…

What to have with soba noodles

One of my favorite summer meals is cold soba, cold tofu or hiyayakko, some not-too-salty pickled cucumbers, and ice cold mugicha to drink. Another favorite soba accompaniment is tempura, which can be dipped in the same sauce - for some reason tempura (battered fritters of vegetables, squid, shrimp and so on) seems to fit particularly well. But tempura is a rather hot and sweaty thing to make, so I usually stick to the cold tofu.

Sweet onion and soba salad with fat-free umeboshi dressing

maki — Mon, 25 May 2009 10:48:38 +0200

We still haven’t found a house to buy (though we may getting close), and due to the way things work in France, we are probably going to be nomads for at least 4 more months even if we put in an offer for a place tomorrow. I’ve gotten more used to cooking in tiny holiday home kitchens, but I’m still not up to anything too complicated - or in other words anything that requires the use of more than 2 burners at a time.

Fortunately it’s now summer, which means lighter, less complicated meals anyway. This salad, which can be a meal on its own, a starter or a light side dish, features sweet salad onions (spring is the season for them, at least around these parts), sliced paper-thin and refreshed in ice cold water. The tart dressing features umeboshi (pickled plums) and uses no oil, so this is an almost fat-free, fairly low calorie dish, that’s vegan to boot.

Recipe: Sweet onion and soba salad with umeboshi dressing

For 4 starter sized portions or 2 main dish portions

For the dressing:

7 Tbs. (or 1/2 U.S. cup minus 1 Tbs.) vegan dashi, or the same amount of water with 1/2 tsp. of konbu seaweed based or (for non-vegetarians) bonito-based dashi stock granules
4 Tbs. freshly squeezed lemon juice
About 3-4 umeboshi, or enough to make 1 Tbs. ume paste
2 Tbs. soy sauce

For the salad:

1 200g (about 7oz) pack of soba noodles
1 large or 2 medium sweet onions (see notes)
4-5 green shiso leaves
romaine or cos lettuce leaves

To make the dressing:

Take the pits out of the umeboshi, and chop the pulp up finely. You should have about 1 tablespoon of ume pulp. (If you can find something called ‘ume paste’, which is pureed umeboshi, you can use that to save some time.)

Put all the ingredients into a jar and close the lid tightly. Shake vigorously to combine. Refrigerate until you are ready to use it. (It will keep for about 3 days in the refrigerator.)

To make the salad:

Slice the onion as thinly as you can manage. Put the slices in a bowl of ice water.
Bring a pot of water to the boil, and cook the soba noodles following the detailed instructions here. The rinsing stage is very important here, otherwise the soba noodles will become gummy!
Shred the lettuce leaves - you should have enough for about 1 cup per plate. (Alternatively you can just line the plates with whole leaves, but I prefer to shred it.)
Finely shred the shiso leaves.

To assemble:

Line each plate with the lettuce.
Mount the soba noodles on top.
Drain the onion slices and pat them dry with kitchen towels. Mound on top of the soba noodles. Top with a sprinkling of the shiso leaves.
Pour the dressing over the salad, making sure everyone has an equal amount of the umeboshi bits.
Each diner should then mix the salad thoroughly before eating.

Notes

You can make all the components in advance, and assemble the salad as you’re about to serve it.

While this is a vegan salad, the flavors go very well with grilled meat or sausages. For a lighter version, omit the soba and just make a salad of the onions and lettuce.

To make this a complete one-dish vegan meal, top it with tofu cubes, and optionally increase the soy sauce in the dressing to 3 tablespoons. For a fun and so not vegan variation, top with crispy bacon bits, and/or slices of poached chicken breast.

The onions

Around these parts sweet white onions are sold as ‘oignons doux’. You can see them at the markets in big bunches like these.

In the U.S. look for varieties like Vidalia, Walla Walla and Maui.

By putting them in ice water, you do get rid of much of the ‘oniony-ness’ that makes you somewhat pungent, but you may want to avoid eating this salad just before a job interview or blind date, to be on the safe side.

Toshikoshi Soba or Year-End Soba: A bowl of hot soba noodles to end the year

maki — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:20:23 +0100

Revised and updated: This recipe for Toshikoshi Soba, or Year-End Soba, traditionally eaten in Japan on New Year's Eve, is one of the earliest recipes posted on Just Hungry. I've expanded the directions so that you can use various methods for making the soup. Originally posted December 30, 2003.

Even though Christmas has become big business in Japan in recent years, the real holiday at this time of year is New Year's Day. The end of the old year, called 師走　(しわす　shiwasu), is a hectic time, as people are busily celebrating with friends and colleagues at 忘年会　(ぼうねんかい　bounenkai), "forget the year" parties - besides wrapping up things at work and getting ready to go home for the holidays.

New Year's Eve itself (大晦日　おおみそか　oh-misoka), however, is celebrated rather quietly by many people. There isn't the big urge to go to a party, to send off the old year with champagne and fireworks and tooting horns. In a way Japanese people do things the opposite of how people in the West celebrate Christmas or Hannukah vs. New Year's Eve and New Year's Day: Christmas is an excuse to have a party (it also happens to be a big 'date' day, when couples stay for the night at a luxury hotel for a romantic party of two). New Year's Eve, New Year's Day and the few days afterwards are when you spend time with family at home. On New Year's Eve, you'll stay home and reflect on the old year, watch some year-ending entertainment programs on TV, and perhaps go to the local temple at midnight, while hearing the 108 rings of the bell to "ring away" the evils of the old year.

The traditional evening meal to have while waiting to greet the new year is a bowl of hot soba noodles, called 年越し蕎麦 (としこしそば　toshikoshi soba), which roughly means "end the old year and enter the new year soba noodles". There is no one set recipe for this soba - they are probably as many varieties as there are households. At our house my mother simply prepared a straightforward bowl with hot soup, something on top such as a slice of kamaboko, a rather rubbery fishcake; perhaps some spinach or othe green leavy vegetable, a raw egg dropped on top just before serving. When a raw egg is used like this in a bowl of hot noodles, whether it's soba or udon, it's called 月見　(つきみ　tsukimi) - moon-watching.

Hot soba noodles can be enjoyed at any time of the year of course, but since I usually prefer cold soba, New Year's Eve is usually the only day I have this. It is quite good and comforting.

When I originally wrote this article 5 years ago, soba (buckwheat) noodles, were generally only available at Japanese grocery stores. How times have changed! Now you can buy them at many general supermarkets, health food stores and such. There are many different brands, at all price ranges. Look for one that has smooth, mostly unbroken (a few strands may break) noodles that are fairly thick. Avoid the very cheap brands; with soba you really do get what you pay for.

Recipe: Toshikoshi Soba: Year-End Soba Noodle Soup

Note that the toppings are not that important here. What is important is properly prepared noodles, and a good flavorful soup. I've given three methods for making the soup, ranging from best (using kaeshi) to ok (using storebought readymade sauce).

Per 1 large bowlful:

About 60 g / 2 oz. dried soba noodles
basic dashi stock
Kaeshi, or soy sauce, mirin and sugar
OR instead of the dashi and ingredients above, a bottle of tsuyu or mentsuyu (readymade noodle sauce), available at Japanese grocery stores
Toppings such as kamaboko, spinach leaves, egg (optional)
Green onions, finely chopped
Nanami or shichimi tohgarashi- seven-ingredient red pepper spice (see notes)

Bring a large pot of water to boil. Put in the soba noodles and lower the heat to a simmer. Cook until the noodles are not quite al dente - it should be cooked through. (Dried soba noodles, unlike dried semolina pasta, is rather delicate so you don't want to cook it in a rolling boil.) As soon as it's done, drain the noodles, and plunge it a bowl of cold water. Change the water frequently as you rinse the noodles. The objective is to get rid of any sort of starchy service on the noodles. Once this is done, drain the noodles and set aside in a colander. (See the very detailed instructions on how to cook and rinse soba noodles here.)

Make the basic dashi stock, and use an extra handful of bonito flakes. (You can also use vegetarian dashi stock if you prefer.)

If you are using kaeshi, mix 1 part kaeshi to 5 parts dashi stock. Vary to your tastes (don't make it too weak or too strong, but remember that you'll be putting soba noodles in it, so make it just a bit stronger/saltier than you think is necessary).

If you are using soy sauce and mirin straight, first mix the soy sauce and mirin in a 2 to 1 ratio (e.g. 2 Tbs. soy sauce and 1 Ts. mirin). Add a little sugar (for 2 Tbs. soy sauce add 1/2 tsp. or so of sugar). Add dashi to taste, at about the same 1 (soy sauce + mirin + sugar) to 5 (dashi) ratio.

If you are using store-bought tsuyu or mentsuyu (noodle sauce) in a bottle (such as this one), add plain water to the until it tastes right to you. The ratio depends on the brand and type. Note that even ones that say they are 'straight' (as in, not concetrated) will need to be thinned out for hot noodle soup, since they are meant to be used 'straight' for cold noodle dipping sauce, which is a lot stronger.

Heat up the soup. Put in the rinsed soba noodles, and gently simmer until the noodles are heated through.

Put noodles into serving bowls. Add soup, and any toppings. If you're adding a raw egg (be sure you're only adding a 'safe' egg!), add it at the last moment.

Garnish with a little of the chopped green onion and/or shichimi tohgarashi on top. You could also add a dab of wasabi, a small sheet of nori seaweed, and so on.

Notes

七味唐辛子　（しちみとうがらし　shichimi tohgarashi or nanami tohgarashi) is a mixed ground spice, containing red pepper, dried citrus skin, sesame seeds, etc. It's a commonly used table spice. You could use ground up red papper flakes as a substitute, though it won't have the same complex flavor and aroma. It's quite inexpensive and lasts a long time, so look for it at a Japanese food store. (Or you can buy it from Amazon Groceries.) I consider it to be a very important ingredient in my Japanese pantry.

Soup made with dashi, soy sauce and mirin is used for most Japanese noodles. The saltiness or strength of the soup is controlled by the ratio of soy sauce to dashi - the more dashi, the thinner the soup.

See this kitsune udon recipe for a vegan topping alternative (simmered aburaage or tofu skin). Of course, you could just enjoy the noodles with no topping, just the green onion and shichimi tohgarashi.

Japanese people usually don't do much drinking on New Year's Eve, because it's considered to be a good thing to greet the New Year bright and early. (Drinking during the New Year's festivities is another matter.)

Cold noodle time!

maki — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:35:31 +0200

I am sort of the road this week, so it’s hard to cook much. When I get settled back at home, the first thing I want to make is cold noodles. What I’m craving most right now:

That is hiyashi chuuka, or Chinese style cold noodles. It’s a meal in one, as refreshing as a salad. I love the salty-tangy sauce. If making it from scratch is too much work, there are very good instant packets which come with the noodles and sauce. If you’ve never tried it, I hope you do at least once this summer! ((Link))

The other noodles I’m craving are cold soba, or zarusoba. What really perks up cold soba is the condiments or yakumi. Chopped green onions are a must, but right now I am craving the fresh flavor of green shiso leaves and the zing of wasabi as well. The basic dipping sauce can also be used with other cold noodles like so-men (thin wheat noodles). I haven’t talked about how to prepare these yet, but the procedure is the same as for soba, with a shorter cooking time. The dipping sauce also works for cold udon noodles, though in the summer I prefer thinner noodles somehow.

Cold noodles, a salad perhaps, and mugicha - a perfect summer meal!

Maybe some day I will tackle ramen

maki — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:46:30 +0200

Periodically I get emails and comments asking me to post a recipe for one thing or another, usually something Japanese. I try to do so (eventually) with most things, though it may take a while between request and actual writeup since I try to make sure that if I do write it up, it will actually work. One of the things I’ve been asked about a lot is ramen, probably because it’s so ubiquitous in Japan, and so tasty. Since it’s usually served as a sort of fast food, and because the instant and cup-noodle varieties are well, so instant, people may assume that it’s not hard to make.

But ramen is one of those foods that takes a lot of preparation, ingredients, and skill to really make properly. If you’ve ever seen the movie Tampopo (the best food movie of all time), where the eponymous heroine goes through many trials to perfect her ramen skills, you will have a general idea of what’s involved. While not all ramen-ya may use pig’s heads and the like to make their soup, a properly made ramen soup is deeply complex and does indeed use a lot of things like pork bones, whole chicken carcasses, and more. It makes sense to make such a soup in large, commercial quantities, but for the home kitchen? I’m not sure.

In Japan there are lots of readymade ramen preparations which are several steps above the instant kind. Some of those readymade soups and noodles are really pretty good. Otherwise, people just go to their favorite ramen-ya for their noodle fix - there are whole books and magazine issues dedicated to just ramen. I’m hoping that real ramen becomes as popular around the world as sushi has, so that the pleasure of slurping a hot bowl of tasty noodle soup can be experienced more easily.

Until then though…I’ll probably content myself with the better varieties of instant at home, when I can afford the calorie hit. Though I’ve seen some pork ‘osso bucco’ at the supermarket recently…

Instant ramen and cup noodles are very, very bad for you

maki — Thu, 17 May 2007 22:05:23 +0200

Perusing a number of links related to the food stamp budget experiments, a popular cheap food item that keeps coming up is instant ramen noodles. As I wrote yesterday, even during my very lean (budget-wise) years I didn’t try to fill up on instant ramen, since it has been ingrained for a long time in my mind, courtesy of my mother, that instant ramen is quite nutritionally horrendous. Some people erroneously think it’s healthy just because it’s Japanese. (This has been brought up here before. And yes, I know ramen is a Chinese product, but modern instant ramen was invented in Japan.)

So what makes instant ramen bad? It’s the manufacturing process. In order to create a dessicated, long-keeping noodle that cooks very fast, it’s deep-fried in oil. There are air-dried instant ramen varieties out there, but they take a bit longer to cook (though it’s only about 5 minutes), and more importantly are not the real cheap kind.

To make things worse, the instant soup mix has more fat in it, not to mention a lot of salt and mystery ingredients. Take a look at the nutritional information for Maruchan instant beef noodles for example, noting that they suggest a serving size of half a pack. When is the last time you ate just 1/2 a pack of instant ramen? A full pack, which is what most people have, is 380 calories, 126 of which are from fat, and most of the rest from white flour. Cup noodles are even worse. The rather healthy sounding Nissin Chicken Flavor with Vegetable Medley have in a real serving (I mean come on, 1/2 a cup of cup noodles?) 536 calories, which come almost exclusively from fat, white flour, and sugar. And really, how satisfying is a cup noodle?
(Note: The label reproduced on Calorie Count seems to be wrong, as it indicates a serving is “1/2”. If you go by this label reproduced on The Daily Plate, 1 cup is 1 serving, which contains 300 calories. Still, it contains 13 grams of fat (9 g saturated fat), 1060mg of sodium and the carbohydrates come from refined white flour. If you want to consider this a healthy snack, go ahead.)

That’s not to say that instant ramen has to be avoided at all costs. I like it myself sometimes. But it really should be delegated to the same category as potato chips and Twinkies, and never be used as the main carb component of a main meal. Pass this along to your college kids! :)

Basics: Kaeshi, soba and udon noodle soup or sauce base

maki — Mon, 14 May 2007 17:18:14 +0200

When the weather gets warmer, we eat a lot of cold Japanese noodles: soba (buckwheat noodles), hiyamugi (thin wheat noodles), so-men (even thinner wheat noodles), Sanuki udon (thick wheat noodles- Sanuki is the name of a region famous for udon) and harusame (bean or ‘glass’ noodles). For most cold noodle dishes a salty sweet soy sauce based soup or dipping sauce called mentsuyu is used. You can buy pre-made mentsuyu concentrate, but to me most of them taste too sweet or are overwhelmed by a too-strong MSG or similar artificial tasting umami flavor. Making mentsuyu at home from scratch is not so difficult, and the difference in taste is quite worth the little extra effort.

The base of mentsuyu is a mixture of soy sauce, sugar and mirin called kaeshi (or hon-gaeshi: hon means “real” or “authentic”). It can also be used as a flavoring base for many other things. You just need good quality dark soy sauce, white sugar, and good quality mirin. It keeps for months in the refrigerator, or even in the freezer (where it will stay liquid) so I like to make as big a batch as I can afford to price-wise and fridge-space-wise.

This is similar to the Japanese essence mix, but doesn’t include the kombu seaweed or bonito. If you are a vegetarian you can use kaeshi safe in the knowledge that it’s totally vegan, and combine it with a vegetarian stock. Kaeshi also lasts a lot longer since the basic ingredients are indefinite keepers.

I’ll be talking about cold noodles and such in upcoming posts, so if you’d like to follow along, you may want to make some kaeshi to be ready.

This is a very traditional basic recipe.

Kaeshi

This makes about 6 cups.

4 1/4 cups (or 1 litre, the standard size for a soy sauce bottle) good quality dark soy sauce
3/4 cup / 180ml mirin (hon mirin, the kind with alcohol in it, is preferred)
3/4 cup / about 150g granulated or superfine white sugar (see notes)

Put the mirin in a pan and bring up to the boil; lower the heat and let simmer a bit to evaporate much of the alcohol content.

Add sugar and stir until melted. Add the soy sauce, and let it warm up slowly, stirring. It should never boil - once it starts barely bubbling, take it off the heat.

If any cloudy scum has accumulated on the top, skim off carefully. I t can be used right away, but is best when allowed to rest for at least a day.

Let cool and store in a glass or other non-reactive, airtight container in the refrigerator. (I keep it in preserving jars with screwtop lids.) It will keep for several months under refrigeration.

Notes

I like this to be not that sweet, but I am from the Kanto (Tokyo) area. People from the Kansai area would use 1 cup of sugar for this instead of 3/4ths. You may want to adjust the amount of sugar to your taste.

In Japan, use san-on-to- (三温糖) or cooking sugar.

If you are sugar-intolerant in any way, a heat-safe sugar substitute should work, though it’s not tested here.

Honmirin (本みりん）is regular mirin, which is a fortified sake, with alcohol content. There is also mirin cho-miryo- or mirin flavoring, which is alcohol-free mirin. I mostly just buy and use hon mirin, especially since the better quality mirins only come as hon mirin.

Hiyashi chuuka: Japanese Chinese-style cold noodles

maki — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 12:39:00 +0200

Summer in most parts of Japan is hot and very humid, so cold foods are very popular. There are a lot of cold noodle dishes, such as chilled soba noodles and thin wheat noodes (hiyamugi or so-men). I love them all, but I think my favorite is hiyashi chuuka, which is Chinese-style cold noodles as interpreted by the Japanese.

Hiyashi chuuka is a one-dish meal. The cold noodles are served with a variety of vegetables and meat on top. You can really use anything, as long as it tastes good cold. Here I've used cucumber ribbons, some roast ham and pork slices thinly cut, and tomato. There's a bit of scrambled egg and some pickled sushi ginger too (since I was out of the brightly red beni sho-ga.) The key to bringing it all together is the slightly vinegary, sesame-rich dressing or gomadare. It's really a sort of pasta salad. Noodle shops in Japan don't serve hiyashi chuuka during the rest of the year, so the signs announcing "Now serving hiyashi chuuka" signal that summer has arrived.

Let me touch on cucumber ribbons. They seem like a really fancy thing, but are very easy if you use a vegetable peeler, and look like you spent a lot of time and effort. I can't use the vertical kind of peeler at all, being left handed, but with a horizontal type peeler like the one pictured here, all I do is to take long, thin slices off a regular English-type cucumber (the kind that comes shrink-wrapped in plastic from the Netherlands), turning the thing as I peel, until I end up with the inner core of mostly seeds, which I just throw away.

Now, about the cold noodles. Unlike Western style cold pasta dishes, where the noodles are meant to be cooled naturally, in Japanese cooking the noodles are rinsed repeatedly in cold water, to both cool them off and to get rid of any surface starch. If you're Italian the thought of rinsing noodles may make you shudder, but it's critical here. Here is a pudgy little hand washing the noodles under cold running water.

You actually scrub (gently, so you don't break the noodles) the strands under running water, until you don't feel any sort of stickiness on the surface. Once the noodles reach this state, you drain them thoroughly before proceeding. This washing stage is critical to making good Japanese (or Japanese-style Chinese) cold noodles.

For the noodles, try to find thin, flat egg noodles at an Asian food store. Thin linguine can be a substitute, though it will have a very different texture from the Asian noodles. Remember to salt the water well if you go with that: Italian pasta doesn't have salt in it but Asian noodles usually do. If you can't be bothered with making the sauce and things and live near a Japanese market, the Chuukazanmi brand of instant hiyashi chuuka pictured here is very good, and comes with little packs of delicious readymade sauce. You do still have to rinse the noodles.

Hiyashi-chuuka with gomadare (sesame sauce)

For about 4 main course sized servings:

1 Tbs. rice vinegar or cider vinegar
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1 tsp. sugar
2 Tbs. water, or chicken stock, or dashi stock (water with soup granules is fine here)
2 Tbs raw sesame seeds, or 1 Tbs tahini
2 tsp. dark sesame oil
1 Tbs. dry mustard powder reconstituted with enough water to make a paste
300g / 10 oz. dried Chinese egg noodles, or hiyashi chuuka noodles, or thin linguine
1 cucumber, cut into ribbons (see above)
2 cups or so of thinly cut roast ham, or roast pork, or cooked chicken
2 small tomatoes, de-seeded and cut into thin wedges
Optional: 1 scrambled egg
Optional: some pickled sushi ginger (gari) or bright red pickled shredded ginger (beni sho-ga)

To make the sauce: If you're using sesame seeds, toast them in a small pan until they start to pop. Remove from the heat immediately. In a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder, grind up the sesame roughly. Combine the sesame seeds or tahini, vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, water or stock, and sesame oil and mix well. Taste and adjust the amount of soy sauce, sugar or vinegar if needed. (You can make this spicy at this point by adding some crushed red pepper flakes.)

In the meantime, heat up a large pot of water to boil. If using linguine, put salt in the boiling water. Cook the noodles of your choice in the water just until it's al dente. The cooking time will vary according to what kind of noodles you're using. Do not cook until the noodles are mushy.

Drain the noodles, then put them back in the pot. Fill the pot with cold running water, and rinse the noodles well (see above technique) until there's no starchiness to them. Drain well.

To serve, put a mound of noodles on each plate - plates with rims, or soup dishes, are ideal here. Arrange the vegetables, meat, egg and ginger attractively on top. Pour over the sauce. Serve a small dollop of the mustard on the side of the plate.

To eat, mix the noodles well, adding a bit of the mustard if desired.

IMBB 22: Kitsune Udon with fresh udon noodles

maki — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 11:05:53 +0100

I haven't participated in Is My Blog Burning, the original food blogging event initiated by Alberto, for quite a while. However, I couldn't pass up on this month's theme, hosted by Cooking With Amy: noodles. I love noodles in all shapes and from all corners of the world.

I have made a very traditional Japanese noodle soup, kitsune udon. When you see the word kitsune in any Japanese food title, it means that it prominently features aburaage, or fried bean curd skin. I'm not sure why using aburaage makes it kitsune, because kitsune means fox. Perhaps it's from the golden brown color. of the aburaage. (Kitsune (fox) and tanuki (Japanese raccoon) feature a lot in Japanese folklore; both animals have the ability to shapeshift, but the kitsune uses it to fool people, while the tanuki often does it to help people. And yes, there is a tanuki udon too.)

My mother's family is from Saitama, a prefecture right to the north of Tokyo. Recently Saitama has become filled up with suburban commuter towns, but much of the prefecture is dominated by the Chichibu mountains, which feature prominently in Japanese literature. While that area is famous for its soba (buckwheat noodles), in the town where my mother grew up, Ogawa-machi (which isn't in the Chichibu area), everyone made teuchi udon, handmade udon noodles. I followed the general recipe my aunt used (her udon noodles were thick, a bit twisty, and delicious), but have adapted it so that I could make the dough in a food processor. This is a rather stiff dough since it only uses flour, water and salt, so using a food processor makes the kneading much easier.

The key ingredient is the flour. If you can, get udonko (udon flour), which is a very high gluten white flour. Otherwise, use a high gluten flour such as bread flour. I used Zopfmehl, which is a high gluten flour used for making Swiss braided bread. All-purpose flour would produce rather soft, limp noodles which is not what you want. You want something that is chewy and substantial even after being cooked in the soup.

The soup is a classic Japanese one made with dashi, soy sauce, and mirin, but the flavor is subtly changed by the aburaage.

Naruto, a sort of fish sausage, is often added to this, but naruto is one of the foods I really don't like (it tastes like a lump of glue to me) so I've omitted it.

(Tagged with: IMBB # 22 + Noodle.)

Fresh udon noodles

This amount makes enough noodles for 3-4 portions, depending on how hungry people are.

3 cups high gluten white flour (udonko is ideal - see notes above)
1 Tbs. salt
1/2 cup cold water, plus additional if necessary

Put the flour and salt into the food processor. Add the water, and start up the motor. If the dough does not form a ball, add droplets of water through the feed tube until it does. Don't add too much though or your noodles will be too soft. Stop it as soon as a ball forms.

Take out the dough and knead it a bit into one mass, and put it in a plastic bag and rest in the refrigerator for at least an hour. (This is the magic trick to all fresh noodles: even the most cranky looking dough turns smooth and yielding after a good rest. Sort of like a lot of humans..)

The cut noodles - here they are a bit thick, though I like them that way.

Take out the dough and roll it out on a floured surface, to about 1/2 cm / 1/6 inch thickness. Flour the surface of the dough, and then fold into thirds. Witch a sharp knife, cut into strips about 1/4cm to 1/2 cm / 1/12th to 1/6th inch wide - remember that the noodles will swell a bit after cooking. Separate the noodles and unfold them, stretch them out a bit and toss a bit of flour through them. At this point you want your water to be boiling already.

In the meantime, heat up a pot of water. Do not add salt to the water - remember the dough is already salted. Toss in the noodles and stir to make sure they don't stick to each other, lower the heat slightly and cook for about 7-10 minutes, depending on how thick you cut the noodles. If the water foams up until it looks like it's going to overflow, add a little bit of cold water to it. Test the noodles for doneness - they should be a bit al dente, or have a bit of chewy core.

Drain the noodles, then rinse well in cold water - this is to take off the starchiness on the surface and to firm up the noodles. Drain again. At this point it's ready to put into the soup.

To make the soup, follow the directions for the soup for toshikoshi soba. You can also find ready made noodle sauce concentrate (in bottles) at Japanese food stores, which you only have to dilute with water and heat up. Also, if you have made the Japanese essence in a bottle, you can just dilute this at about a 1:6 essence to water ratio and heat up.

To pretreat the aburaage (fried bean curd) pour some boiling water it - this gets rid of any excess oil. Drain, and put into the hot soup and simmer for at least 10 minutes.

Add the noodles, and simmer for an additional 10 minutes, or more (the noodles just keep absorbing the soup and become yummier).

To serve, top with slivered green onions and shichimi tohgarashi, which is described in the Toshikoshi soba recipe.

Note: if you can't get the fried bean curd you can top off the udon noodle soup with a lot of other things: vegetables such as spinach, an egg, leftover tempura, etc. Tanuki udon for example is topped off with abura kasu, leftover bits of fried batter from a batch of tempura. There's even curry udon, udon topped off with a curry sauce. You can also simply put a lot more green onion on it and just eat it like that.

ramen, ramen

maki — Thu, 04 Dec 2003 02:14:32 +0100

Two German guys are trying to eat their way through all sorts of "Asian style" noodles, and they are blogging their taste reviews (German site). I've tried some of the ones they've blogged so far though...and they are pretty bad.

Yes there is "good" and "bad" instant ramen! Good instant ramen does not smell oily or rancid, and has a good tasting soup stock. The best instant ramen has freezedried noodles that are slightly transculent. Nevertherless... it's a handy quick snack food, and yes it's pretty bad for you...(the soup usually has a lot of animal fat in it and is very high in sodium) but heck...I crave instant ramen sometimes. Not real ramen, which is made from fresh noodles and real soup stock, and (as was depicted so wonderfully in the movie Tampopo) be a a true gourmet experience. Instant ramen is artificial and fast and just delicious. Like potato chips though, it does tend to leave you with a slightly queasy feeling afterwards. It's probably due to the high salt content of the soup.

According to Instant Ramen's Home Page (the official site of the Japan Convenience Food Industry Association) instant ramen was born in 1958. The first flavor was chicken, and it was sold with the slogan "Just add hot water and wait 2 minutes".

Nowadays of course ramen has spread all around the world. It's become one of those cheap foods that students try to live on (therefore leading to general malnutrition). I do like ramen straight up sometimes, but usually I add some vegetables and an egg. Easy vegetables to add are roughly cut up green onions, pre-washed spinach, arugula, watercress, even lettuce. It has to be something that will cook fast or barely needs cooking at all, 'cause what's the point of spending time making instant ramen? If I have some around, I'll add a slice of kamaboko (fish cake), some cold roast pork, canned corn, or even a couple of slices of Lyoner sausage (which is sort of easier to get a hold of here.)

The picture shows a bowl of "real" ramen, Sapporo style, with light colored soup (flavored with salt, not soy sauce or miso), corn, roast pork, spinach, and chopped leek, plus a real Hokkaido touch - a pat of butter. Yummy. If you want to try to emulate this with instant, try to get a hold of "Sapporo Ichiban Shio Ramen", usually available at Japanese or Asian food stores.