Izakaya Food, Modern Version
12 May 2009
While Simon is currently travelling in Germany, I’ve been dining out with fiends quite a lot, enjoying the series of bank holidays last week. I’ve sometimes been cooking at home for myself, too, but my usual guinea pig being away, I’ve not really tried out a lot of new stuff.
So for this week’s blog I’ve been digging in my repertoire of so far unposted recipes, and I’ve come across this simple and tasty and totally fusion-style soba noodle dish, which was mostly inspired by a fantastic izakaya Simon and I went to a few weeks ago upon recommendation by a friend.
Originally a place to sample sake (hence the name), an "izakaya" could now be described as something like a "Japanese pub", or "Japanese tapas bar" – a casual, lively place with simple (but usually extremely tasty!) food, which comes in little portions so you can enjoy plenty of different dishes along with your sake, or shochu, or beer. Japanese home style cooking at its best.
At this particular place called "Shirube" in Shimokitazawa (a very lively and studenty area a bit outside central Tokyo) the food was a bit unusual, though. Even if I would still clearly qualify them as izakaya style, many of the dishes had a modern, almost "fusionish" twist to them, and I was instantly inspired. It took us a quite some time to pick from the menu, because everything sounded so intriguing and appealing… One of our choices that have most stayed on my mind was a dish of yakiudon (stir-fried udon noodles) flavoured with miso and butter. Absolutely delicious, the butter giving a lovely smooth texture and delicate taste.
For my own dish I used fresh soba instead of udon (in this case, wasabi flavoured ones, which however showed more in the colour than in the taste, but they tasted really nice all the same), changed the miso paste for soy sauce (I somehow felt that was a better match for the soba), and added a few more condiments, such as among others pine seeds and chili. Very tasty, indeed!
Butter & Soy Yakisoba
| for 400g fresh noodles (yields 4 sides or 2-3 main portions) |
| 400g fresh soba noodles
(count less if you use dried ones) |
| 4 Japanese mini red peppers |
| 2-3 cloves of garlic |
| 1 bunch of chives |
| 2 tablespoons pine seeds |
| 2 tablespoons sesame seeds |
| 1-2 little dried chili peppers (to taste) |
| 2-3 tablespoons soy sauce |
| 40g butter |
| a dash of sesame oil for frying |
Boil the soba noodles in salt water (check the package instructions for cooking time). When done, drain into a sieve and rinse well so they won’t stick together, and set aside. (Dried soba will of course do as well, but as there is no very dominant sauce involved here I think it is worth using fresh ones.)
Clean the peppers of stems and seeds and chop very finely. Heat a dash of sesame oil in a non-stick frying pan and sauté the peppers for about 10 minutes or so at medium heat. Make some space in the middle of the pan and add the pine and sesame seeds; once they are slightly browned, mix with the peppers and shift to the sides of the pan again to briefly and cautiously fry the garlic in the centre. Just before the garlic gets brown, mix with the rest and reduce the heat. Very finely chop the fresh chives as well as the dried chili pepper(s) (adjust the spicyness to your taste…) and add them, too.
Stir in the butter, and when it has melted, season to taste with soy sauce. Finally turn the heat up again and add the soba; briefly sauté them while stirring well so the noodles don’t stick to the pan and the butter sauce spreads well.