As Days Are Getting Hotter...
14 July 2008
Summer is not the most pleasant time in Tokyo. Days (as well as nights) are starting to get really hot and humid now, making you sweat immediately whenever you step outside the comfortably air-conditioned buildings. All the better that Simon and I have a nice trip planned for next week, taking a break from the hot summer in the city: We will go to Hokkaido in northern Japan, so there will be no new post next week!
The area we are going to is not only famous for its stunning scenary that can be enjoyed at quite pleasant temperatures at this time of the year, but also – as I have heard with great delight – for its delicious seafood, particularly the large crabs and scallops. The more I hear about the area, the more I am looking forward to this trip!
Before that I have still other travel plans coming up: From tomorrow I will go on a 3-day figure skating training in a little place called Nobeyama, somewhere up in the Japanese Alps. I'm not sure whether to have more respect of the really high level of some of the other participants (those are "real" skaters, not just recreational ones like me), or the fact that I will have to communicate in Japanese for 3 whole days… It will certainly be a great practice (both for skating and my language skills), and I am really excited to get to see yet another part of the country!
There will be more on these (hopefully more well tempered places) once I get back from Hokkaido, but now back to the summer days in Tokyo: The heat and the humidity have considerably curbed my appetite for any substantial food, which I find kind of frustrating. But luckily there is cold soba, and it is not hard to understand why it is so popular here. This is just the single most refreshing dish for these days! Although I love hot soba in all its varieties whenever the temperatures are a bit lower, right now the cold version of the dish is just such a boon! And although it is really light, it has more substance than just only salad, so I don't wake up hungry in the middle of the night.
Apart from being extremely yummy, cold soba is also very simple to prepare. It mainly consists of cold soba noodles, usually served spread out on a basket-like tray, and typically garnished with spring onions and, if you choose, other light toppings such as tofu. Aside you get an extra bowl with cold soup made of dashi, soy and mirin, into which you dip the soba bite by bite before eating them.
Eating soba (or any noodles) with chopsticks may seem like a bit of a challenge to someone who is not used to using these tools every day. The trick is just to sip the noodles into your mouth after dipping them into the soup, while helping bit by bit with the chopsticks. Lifting the soup bowl up closer to your face also makes it easier to eat without accident. You may also make "slurping" noises when eating the noodles, which, unlike in "Western" countries, do by no means suggest bad manners. On the contrary, this is considered the best way of eating noodles, and the noisy slurping is actually supposed to serve a purpose: Not only does it help to cool the noodles down before they reach your lips when eating them hot, but the oxygen you sip into you mouth also enhances the flavour of the food (same principle as in tasting wine). Anyways, whenever I try to slurp, the noodles will just not really get into my mouth, and the soup stuck on the noodles will spill all over the place… so while Simon is quite good at this (he often has soba for lunch with his colleagues), I keep enjoying my soba in silence…
So here is my version of cold soba, containing different ingredients I just had at home, giving a bit of a "personal fusion" touch to both the cold soup and the toppings. There are of course no limits to any variations!
Cold Soba with Summer Toppings
| serves 4 |
| 400g dried soba noodles |
for the dip |
| 300ml dashi |
| 150ml mirin |
| approx. 100ml soy sauce (to taste) |
| 2 teaspoons of fine white sugar |
| 2 cooked egg yolks |
| 1-2 teaspoons of mustard |
| 2 teaspoons of grated fresh ginger |
for the toppings |
| 4 Japanese thin cucumbers (or 1 large one) |
| some dried dill |
| some sweet paprika powder |
| some garlic powder |
| 2 cooked egg whites |
| 100g tofu (firm/cotton pressed) |
| 2 myoga |
| a hand full of spring onions |
Prepare the dashi if you make it yourself; if you use ready-made powder, you may as well wait until later to dissolve it. [more on how to make dashi]
Peel the cucumbers and cut or grate them into short julienne strips. (If you use large cucumbers rather than the thin and firm Japanese ones, remove the "wobbly" bit in the middle before cutting them). Slightly salt them and let them rest, so the water comes out.
Boil the soba in salt water according to the cooking time given on the package (the ones I use take about 6 minutes). Once done, drain the noodles and rinse them with cold water until the water gets clear (it is important to wash the starch off the surface of the soba noodles to keep them from getting sticky). Then place the strainer into a bowl of ice water to cool the noodles down, and drain them again before using.
Mix the dashi with the mirin, the soy sauce and the sugar and bring to a light simmer until the sugar has dissolved. Take the mixture off the heat and add the mustard and the freshly grated ginger. Peel the hard boiled eggs and cut them in half to take out the yolks. Mash the latter with the back of a fork and add them to the sauce. Whisk well until the mixture is smooth. If the egg yolk does not dissolve properly, strain the sauce through a sieve and press the clotty bits though.
For the toppings, finely slice the myoga and the spring onions and cut the tofu as well as the boiled egg whites into little cubes. Drain the cucumber strips well (they should have left quite a bit of water) and season them to taste with some dill, sweet paprika powder and garlic powder.
Place the cold soba in individual bowls or just on a large tray for everyone, and garnish with the toppings. Serve everyone an extra dish with the cold soup as a dip for the noodles.