Say you’ve got some scallions and garlic, a
bright lime, some roasted sesame oil, maybe some sesame seeds, and perhaps some
cilantro. What do you do? Add them to some soba noodles for an exuberant
version of Sesame Noodles!
Could this be the first time I’d noticed the buckwheat
goodness of soba? Could it be that I’d never had them before? Because I was
very impressed. They were both silken and strong, as well as flavorful.
Soba is the gray/brown Japanese noodle made of
buckwheat and water and it is literally the word used for buckwheat. The
traditional recipe for cooking these noodles is to bring a big pot of water to
a boil, plunge the noodles into it, and when it comes to a boil again to keep
adding cold water each time to keep them at a simmer.
I brought a pan (I use a rather deep sauté pan
for this) of water (but not an exorbitant amount) to a boil, plunged the
noodles into it and cooked them over a medium heat for 6 minutes, then plunged
them into a pan of cold water to cool them off but not make them too chilly. When
I was ready, I drained them and tossed them with the ingredients above, adding
maybe some salt and perhaps a small brunoise
(tiny squares) of jalapeno. I took them as an appetizer to one of our
Fridays@Five get-togethers and we all looked like birds, dangling those
beautiful strands down our gullets.
The reason I was bothering with those noodles
at all was because of a recipe I’d seen in Seven Days by one of their new food
writers, Hannah Palmer Egan, for a Daikon Miso Noodle Bowl. I was particularly
interested in the simple miso broth she made with 4 cups of water, 3
tablespoons of red miso paste, a scant handful of bonito flakes, and ½ of a
medium daikon radish that had been peeled and thinly sliced. The water is
brought to a boil, the miso paste whisked in, then the bonito flakes and daikon
are added, the pot is covered and it’s boiled over medium heat for 10 to 15
minutes. She went on in some detail and I did follow that recipe that can be
found in their January 6 issue
and it was very good but I’ll leave that up to you.
For those times when you just want a broth to
add your own things to, this is a good basic one and you don’t have to boil up
a chicken. I add some sesame oil, some garlic, and maybe an egg and it fulfills
my afternoon hunger. Or supper. Or even breakfast.
An egg? My Facebook friend, CrescentDragonwagon, detailed a quick soup that she was having for breakfast when I
questioned her about it. She had said, “…miso soup, with grated fresh ginger,
minced garlic, scallions, tofu, a poached egg, a little cooked brown rice… this
is what called my name.”
Ah, I said, and do you boil the water and then
add miso and bonito flakes. She reminded me that she was vegetarian and so
skipped the bonito flakes, “And yes, I bring water to the boil, today adding a few chunks of fresh
ginger, then poaching the egg in it, then pouring a little water onto the miso
paste to dilute it, then pouring the whole shebang into the diluted miso.”
Sometimes she would add grated ginger and sliced shiitake mushrooms. But, one
should remember that, “The egg yolk of course should still be on the runny side
when it gets poured into the bowl, because the minute you pierce it with the
spoon it flows into the hot broth and cooks further and the whole thing
enriches quite wonderfully.” WOW. Egg yolk porn.
When I made my first miso broth the other day I dug out a white plastic
container of Mitoku Organic Yamaki Barley Miso that I’d bought at Sunshine
Natural Foods in the last century sometime and had never tried. It was a shiny
mahogany color of clay-like consistency, and I thought – hey, now or never.
Absolutely delicious. Now I am on a hunt for it. If any of you know of it or
where it can be found, please let me know. Otherwise, a fascinating array of
misos can be bought at the Co-op.
So those are some ideas for soba noodles and miso broth, and now I want
to talk about udon noodles and this is why: Saturday, which was Valentine’s Day
you will remember, I stopped after the Farmers’ Market at Green Mountain Fresh
on State Street to get some fish for Leo’s supper: He brings me flowers and I
make him a nice dinner (which I do every other day, too, but I make a bigger
fuss about it on Valentine’s Day). They had fresh chopped clams and I thought
that we had not had clam spaghetti in a long time and we do both love it. And I
thought that it would be especially good with soba noodles and I was sure that
I had another package at home. Yum. I was hungry already!
Long story short, once home I found I did not have soba noodles, I had
udon noodles and I was certainly not going back into town, so udon noodles it
would have to be. And though I did not know what to expect, these turned out to
be as silky and strong as the soba noodles, without, however, the nice
buckwheat taste.
I cooked them up in the same way I did the soba and then I dumped them
into a pot of cold water just as I had the soba, and they warmed the cold water
to a comfortable level while I made the clam sauce, which was simply some white
wine poured into the bottom of a sauce pan, some chopped garlic added to that,
cooked until just a scrim remained then adding a stick of butter to melt over a
very low heat and when it was melted I poured in the lovely chopped fresh clams
and their juices and warmed the whole thing. In the meantime I chopped a lot of
flat-leafed parsley and stirred that in. In shallow soup bowls I swirled the
cooled udon noodles, spooned the hot clam sauce over and sprinkled that with
grated parmesan cheese.
I’d lit candles to illuminate Leo’s beautiful bouquet and we dug in,
twirling our forks against a soupspoon and slurping those silken noodles and
chunks of clams into our mouths. A crisp massaged kale salad
bright with lemon proved the perfect foil.
