Cold Soba Noodle

Assalamualaikum!

So I told myself that I shouldn’t be working on any school work today.I need to breathe..But of course being a McGill nerd that I am, I’m already thinking about my third term paper that is due in about a week from now.Breathe..So I decided to make a feast for myself. Roasted whole chicken is nicely sizziling in the oven. At the moment, that’s my background music. For the time being, I shall write about my cold soba noodle.

I was writing my term paper for ANTH 206 class. The paper was fun to write. I leanred so much about the Mro Tribe in Bangladesh. But at the same time, I WAS CRAVING FOR JAPANESE FOOD!

Last time I came back to Montreal, I took the Malaysian Airlines flight and transited in Narita Airport in Japan. On the flight, the food was AMAZEBALLS.So delicious. I can’t remember what I ahd for the main course but I distinctively rmemebered the side dish. It was a cold green noodle with soy-ish sauce with strips of seaweed on the top. It was goooooood. I am of course the jakun one who have no idea what its called. I even googled and twitted about it. I even googles (Malaysian Airlines inflight menu)I’m so oathertic sometimes.*head down* Then my friend Munie was telling me perhaps its soba noodles.

So I did more resaech and true enough. It’s the cold version of soba noodle served with dipping sauce. I was ecstatic! I found the rcipe. BUT. It calls for mirin, which ,most of the time has alcohol in it. Then I did what anyone would do…find its substitute.So I made my own. Halal one.WEE!

I halved the dipping sauce recipe but I still have more! I already had a whole *cough* packet *cough* of soba noodles which was about 5 servings and I still have about half of the dipping sauce I made. The next time I have cravings for soba noodles, I only have to cook more noodles.Thats all!:)

Also, we won’t be using all of the mirin. You cpould also keep that and perhaps make some teriyaki with it.

The original recipe : here

Homeamde mirin: here

Mirin

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoon of rice vinegar

1. Put the water and sugar in a sauce pan on medium high heat. Wait till all of the sugar dissolved.
2. Turn off heat and wait for a few minutes to let the syrup slightly cool
3. Stir in the rice vinegar

Cold Soba Noodle with Dipping Sauce

1 packet of soba noodle

1. Cook as instructed on the label
2. (reserve some of the cooking water)
3. Using a  colander, wash the cooked soba noodle under cold water for 30 seconds or until the noodle is cold.
4. Put in the fridge before serving

  

Dipping sauce

1 small bottle of Japanese soy sauce (148 ml)

1/2 cup of mirin

1/2 cup of sugar

1. In a saucepan, heat everything together until the sugar dissolved.
2. Let cool.

To assemble:

1. Garnish the soba noodle with shredded seaweed sheet and some sesame seed.
2. Serve with dipping sauce and wasabi on the side.
3. The dipping sauce is very salty and strong in flavor. Add little by little to make sure that you put the right amount of sauce on your noodle.

Variation:

Add some of the cooking water or what is called “sobayu” in Japanese in a bowl along with the noodle and dipping sauce. SO it’ll be a soba noodle soup instead. So yummeh!

One thing to note is that Japanese soy sauce and Chinese soy sauce are not the same.Their brewing styles are different thus taste different as well. 

Enjoy!

Wasalam.

Till then, 

Love,

Sofhan Hasni