Summer Session #3: Zaru Udon (Cold Thick Noodles)

Summer Forking Lesson #3: How to Dip Your Thick Noodle

(serves 3 – 4)

If you’ve been following along in the summer sessions, you now are well (socially) lubricated and have managed to look good and stay cool while doing so. You’ve done the difficult part, now it’s time to get down to dipping your noodle. Zaru udon (cold thick noodles dipped in a soy-based sauce) make for perfect summer forking. Tasty, quick, and cold, you’ll easily have your noodle slipping and sliding just the way you like it. (Speaking of “just the way you like it”, if you find udon noodles have too much girth, you can replace the thick, white udon noodle with the thinner, darker soba.)

Ingredients for Zaru Udon

• 3 to 4 bundles of udon noodles

For the dipping sauce

• Boiling water, 2 Tbsp
• Dashi (fish or kelp stock) powder, ½ tsp
• Sugar, 1 Tbsp
• Cold water, 1 ½ cups
• Soy sauce, ¼ cup
• Mirin, 1 Tbsp
• Garnish: 2 green onions, chopped, and grated wasabi or ginger

How to make “Zaru Udon”

1. Get hot. Put on a large pot of water to boil (for the noodles). Meanwhile, in a medium-sized bowl (big enough for 2 cups of liquid) prep the cold dipping sauce by throwing in the dashi powder and sugar and a couple of tablespoons of boiling water stirring until the dashi and sugar dissolve. If you nick the boiling from the large pot, do so before putting the noodles in it! The starch from the noodles are not desired in your sauce.
2. Be saucy. To your dissolved sugar/dashi mixture, stir in the cold water, soy sauce, and mirin. Put the sauce into the fridge to chill.
3. Get your thick noodle ready. Once your water is boiling, dump in your udon noodles. While the noodles are boiling, prepare a large bowl of icy-cold water (add a dozen ice cubes if you have them) which you’ll use to chill the noodles.  Once the noodles are al dente (around 5 -6 minutes, depending on girth) drain them, rinse in cold water, and then dump into the ice-cold bath, shaking them around until they are nice and cold.
4. Present your noodle for dipping. Drain off the noodles and present each portion in a shallow serving bowl or, if you have it, a shallow woven basket (this is how the Japanese like to present their thick noodles). Pour out the chilled sauce into small bowls and garnish with chopped green onion and about 1 tsp of grated ginger or ½ tsp of grated wasabi per dish.
5. Get dipping. To eat – take a few noodles and drop them (gently, don’t splash!) into the sauce. When you fish them back out, they will be dripping in cool, salty, yumminess, perked up by a little kick of ginger or wasabi. Enjoy!

Special Bonus – Sloppy Seconds!

As an added bonus, you can have an amazing lunch or dinner the next day with leftover udon and sauce.

Yaki-udon: Fry the noodles up with some leftover veggies, meat or seafood. Add a little dissolved cornstarch to the sauce, and throw it on at the last minute, cooking until the sauce thicken.

Udon salad: Top your fave salad veggies and then pour on the sauce for a noodle salad. Add a bit of sesame oil for extra flavour.

Summertime Session #2: Summer Somen (Noodle) Salad

Summertime Forking Lesson #2: Look good, Stay cool

If you’ve completed Summer Session #1 (Sassy Sangria), then you are by now well lubricated (and possibly also inebriated) and ready for the next step – get out your noodle. This noodle salad is not only delicious and easy to make with whatever you happen to have on hand, even the most inexperienced forker can make it look good.  This one gets bonus points for a water-based (instead of oil-based) dressing – keeping things fresh and friendly to your waistline. Warning: this dish is extremely tasty, once created, prepare to beat off potential forking partners.

Salad: (Substitute with your favourite toppings, but stay fresh and light)

• Somen noodles, one bundle (rice noodles are a good substitute if you can’t find somen noodles)
• Cooked shrimp or crabmeat, about ½ – ¾ cup (optional)
• Thinly sliced, salt-massaged hard vegetable, about ½ – ¾ cup. I use cucumber, but you can use thinly sliced daikon radish, julienned carrot, etc.
• Roughly chopped soft leafy veg or herb, about ¼ – ½ cup. I used chopped shiso leaves, but you can use spinach, cilantro, butter lettuce, etc.
• Reconstituted dried wakame (kelp) (soak 1 Tbsp dry wakame in ¼ cup water for 5 minutes, and drain excess water once reconstituted)
• Daikon sprouts to garnish (optional)

Fresh Sesame-Ginger Dressing:

• Sushi vinegar, 1 Tbsp. (or rice vinegar, 1 Tbsp. + sugar, ½ tsp)
• Water, 2 Tbsp.
• Ponzu, 1 Tbsp.
• Sesame oil, 1 tsp.
• Grated fresh ginger, 1 tsp.

How to make Summer Somen Salad:

1. Give your hard veg a good massage. To soften up harder veg like cucumber, daikon, or carrot, julienne or slice them in paper-thin rounds, throw into a bowl, salt generously (about ½ – ¾ tsp. per 2 cups chopped veg.) and then massage (yes, massage) the salt into your veg. After a good going-over with the salt, your veg will start to weep (its moisture). Leave it to weep for 10 – 15 minutes, and then drain excess water, squeezing your veg to get out a good portion of the moisture.
2. Take out your noodle. While your veg is weeping, boil some noodles according to package directions. While they are boiling, prepare a large bowl of cold water with plenty of ice cubes. It sounds cruel, but once boiled, drain your noodles out in a colander, and then plunge them into the ice-water, using your hand to roughly and vigorously shake about your noodle. This will cool it right away and stop your noodle from becoming too limp. Refresh the ice-water, and keep noodles in cold water until ready to use.
3. Prepare your veg. Chop up your leafy veg, re-constitute the wakame (kelp).
4. Get on top. Strain your noodles, and pile them into a shallow bowl or plate.  Arrange the toppings artfully on the bed of noodles.
5. Lube up and caNoodle. Throw together the dressing ingredients, and pour on top or around the sides.  Present to your forking friends, and prepare for some canoodling.

This salad is so forking delicious, look at the hot people it attracted!

Spicy Asian Noodle Salad

Do you enjoy Asian-style forking? Salad-tossing? Thinking of introducing some warm, aromatic oils into your forking repertoire? If you’re up for it and ready to use your noodle, then follow these steps for a sensual, spicy forking experience. It takes a little time, but you won’t be disappointed – satisfaction is guaranteed.

Salad ingredients:

• Noodles of your choice, cooked and cooled by running under cold water (you can use soba, udon, rice noodles, ramen, egg noodles, or any other asian-style noodle – I like soba because the buckwheat flavour can stand up to this salty and spicy dressing)
• Salad of your choice: e.g. Bitter greens, baby greens, thinly sliced green and red onions, red pepper, tomato, avocado, etc.
• Chopped cashews to top

Dressing ingredients:

• Sesame oil, 2 Tbsp
• Chili oil (La-Yu), 1 ½ tsp
• Garlic, minced, 3 cloves
• Red chilli flakes, ½ tsp (or more to taste)
• Water, 1 cup
• Soy sauce, ½ cup
• Rice vinegar, 2 Tbsp
• ¼ cup honey
• Cornstarch, 1 tsp
• Juice of 2 limes
• Cilantro (or “coriander”, for the British), chopped, 2 Tbsp or to taste

How to make “Spicy Asian Noodle Salad”

1. Heat the aromatic oils. In a small saucepan, heat up the sesame and chilli oils on low-medium heat. Once they are warm, add the garlic and chilli flakes and sauté them briefly. If you like things really spicy, you can add one chopped Thai chilli pepper or a ½ – 1 tsp of chilli sauce.

2. Get wet. Just when the garlic softens (don’t let it brown!) pour in the water, soy sauce, and vinegar. Then, raise the temperature and bring things to a boil.

3. Slow down, honey. The key to sensual forking is to take things slow, so once your mixture is boiling, bring it down to a steady simmer and add the honey, stirring until it’s incorporated.

4. Get thicker. Mix the cornstarch with a few teaspoons of warm water and whisk, creating a thin white sauce. Pour this into the simmering soy mixture and cook for a further 5 minutes or until it thickens. Take the mixture off the heat and allow it to cool. This could take a couple of hours, but that’s all a part of the sensual forking experience – the aromas in your home will drive you wild with anticipation.

5. Get juicy. Add the lime juice and chopped cilantro

6. Get forking. Build your salad and add a generous amount (I use about a ¼ cup) of dressing per serving. You’ll have some extra sauce – keep it in the fridge to use with any other recipe that can use a bit of an Asian kick.

I have to admit that the recipe is not my own – but after many furtive glances and some cheeky flirting, I finally broke down and adulterated this dressing from the Rebar cookbook. Although I’m not generally a big fan of most of the food at this home-away-from-home of the Victoria-based granola set, I have to admit that the aroma of this dressing certainly gets parts of my body moist… my mouth, naturally.

Recipe by: Hana

This recipe in Japanese

Souper Hot Soba

(serves 2)

Soba (buckwheat noodles ) are not a prudish ingredient. They are up for anything, be it hot, cold,  in a soup or mixed in a salad. Heck, you can even make soba tea! The other great thing about soba is that in Japanese, the word “soba” can also mean “beside” or “next to”, and trust me, if you can make soba, you’ll have plenty of people wanting to “get next to” you! Here is a recipe for the most basic, straight-ahead way to cook soba – “missionary” style, if you will – served piping hot in a soy-based soup.

Ingredients:

• Soba noodles (one bundle per person)
• Water for boiling the noodles
• Soba “tsuyu” (soup) concentrate in a jar
• Water for the soup base
• Toppings of your choice (e.g. green veggies, chopped green onions, poached egg, “usu-age” tofu slice, “sansai” japanese vegetables)

How to make “soba”:

1- Get warmed up

Put on a pot of water to boil – this is for the noodles. In another (smaller) pot, measure out the soup “tsuyu” concentrate and water and bring to a boil. (Since each brand has different levels of concentration, use the label as a guide – if in doubt, use one part concentrate to two parts water.) I usually make enough for one cup of soup per serving.

2- Get hot

Boil the noodles for 4-5 minutes, and drain. In the soup pot, boil any toppings that you want piping hot, like veggies or tofu – I like to poach an egg in the soup, to place on top of my noodles.

3- Get it in

Place the drained noodles in a large, high-rimmed  soup bowl, and pour the soup on top. Arrange the toppings and sprinkle with chopped green onion or other garnish of your choice. Eat while piping hot.

This recipe written by: Hana

This recipe in Japanese