Yankee Cook Meets Soba Noodles

SAM_0969

A new ingredient is a little like a new vocabulary word. You know how it works: you learn a new word and it takes a little effort to use it in a sentence, to add it to everyday conversation. Same thing, I think with ingredients. No doubt you have certain items you keep on hand because you are accustomed to using them in everyday cooking, and adding a new, unaccustomed, ingredient to meal planning can be a challenge, especially if it is a foreign ingredient, one well out of one’s native culture.

For some reason soba noodles have intrigued me. Made of buckwheat, and, therefore, containing no gluten, I had enjoyed them at restaurants. They are a little familiar because they are a kind of pasta but it seemed dumb to put spaghetti sauce on them when I could make a more interesting dish by looking at how they are used in Asia.

Enter Janusz Jaworski, one of the World Wide Opportunities in Organic Farming (WWOOF) volunteers who spent time here on island a few weeks ago. Janusz learned what to do with soba noodles from an Asian girlfriend, and reported that they are now a staple in his kitchen because he found he could quickly make with them a simple and wholesome meal.

His usual pattern was to cook the noodles, and add something raw, something pickled, something aromatic like onions or garlic, and sprinkle on sesame seeds, then add soy sauce at the table. This simple formula made so much sense to me that I “got it” about the noodles.

We used chopped cucumbers, pickled beets, and chopped red onion. We could have added protein in the form of cooked chicken, shrimp, a morsel of cooked pork, beef, or salmon or a fried egg. For the raw part, we could’ve grated carrots, turnips, or chopped summer squash, shredded spinach, chard or kale, cabbage, bok choy, and that ilk. For the pickled part, we could’ve used that commercial pickled ginger you see in the ethnic food aisle or lightly pickled cucumbers, and I suppose even, dilly beans. I’d be inclined even to drop some chutney, or relish into the bowl of noodles.

Some onion or garlic chopped up, lightly sautéed, really helps. Toasting the sesames a little really improves their flavor. I’m thinking I ought to toast up a bunch of them for all-purpose sprinkling. Soy sauce is fine, but if you like hot sauce, by all means use that.

Soba cooks in only a few minutes, about five. Pull one out after three or so minutes and bite it to see if it is al dente yet. Don’t let the noodles get soggy. We ate our noodles warm but they are just as good cold.

You can see that this dish can soak up miscellaneous leftovers and stray vegetables in the fridge for an economical meal. I’m still getting used to this new word—soba. It just wasn’t in my standard Yankee vocabulary but neither was fettuccine until I was an adult.

Soba Noodle Bowl
Serves: 2
 
Ingredients
  • ½ cup (plus or minus) raw, chopped vegetables or greens shredded
  • ½ cup (plus or minus) pickled vegetables
  • ½ cup (plus or minus) cooked meat, fish or shellfish, or 2 fried eggs (optional)
  • ½ a small onion chopped, and/or a clove of garlic raw or lightly sautéed
  • 1 quart boiling water
  • A bundle of soba noodles about one inch in diameter
  • Toasted sesame seeds
  • Soy or hot sauce to serve
Instructions
  1. Assemble the vegetables and optional protein.
  2. Sauté lightly the onion and/or garlic if you wish.
  3. Add the noodles to the boiling water and cook three to five minutes. Drain.
  4. Divide the noodles between two soup bowls and top with the vegetables and optional meat. Sprinkle on the sesame seeds.
  5. Serve immediately with soy or other sauce.

 

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.