Skip to main content

How to cook Zaru Soba





Kazuyo brought back some soba from Japan, three packs for me :-)! I love soba, the Japanese buckwheat noodles that can be eaten cold or hot.



When we were living in Japan my husband did a lot of editorial work for KodanshaInternational, and among the books he worked on there was this one: The Book of Soba by James Udesky. The book tells you how to make your fresh soba, but also how to cook the dry one, plus it has some recipes, some history and nutritional info. I like it.




This is my soba set: plates with fitting straw mats (zaru soba is served in baskets or on mats, to keep it fresh and drained), plus some matching soba dipping bowls. I also have some tea cups with the same pattern: dragonflies!




Zaru soba is cold soba topped with nori (I cut a sheet of nori in small pieces with a pair of scissor) and served with a simple dipping sauce and garnish. One thing that I learned form The Book of Soba is that soba is not cooked like pasta. The only thing in common with pasta is that you should use the biggest pot you have and have enough water as if you were to cook spaghetti. But don't add salt!

Bring the water to boil: add the soba, stir gently. When the water starts to froth add half a cup of cold water and lower the heat. Do this three times. After the third time your soba should be ready. Drain and collect the cooking water to make soup, if you like (full of starch and vitamins and minerals) and place the soba in a bowl with ice water. Or just rinse under cold water (I prefer this way, the soba may not be perfect but I cannot bear to loose anymore starch!




Place your cold and rinsed soba in a soba basket or on your soba plate (lined with the soba mat). If you don't have a soba mat use your sushi rolling mat. Top with nori. Here I put some daikon salad with ume mayo, and sesame capsicums on the side too, they are not traditional, they were just left overs from my Japanese cooking class, but they paired well with the cold soba.



For the dipping sauce I prepare a base broth by simmering a piece of kombu for 30 minutes in water, then I add a little soy sauce (most would use bonito flakes). Let the broth cool down: this is a cold dipping sauce. Before serving put a tiny bit of wasabi in each dipping bowls, and a little grated daikon or radish, and then some chopped spring onions or chives. Pour the broth over and stir. For a fancy dinner place all the garnishes in small plates and let your guests mix their own sauce. To eat pick up the soba with your chopsticks and dip into your dipping sauce, then slurp everything up. You can make a slurping noise too, but I am not good at that!


Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©




Comments

  1. I like soba noodles a lot, some times i even add to my pasta salad. Nice tip.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Alessandra
    How are you? I like this recipe and your instruction to make it.
    I am going to make a pasta dish tonight...and was trying to find out your posting on pasta sauce with tomato...just cant find it...but I remember I made it few times. I am still searching your postings. Please help , if you have time in next 4 hours ha ha
    Have a nice weekend

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dear Ushnish

    Just read this, maybe I am too late, but maybe you were looking for this one?

    http://alessandrazecchini.blogspot.com/2008/09/tomato-sauce-for-pizza-or-pasta.html

    ciao
    A.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your Japanese food always amazes me! And look at those little hands with chopsticks! Priceless!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book  Sweet As...  where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal

Home Made Marzipan Sweets

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel

Kamo Kamo Maori Squash and Italian Borlotti Beans

A crop which gives me great pleasure is borlotti beans, not only for their flavour but also because I love the idea of growing protein food! I eat fresh borlotti, or I dry them and then use them to make nice soups and stews; in particular I like soups with pumpkins, but since this year I am traveling on, I will not enjoy the pumpkins that are growing in my garden. So I tried a different 'pairing'. A friend gave me some kamo kamo, the traditional Maori squash, and told me that the way to eat it is to boil it (skin on) and then cut it and spread it with butter (or olive oil...) salt and pepper, and scoop the flesh out with a fork. I had two kamo kamo so I boiled one (as a was told) and cut the other and sauted with a drop of olive oil and other vegetables from my garden: red onion, and celery. Then I added the beans and some water, salt and pepper, and cooked everything until the beans were soft. I added water little by little, when necessary, and I thought that this would be goo