Japanese Soba Recipe

While I am still trying to find a way to upload my photos, I thought I might as well post about something else first.

A few months ago, I hosted a Japanese girl from Hiroshima. She spoke English, so there wasn't much chance for me to practice my Japanese (since I figured she would want to practice her English language).

Singapore seemed most well known for food, so we (my dad, actually) stuffed her with loads of food during her stay with us. He cooked a lot, bought a lot of food for after-dinner snacks (Although I'd be scolded if I did that on normal days -_-"), and we brought her around Singapore to the famous food stalls.

In return on one of the days, she taught us how to make the traditional Japanese Soba. The recipe is as below:

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Sauce ingredients:

• 4 ladles of water
  
• 1 ladle of soya sauce
• 1 ladle of sweet rice wine (mirin)
  
• 1 ladle of un-sweet rice wine
• 2 small packs of bonito flakes

Misc ingredients:

• Soba noodles
• Seaweed strips
• Lots of ice

How to make sauce

1. Place the water, soya sauce and the 2 rice wines in a pot and bring to a boil.
2. Add the bonito flakes once the mixture boils and turn the fire off.
3. Leave it till the flakes sink (approximately 5 mins)
4. Remove flakes and refrigerate.

Cooking the soba

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil.
2. Add the soba and wait till the water boils again.
3. Bring down the flame to a slow fire for 3 mins.
4. Turn off the fire and place the noodles in cold water.
5. Wash the noodles 3 times under running water to cool them down.
6. Place the noodles in ice.

When ready to serve, place each serving of noodles on a plate and the sauce in a separate bowl. Place some seaweed strips on both the sauce and noodles.

Enjoy. =)

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My family's subsequent experience with cooking the soba has brought us to change step 3 of cooking the soba to:

- Turn off the flame and leave it for about 2 mins.

We found that the noodles would be more springy and less soggy when we changed that step. If you are one of those whom are afraid of changing the original recipe, rest assured that the slight change does not screw up the recipe ;) Keeping the step as it is is alright as well.

For those who are intending to try the recipe out, I hope you like it! =D


Signing off... ...