Zaru-Soba (Cold Japanese Noodles) Recipe

Zaru Soba is Cold Wheat Noodle served on a bamboo plate over ice cubes to keep the noodles cold. It is served with a dipping soup known as Mentsuyu (you can find the Recipe under my previous post “Recipe – Sauces & Dips”)

Ingredients: (Make 4 servings)
One packet of dried soba noodles (abt 12 oz / abt 340g)
2 to 2-1/2 cups of mentsuyu (dipping sauce)
Wasabi paste
4 quail eggs (do not cook)
Seaweed Strips
Green onion (finely chopped)

Preparation:
Boil water in a deep pot. Once the water is boiling, add dried soba noodles. Gently stir noodles with chopsticks. Read the instruction on the packaging for boiling time. The best is to break a small part of the noodles and try it. Your mouth is the best judge. Once it is cooked, remove the noodles from the pot. Wash the noodles under running water and drain it.

If you have a bamboo plate it will be great. However, if you do not have one, you may make use of any drainer you have at home. Put the drainer on top of a bowl. Place ice-cubes on the drainer and cover the ice-cubes with the cooked noodles. The bowl is to collect the water when the ice starts to melt. Sprinkle seaweed strips on the noodles.

Divide the Mentsuyu dipping sauce equally into 4 small bowls or cups. Serve green onion, quail eggs and wasabi paste on separate small bowl or plate.

Each guest will have their own dipping sauce. Crack one quail egg (if you can’t get quail egg, replace it with small eggs) into the dipping sauce and mix lightly. Add wasabi and green onions. Pick up the noodles with chopsticks and dip it into the sauce. Coat the noodles well and Sooooopp…….suck the noodles right into your mouth. Don’t be shy to make loud sucking noise. It’s very fun. Anyway, for Japanese, it’s not rude to suck noodles and make some noise as it is showing the cook that you are enjoying the noodles…..very Japanese right. Yeah !!!

Where to get the Ingredients ?
You can get the dry noodles, seaweed and wasabi paste from many supermarket who sells spaghetti, Japanese noodles, macaroni. I got mine from NTUC Fair Price supermarket. They have a corner selling Korean and Japanese Ingredients and dry food. The dry noodles come in packet like spaghetti strips and wasabi comes in tubes like toothpaste.

How do Soba Noodles and Wasabi look like? What is it ?
Did some research from Wikipedia and link it here for your easy reference.

Soba (そば or 蕎麦, Soba) is a type of thin Japanese noodles from buckwheat flour.
More details on : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soba

Wasabi (わさび,ワサビ , 山葵 (originally written 和佐比) is a member of the Brassicaceae family. Its root is used as a spice that has an extremely strong flavor. Its hotness is more akin to that of a hot mustard.
More details on : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasabi

Tips :

1) Please refer to my post on Mentsuyu (dipping sauce) and Dashi Soup Stock. You need Dashi Soup Stock to make Mentsuyu..

2) There are cooked soba noodles in packet forms with sauce included. Unlike instant noodles where the noodles are dried, the soba pre-cooked noodles pack’s noodles are soft. They are normally stored in chill department (together with toufu and fish cakes section).