Clear Japanese soup with soba

It's been cold here recently (we got frost here a few weeks ago), and thus my SO and I have been in the mood for soups. One of our current favorites is this quick and easy clear Japanese soup with soba. The broth is a great combination of savory, salty, and sweet, yet it's made from only three ingredients: dashi (the classic Japanese soup stock that's used in many dishes, including miso soup), soy sauce, and mirin (sweet sake). Since we just cooked up a batch of this today (to have as a drink, acutally; see notes), it's this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

6 cups water
~4" piece konbu (~3-6 square inches)
1 package (10g / 0.35 oz) instant dashi powder (or 6 cups dashi in place of the water, konbu, and dashi powder)
1/4 cup low-salt soy sauce
1/4 cup mirin
2 bundles dry soba (100g / 3.5 oz each)
Nori, cut into thin strips (~1/8" x 2", but it doesn't matter) for garnishing

To make this soup we cook the noodles separately from the broth, put the noodles into a bowl, and then ladle as much broth as we want on top of the cooked noodles.

To make the broth:

1. Bring the 6 cups of water to a boil in a pot large enough to hold it.
2. Reduce the heat to a simmer, add the konbu, and simmer for 5 minutes.
3. Remove the konbu and stir in the dashi powder, soy sauce, and mirin.
4. Keep warm until the soba is ready.

To cook the soba:

1. Follow the package directions. We add the dry soba to a pot of boiling water (not the soup stock), cook for 5 minutes, and then drain the soba.

To assemble the soup:

1. Place the desired amount of soba noodles in each bowl.
2. Ladle a sufficient amount of broth over the noodles.
3. Serve with thinly cut pieces of nori on the side, and extra broth on the table (or in the kitchen), for those who want more.

Notes:

Nori is the toasted sheets of seaweed that are often used to wrap sushi; it adds a nice, crunchy texture to the soup. However, the nori gets soggy quickly, and thus it's best to sprinkle on only a couple pieces at a time as you eat.

We typically use instant dashi powder (instead of making dashi from scratch) primarily because it's quicker and cheaper (shaved bonito is expensive!). If you're using dashi stock instead of the instant powder, just bring the dashi to a simmer and then add the soy sauce and mirin.

Soba are Japanese buckwheat noodles; they're typically brownish in color. We try to get brands that have a high buckwheat content, as many manufacturers dilute the buckwheat with regular wheat flour.

This recipe scales extremely well; make as little or as much as you want. Leftover broth stores extremely well, but soba should ideally be cooked fresh (it gets soggy with storage), so only cook up as much soba as you plan on eating in one sitting.

This soup makes an excellent savory drink as well. My SO and I sometimes make this recipe (leaving out the soba and nori) to drink on on cold days or whenever we're tired of our usual assortment of drinks.

As with all our recipes, we make no representation as to the authenticity of this recipe; in fact, from what we know, soba is most often eaten drained and dipped into small bowls of sauce.

Categories:

• recipe
• cooking
• japanese
• soup
• drink

Non-icy lassi

Nearly two years ago my SO and I posted our lassi recipe. While we love that recipe (and have made it dozens of times since posting it), we've noticed that we've never gotten a lassi like ours at an Indian restaurant. Instead, restaurant lassis are always smooth, and much frothier than our ice-based recipe (which is filled with ice particles and has almost no froth). Today we finally tried making lassi with cold water instead of ice, and the secret of non-icy lassis was revealed.

So, if you want a sweetened yogurt drink with lots of little ice particles in it to cool you off on a hot summer's day, try our ice-based lassi; if you instead want a light, airy lassi that isn't quite as cold, but may be more like what you've had at Indian restaurants, try this recipe. Since we enjoyed this lassi just as much as our ice-based one, it's this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

2 cups whole-milk plain yogurt (we use Trader Joe's "Cream Line")
7 tablespoons (scant 1/2 cup) sugar
3/4 cup cold water

1. Mix yogurt and sugar together in a blender.
2. Add water, and blend until well combined and frothy (~1 minute).
3. Serve.

This recipe is a modified version of our ice-based lassi.

[Updated February 2007 to change the proportions to better reflect what we're currently making. The old recipe was 1 1/2 cups whole-milk plain yogurt, 6 tablespoons sugar, and 1/2 cup cold water]

Categories:

• recipe
• cooking
• drink
• indian
• lassi

Very simple hot apple cider

The host of the Halloween party we just attended requested that people bring ethanol-based drinks; we wanted there to be an alternate available, so we made some hot apple cider. Hot apple cider is exceptionally easy to make, and since it's the season for cider, I thought I'd make it this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post.

2 gallons unfiltered apple juice or cider
3 3-inch sticks cinnamon

1. Pour the apple juice or cider into a large pot. Add the cinnamon sticks.
2. Heat over medium heat until the cider is a good drinking temperature.
3. Serve hot; we left a ladle in the pot, and the pot on the stove over low heat, throughout the party. The cinnamon flavor becomes stronger the longer you heat the cider, so fish out the cinnamon sticks if it starts to get too strong.

Notes: This recipe (obviously) depends on the quality of the apple juice, so buy the most flavorful available. Apple juice made from freshly pressed apples is the ideal, and a treat - we had it once at Longwood Gardens years ago, and have been craving it ever since. Our current favorite commercial apple juice is Trader Joe's unfiltered apple juice (sold in one-gallon jugs); it's the closest we've found to fresh-pressed apple juice.

This recipe is far simpler than many apple cider recipes, which often include cloves, extra sugar, and other ingredients. We prefer the simplicity of just cinnamon with good apple juice, but flavor to your own tastes; probably the most traditional ingredient we've left out is cloves.

Our cinnamon is very fresh; if you just have a five-year-old jar of cinnamon sticks, you might want to add a few more. If you don't have whole cinnamon sticks, substitute ground cinnamon -- we'd suggest adding a bit at a time and tasting to check the flavor.

Also, remember that we made this for a large party, so feel free to scale down the recipe (though leftover cider tastes good chilled as well).