Lunch/Dinner Recipe 5: Japanese Inspired Soba Noodle Salad

Soba noodles are made of buckwheat and work well for a slightly Japanese inspired dish (most of you will probably know it from some Japanese soups). As with pasta, make sure that the product you buy is actually made of 100% buckwheat. I was just rummaging through my pantry and found a pack of 'Brown Rice Udon noodles' where 50% of the ingredients was wholewheat flour!

As you will see on the back of the packaging, soba noodles should be rinsed in cold water after being boiled and they thus lend themselves quite well for a salad.

Serving 4
250 g soba noodles boiled as per instructions on the packaging
100 g edamame beans, steamed (if you have trouble sourcing these you can use broad beans or peas instead)
250-300 g shitake mushrooms, sauteed (see below)
1 tblsp fresh ginger, finely chopped
1-2 tblsp toasted sesame seed oil
250-300 g firm tofu, griddled and cut into small squares
1 tblsp Furikake (Japanese seasoning - see picture at the end of the post) containing black and white sesame seeds, nori seaweed and red shiso leaves). If you can't source Furikake then it can be substituted with nori seaweed in small pieces.
4 spring onions, finely sliced (I use the white part and a little bit of the lower green part)
A bit of lime juice
Herbamare

Dressing
3-4 tblsp toasted sesame seed oil
1-2 tblsp lime juice
1 tblsp fresh ginger, grated
2 tsp honey
Herbamare

Tofu
Start with the tofu as that needs to 'drain' on some paper towel before you griddle it. Cut the 'brick' into slices that are about 1 cm thick. Place the slices on paper towel and pad paper towel on top of the slices to drain it. You may need to change the paper towel 2-3 times to get enough liquid out of the tofu or it will burn too much when you griddle it. You can leave it on the paper towel while you do some of the other processes. When you get going with griddling the tofu, make sure the pan is very hot before you put them on. Turn them after a few minutes when you can see that the griddle marks are dark brown and repeat on the other side. When they are finished cut them into smaller squares to mix into the salad.

The griddled tofu

Sauteed Shitake Mushroom
Wash and cut your shitake mushrooms. Put 1 tblsp of toasted sesame seed oil into a hot non-sticky frying pan and heat it up a bit before you put in the chopped ginger and shortly thereafter the shitake mushrooms. Lower the heat to medium and cook them for 7-10 minutes and season with a squeeze of lime juice and some Herbamare.

Dressing
Mix ginger, toasted sesame seed oil and lime-juice and season with honey and Herbamare until it has a well-rounded taste.

To serve
I first mix the cold, drained soba noodles with the dressing to give them a good coating. Thereafter I add all the other ingredients leaving a bit of Furikake seasoning and spring onion to dress with at the end.