Summertime And The Feeling Is Soba

Cold soba on a hot summer day with deliciously savory and refreshingly sour tsuyu cascading down your throat is amazing! When you pair it with little tomatoes and fried eggplant it’s even better. Check out below how to make the broth for this cold soba dish and the fried eggplant or agenasu:

Ingredients

Dry Soba Noodles 1 package

Small Eggplant 5

Soy Sauce 5 tbs

Rice Vinegar 5 tbs

Cooking Sake 2 tbs

Mirin 2 tbs

Dashi Powder (Ajinomoto) 3 tsp

Green Onion 2 stalks chopped

Ginger 3 tbs minced

Ok, first start off by making the tsuyu. You will need to cook it because of the alcohol content from the sake. In a sauce pan bring the soy sauce, sake, mirin and dashi to a boil. When it has boiled for a few minutes let it cool off before serving. Next go ahead and cool your soba noodles. You can place the finished noodles on top of ice cubes in a colander while you make the dressing which you’ll need to use when you fry the eggplant and also when you plate your dish.

The dressing is simple and uses the tsuyu sauce you made earlier. Separate the tsuyu into two bowls. One of the bowls will be used for the agenasu after frying. Mix the remaining bowl with the vinegar, ginger and green onions and place on top of ice cubes for further cooling.

Agenasu is great with cool noodle dishes. Mainly because of it’s yummy fried flavor that doesn’t weigh down a cold summer dish. You will need buy smaller eggplant from an Asian or Arabic market or cut American gigantor eggplant into smaller pieces. After you halve or cube the eggplant, criss cross the outside of the skin to help the frying process and enable it to absorb the juices you’ll add later. Fry the eggplant, without coating it, in regular vegetable or cooking oil. As you take out the fried eggplant place them in a pan with the tsuyu you separated from the dressing above.

You don’t necessarily have to plate the noodles using the dressing. You can keep them in individual bowls for people to dip as they eat. You can garnish with mini tomatoes, extra green onion, or my favorite, natto. Again, this is a summer dish that makes your entire body refreshed and cool so you can battle another humid Japanese summer day or any summer day, for that matter. Check it out and let it take you to a waterfall of flavor!