It's alive!

Hello!
I guess this blog kind of died as I got more and more busy in school... No worries, I've got my CAS under control!

Anyways, school is nearly over now, I just finished my end of term (mock) exams and only have a few essays to write before I've got two months of freedom. Today was a day off from school as well, Christian holidays and all that, so I entertained myself by trying to make a Japanese dish that one of my friends recommended to me. Using ingredients sent to me by Annie (I promise I'll send you the box of goodies soon!), I conquered the kitchen with the fishy odours of Japanese cooking.

Here are the results (don't mind the messy table!):


This is zarusoba with soba tsuyu, in addition to green tea and some miso soup. It is, basically, cold buckwheat noodles (in the middle) which you dip in soba tsuyu (a dipping sauce, the brown liquid in the cup). Although I had no zaru to hold the soba, I had most everything else. I made the miso soup because I had leftover dashi from the soba tsuyu, and it would be a shame to waste it!

It was very tasty, though I think I made too much soba for only me... Nobody else dared to or wanted to try it :<
For anyone who might be interested, here is the recipe I made, adapted a bit from what I found at http://japanesefood.about.com

Soba tsuyu

• 250 ml dashi

• 50 ml soy sauce

• 50 ml mirin

• Finely chopped spring onion (or other topping of your choosing)

1. Put mirin in a sauce pan and heat.

2. Add soy sauce and dashi soup stock in the pan and bring to a boil.

3. Stop the heat. Cool the sauce.

4. Add the spring onion/topping

Zaru soba

• 100g soba noodles

• 1 liter water

1. Boil the water, and then add the soba into the boiling water.

2. Turn down the heat and stir gently with chopsticks (or anything you are comfortable with using; I find chopsticks easier and more fun for this!)
   

3. Drain and cool in cold water.

4. Gently wash noodles and drain well.

Miso soup

• 250 ml dashi

• 1 tablespoon miso paste
  

• finely chopped spring onion (optional)
  

• tofu and wakame in small pieces (optional)

1. Boil the dashi.

2. (Add tofu and soften it, add wakame)

3. Turn down the heat. Use a small bit of the boiling dashi and dissolve miso in it.

4. Gradually add the dashi/miso back into the pot. (Don't boil the soup after this!)
   

5. Add spring onion. VOILA

Next time maybe I will try to make something else, like nikujaga or gyuudon.
That is all for now!

-HM