Zaru Soba

In quest for a healthier lunch now that the healthfood store next door to my office has doubled its salad prices, I have decided to try cooking a little at lunchtime. Nothing major ie boiling soba noodles for zaru soba which I love.

I managed to find chasoba noodles at the Holland Village Cold Storage which come prepackaged into little serving sized bundles. I also managed to find tsuya which is the soy based dipping sauce for noodles and a tube of wasabi. I stuck religiously to buying only Japanese brands with ingredient labels in Japanese, and the odd sticker of English translations as to my dismay, any Korean or chinese or even some Singaporean brands have been adulterated to local tastes.

Chasoba is made from buckwheat and green tea so maybe it'll even help me stay awake after lunch instead of falling into a postlunch stupor. Soba is also rich in fibre and selenium and vitamin B...apparently it is the noodle of choice of health conscious Tokoyites.

I boiled this together with some Chinese watercress and rinsed it. And discovered that one rinse with tap water is insufficient to remove all the starchiness. I have a wonderful bottle of australian made organic brown rice miso which I added a tiny teaspoon of to the mixture as well as of course the dipping sauce and gobbled it all up in 5 minutes.

Taste-wise, I need to either go really pure and eat proper zaru soba or convert it into hiyashi noodles, as there's something missing or which doesn't quite gel although overall it's not bad. Hiyashi noodles however is usually made with ramen, though in the interests of experimentation, I can always try a soba version. Overall, I think what's missing is a bit of protien for both taste and nutrients so next time I should try some cold tofu dish topped with bonita flakes in some soy sauce or add slices of omelette and ham.

These however are strictly for alone eating. I don't think it's the sort of thing I'd inflict on anyone else other than myself for a quick working lunch.