Udon Noodle Soup
new beginnings
Udon Noodle Soup
The last few weeks have felt like I went from zero to sixty overnight. Between the permanent closing of the restaurant to the relaunch of my Urban Hotdog Collective food truck I haven’t found a minute to slow down.
A light spring snow is falling this morning and although I have a lot to do I wanted to get back to my writing for a few minutes and put together this beautiful soup to nourish me and get me through the day. I’ve been thinking about this Udon noodle soup for weeks ever since I made a trip to the asian market. It is really quite simple and I start by making Dashi which is a Japanese soup stock made from kombu seaweed and bonito flakes (dried, fermented fish flakes)
Ingredients:
- 4 cups dashi
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine)
- 1 tablespoon sake (Japanese rice wine)
- 8 ounces udon noodles (fresh or dried)
- Toppings of your choice: I added some duck confit meat, green onion, shiitake mushrooms, bell pepper, sesame and fresh cilantro. I also suggest adding a six minute boiled egg
Instructions:
1. In a pot, bring the dashi to a simmer over medium heat.
2. Add soy sauce, mirin, and sake to the dashi and stir to combine.
3. Cook the udon noodles according to the package instructions. If using fresh noodles, they may only need a few minutes; if using dried noodles, they may take longer.
4. Once the noodles are cooked, drain them and divide them among serving bowls.
5. Ladle the hot dashi broth over the noodles in each bowl.
6. Add your desired toppings to each bowl.
7. Serve hot and enjoy your udon noodle soup with dashi
Enjoy this delightful soup on this chilly spring weekend. I have lots more to share and will get back to more of my culinary adventures soon.
Chef Paolo
Udon is my favorite dish Paolo -- how did you know? Great comfort food. -- Love and health to you and yours -- Tam
I just re-read this poem Tam ….
From:
JOURNEY CAKE
Finding the meal handy for long journeys, we called the cakes it made "journey cakes."
Tam Lin Neville
If she were to remember this room with is soap and tub, years from now when her burly body and dun-colored wings grace the ladderless rungs of heaven, the bulb would still burn all night and specks of exhausted insects rain down on the sink in the room that she kept, the room of her lifetime with its strange nocturnal habits,
somnambulant days, nights that went to perform landings she never got right,
leaving the dust of her wings on the sill, the soap, the lip of the tub, any ledge she could see or smell.
The way we tell someone's story: she lived, she died, she has gone to heaven-I want to ask, Can I say this? and not wait for an answer.
Her milky wings have carried her and she alights.
A rung, as though the clouds were beaded.
The volume of all those days shut with a whisper, a hum, its pages like snow
drifting closer to the sun on a cloudless day.
All those nights I did not know her, she has remembered these as only the beginning.