so-min champuru

The other day, I was looking in my pantry and realized I had a lot of somen to use and thought I could make champuru with it.

In Okinawan, so-min (soh-mean) means somen (angel hair pasta-like noodle). Champuru means "stir-fry".

The Okinawan cookbooks that I have, had some recipes for so-min champuru but they looked rather "plain" and colorless...

So, I jazzed it up with some colorful veggies...

So-min Champuru : serves 2
1 bundle of somen
cabbage
orange bell pepper
maitake
spam
pepper
olive oil

Cook your somen no longer than a minute and a half, rinse and set aside.
Cut veggies and spam into bite size pieces
In a frying pan, heat oil and stir-fry veggies and spam, if you want your cabbage a little softer, cook longer.
Add some pepper
Toss the somen in and coat well.
Serve

NOTES: so easy and delicious. I didn't add any salt because I was using spam, but if you want, you could add some shoyu or salt. Definitely will be making this again.

cool

Saw this on a commercial...make some somen then chill it.

The best way to chill it is, after cooking the somen, rinse it in some ice water. If you chill it in the refridge, you'll end up with a clump of somen...not pretty, plus you'll still need to use water to separate it.

In a bowl, top your somen with some shiofuki konbu (seaweed that is seasoned then dried), some green onion (I added chopped okra because I didn't have green onion), and if you have some shaved bonito add some of that too (I was too lazy to look for some in my pantry).

Then for the "soup", add some chilled mugicha (barley tea), I used some chilled bancha (roasted green tea).

When the shiofuki konbu mixes with the tea, it gives just enough saltiness to the dish.

Simple, cool...lunch!

chill!

I told you about writing in blue to create a "cool" image.

Well, in the Summer, the Japanese also put their "cool" foods into clear, glass dishes.

By putting the food into a clear glass dish, they create an "icy" feeling. Some restaurants also put the dishes into the refrig to really chill it.

Last night's dinner was reisei somen. Reisei means "chilled", somen is like a Japanese angel hair pasta, although it is a little salty. I used this recipe, but used whatever veggies I had in the refrig (okra, bell pepper, cucumber, red onion & tomato). If you do use somen, do not salt the water you will be boiling the noodles in.

Hope you are keeping cool where you are...have a nice weekend!

kitsune udon (actually somen)

Remember the junkie somen (Japanese vermicelli) that I bought recently? Well, I figured out that it wasn't the somen, it was me. I didn't have the water at a rolling boil when I cooked it the last time. These noodles are a bit thicker than the somen that I am used to and seem more like udon (wheat noodle).

For lunch yesterday, I made kitsune udon(actually somen). Kitsune means fox. The reason this dish is called kitsune udon is that an old legend once said that foxes love to eat aburage (fried tofu). Plus, kitsune-iro is also a brown, amber color that you look for when cooking things, I guess "it should be as brown as a fox"? Kitsune udon is one of the top 3 food items that should be eaten when visiting Osaka, in order, #1 takoyaki, #2 okonomiyaki and #3 kitsune udon.

I bought a piece of aburage. It comes thin or thick, cut or uncut. I bought the thin and uncut.

Cut the piece of aburage into triangles, it is up to you as to the size. The piece I bought was about 8 inches long, so I made it into 4 triangles.

Then run hot water over the pieces. This is to get rid of the oil coating on the aburage.

Put the aburage into a pot that all the pieces will be able to lay flat in. (If you don't have a pot large enough, you'll have to turn the pieces around every so often.)
Add 1.5 tablespoons of shoyu (soy sauce) and 7 or 8 tablespoons of mirin (sweet rice wine).

Bring the mixture with the aburage, up to a boil and put an oshibuta (drop lid) on top. (If you don't have a drop lid, you can make one with foil--make it a little smaller than the diameter of the pot and put two holes in the middle, it should kind of look like a pig's snout.)

Turn down the heat to simmer for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, the sauce should have reduced quite a bit and should kind of be thick, like caramel. And the aburage will be a little plump, this is because it soaked in a lot of the sauce.

Cook your udon according to the package. Rinse the udon after cooking.

Get your tsuyu (soup) ready. I used a pre-made concentrated one that needed to be diluted with water. The pre-made stuff can be a bit on the salty side, but it is easy to use. You can dilute it with cold water for cool noodle dishes and hot/warm water for warm noodle dishes.

Add your cooked udon, and aburage, chopped green onions and some shichimi (Japanese 7-pepper spice) to the tsuyu.

Lunch is served!

p.s. If you have leftover aburage, you can keep it for a couple of days in the refrig to make kitsune udon again, just zap to heat it or warm it up in your soup before serving. You can also make this dish with soba (buckwheat noodles) instead of udon, which would then make it kitsune soba.

somen salad...semi-failure

Today was a really nice day, but REALLY warm. At least it wasn't humid (which is a word you will be hearing until you get sick of it in the up and coming months), still it was kind of summery.

I wanted to make something kind of "cool" for dinner tonight, so I made somen salad. I've made it before and posted about it here.

I found another recipe for somen salad in a cookbook my mom gave me recently which was written by her classmate, Jean Watanabe Hee.

The reason this salad was a semi-failure was because I bought a different type of somen. I bought the cheaper of all the somen on the shelf and ended up with a really junk texture of noodle, in fact after cooking it, it had all this numeri (slime) on it. Even after washing it, you could see the strings of slime...blah.

Still, I wasn't going to throw it out (although I was tempted to). Here is the recipe for the salad, if you'd like to give it a try. It is a little different from the recipe I posted before.

Somen Salad from "Hawaii's Best Salads, Sides & Soups"
1 package somen (8 oz) noodle broken in half and cooked according to package directions
1 small head iceberg lettuce, shredded
1 bunch Chinese parsley, chopped (optional)
3 stalks green onion, finely chopped
1 cucumber, julienned
1 kamaboko (6 oz) thinly sliced and cut into thin strips
3 eggs, beaten and fried, thinly sliced into 2-inch strips
1/4 pound char siu or ham, thinly sliced

Dressing:
1 tablespoon roasted sesame seeds
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/4 cup oil

Layer salad ingredients in orlder isted in 9 x 13 inch pan. Refrigerate. Combine dressing ingredients and shake well. Serve salad in individual portions and pour desired amount of dressing over.

NOTES: I only had kurogoma (black sesame seeds), so that is what I used. If you can't find these veggies where you are, use what you have on hand. I don't usually buy iceberg lettuce, so I used what I had--bib lettuce.

la festa al fresco-updated

I was so excited when my friend, Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice invited me to her wonderful pot-luck party called La Festa al Fresco.

Since the party is celebrating the summer's bounty, everyone needs to bring a dish featuring a fresh summer ingredient. Although, Toronto is already starting to have cooler weather (lucky guys!), it is still very hot & humid here in Japan.

I thought about what to make and I decided to make somen salad. Somen is an ingredient which I posted about recently here. This salad is really easy to make and can often be found at pot-luck parties in Hawaii.

Here's the recipe: Somen Salad, serves 6-8 adapted from "80 years of 4-H cooking in Hawaii" pages 30 & 31.
Ingredients:
1 pkg. somen
1 head lettuce, chopped fine
1 cucumber, slivered
2 eggs, scrambled
1/4 lb. char siu, slivered
1/2 pkg. kamaboko (7 oz.), slivered
1/4 lb. ham, slivered
3 stalks green onion, chopped

Sauce:
1 T. sesame seeds
1/2 c. shoyu
1/4c. sugar
1/4c. vinegar
1/4c. sesame oil

Cook noodles according to package directions, rinse and drain. Mix sauce ingredients together. Chill. To serve, place somen on a large platter. Garnish with remaining ingredients. Pour sauce over salad just before serving.

Notes: Char siu, is a chinese roasted pork. If you can't get this ingredient, just use ham or shredded chicken. I didn't have either, so didn't put any into the salad.

Sometimes somen comes bound in little bundles, like this. When you buy your somen, you can either make the whole package or a couple of bundles depending on how many people you are feeding. For 2 people, I only used 1 bundle.


Kamaboko, is a fish cake paste that is steamed onto a board or bamboo rod. If you have ever had a hard time taking the kamaboko off of the board, run the back-side of your knife (the dull side) down in between of the kamaboko and the board and it will come off the board really clean!

You can use whatever veggies are available in your area--or like! I added more types of veggies than what the recipe called for.

Enjoy!

p.s. check out Cream Puffs' site on September 5, when she posts all the foods brought to the party! I can't wait!

Update: I forgot to mention that the party is being hosted by Ivonne and Lis of La Mia Cucina (sorry Lis!)