On this beautiful Saturday in Miami I started off my morning with a large bowl of greek yogurt mixed with bananas, mangoes, and granola. It was a perfect and refreshing start to what turned into a relaxing day at the beach, complete with frozen mixed drinks at a bar right on the ocean. After returning from the beach, showering, and relaxing with some good Netflix movies (I recommend Something’s Gotta Give), all I wanted to do was to have some warm comfort food to finish off the evening. Hot soba was therefore the answer.
Soba is a thin Japanese style noodle made from buckwheat flour, giving it a slightly heartier texture than an italian spaghetti. It has become a much more popular noodle in fusion cooking, especially in “soba salads”. To make the soup for my hot noodles, I used a noodle soup base called Yamaki Mentsuyu that is made from a combination of soy sauce, sweet cooking wine, sugar, and dried bonito fish flakes. I used a 1:3 ratio of soup base to water, brought it to a boil, and stirred in some fresh spinach and a beaten egg. Unfortunately I had to do this entire procedure in a deeper saucepan instead of a pot since I have so few pots here.
I assembled the soup by topping the cooked noodles with the hot soup base complete with the now cooked egg and spinach. Normally this dish would have used a sprinkling of Japanese spices called togarashi. Although I didn’t have the togarashi today, just the smell and taste of a bowl of soba was able to warm me up perfectly just like any good comfort food does.