I visited Japan a few years back and got to eat plenty of nice sushi and even try Kobe beef. Strangely I had one of my biggest culinary discoveries on the flight over there. When I entered my flight, I didn’t even realize that I had been upgraded to business class until I stood there staring at something that looked more like a comfortable living room chair than an airline seat. So I got to spend the overnight flight in comfort and being served delicious teasers of Japanese food. What I remember the most is the soup I got for breakfast and not just because I got a soup for breakfast! Thick, soft noodles in delicious fish broth. I wrote down the name and was set on buying the ingredients needed to make this soup with such delicious noodles.
Entering the supermarket was a huge culture shock. There was almost nothing there that looked remotely familiar except some slobs of meat (and who knows it might have been horse) and everything was labeled in Japanese only. Thankfully I managed to google some photos and got a help from a colleague that knew a little bit of Japanese. So in the end I went home with a suitcase full of strange ingredients and some wooden eating sticks. I still make this soup regularly and no matter how much I make my fiance always seems to find space for all of it. Our little daughter loves it as well!
Silja eats Japanese
I wont claim this is authentic but this is something I adapted from few recipes I found online that I unfortunately no longer have the links to. The soup is about the simplest thing to make but timing all the tempura frying is trickier. This is my approach.
Udon soup with Tempura
3 x 90 gr dried Udon noodles
Soup ingredients
700 ml water
1 tsp dashi
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp mirin
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
Tempura flour mixture
3 full tbsp flour
1 1/2 dl cold water
Salt
Tempura vegetables
1/2 eggplant, sliced
12 scampi
1/2 bell pepper, sliced
1/4 onion, sliced
Sprinking
Spring onions, chopped.
Slice your eggplant and lay the eggplant slices on plates and sprinkle salt on top of them. Let them lay there until they start sweating. Chop the onions and bell peppers.
Mix all the soup ingredients in a pot. Bring to boil and set aside.
Mix the tempura flour mixture together. I recommend shaking it in a jar.
Put on water to cook the noodles. Follow instructions on Udon package.
Heat sunflower oil on high heat. Pat the eggplant slices dry and dip in the tempura flour mixture. Heat the sunflower oil on max heat and fry the eggplant until they are golden on both sides. It is usually smart to put the heat down a notch but you need to keep it pretty hot. Dip the onions and bell peppers and at last the scampi into the tempura flour mixture and fry them.
Now the noodle water should be boiling so cook the Udon noodles according to the description on the package. When done quickly drain them and pour some cold water over them.
Serve by pouring some soup into bowls, adding noodles in there and some tempura on the top. Sprinkle with spring onions and eat with wooden sticks. Slurping is allowed!
Udon with Tempura
Norway shopping tips: Last time I checked it was possible to get the ingredients for this at Japantorget (store at Majorstua). A-market downtown Oslo also has some of the things (at least the noodles). Udon noodles are sold both dried and fresh.
