Cold Sōmen

I usually eat Sōmen (そうめん) or Zaru Soba (ざるそば) when the weather is hot and have no appetite for hot food. My mom used to scream at me, saying that eating cold food is not good for the stomach and so on. I didn't want to rebuke her but erm.. what about cold drinks and ice cream? Ahah.. Anyhow, to me, eating cold noodles in a hot afternoon is the best, cools the whole body down.

Sōmen are noodles made of wheat flour I have only encountered it in dry, noodle stick form. They are usually eaten cold with a dipping sauce made out of dashi stock and shoyu. Serving it can be very simple, just some grated ginger and spring onions. Or you can choose to add some form of protein and fibre to the meal. In this case, I chose some shredded egg omelette, pan fried salmon and pickled seaweed.

There is another interesting way of eating sōmen. The noodles are cooked and placed in a long flume of bamboo, alleviated at an angle. They will run ice cold water in this flume and as the noodles flow along, you are supposed to catch them. By doing this, not only it is fun, the noodles are also cooled by the time you caught them. They called it 'Flowing Sōmen' or 'Nagashi Sōmen" (流しそうめん). To know more, please go to this site.

For Dipping Sauce (prepare beforehand)
300 ml Dashi stock
100ml Shoyu
60ml Mirin
1 tsp Sugar

Method
In a saucepan, mix and heat up the mixture. Leave aside to cool.

For the noodles, just boil in the water. When cooked, rinse with cold water and drain them with a colander. Rinse in cold water again, check if the water is murky. Once it is clear (usually 2 rinse will do the job), you can actually leave the noodles in the cold water. However, since I am bringing this to work, I drain the noodles dry (I added some oil when I boiled the noodles to avoid them sticking together).

An easy and simple meal to put together!

Happy cooking!~ それじゃ～～