Enjoy!

December 21, 2009

Soba with Soft Boiled Eggs & Veggies

What's for lunch? Soba + fixings!

Soba with Soft Boiled Eggs, Sugar Snap Peas, Pickled Cucumber

Savory, Sweet, Salty, and Tasty

No work this week means that I have more time to cook! This morning R sent me a great video of Jean-Georges and his team making some fresh soba noodles. So for lunch, I was inspired to make some soba noodles myself. Not fresh soba, of course (I don't have the space or skills for that challenge!) Instead, I thought that it would be a good time to try some more recipes from my Momofuku cookbook.

One of my favorite dishes from my dinner at Momofuku Ko last year was the soft-cooked hen egg with caviar, onions and potatoes. The best element was definitely that soft, gooey soft-boiled egg. Surprisingly, it's quite simple and fast to make. The difficult part was just peeling them perfectly, since the white and yolk were still very soft. I made six eggs to ensure that at least two were photographable. (David Chang notes that he boils a dozen, hoping for eight perfect ones for the dish.)

To add a bit of color to the dish, I blanched some sugar snap peas and made some pickled cucumbers. The snap peas came out perfectly crisp and subtly sweet. The pickling brine was also very simple- just boiling water, rice wine vinegar, sugar, and Kosher salt. David Chang suggested to pickle them for awhile (3-4 days) to achieve maximum flavor, but they are edible immediately. I couldn't wait, so I added them to my soba at the very end.

I think the next time when I make this, I want to try some more strongly pickled veggies or mushrooms. While everything tasted great, I wish that there could've been a bit more of a sour kick.

More pics can be found here.

*** Later this evening ***

I remade this dish for B with a few variations. I added some sautéed shiitake mushroom slices and chicken/apple sausage. It didn't help add any sourness, but definitely some more textures and flavors for the soba noodles to play with. The pickled cucumbers also have a lot more flavor, although I'm not so sure that I completely like it. It might be due to the rice wine vinegar that I used...

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