So Cool, and So Very Cool, Too

In the immortal words of the rap singer Nelly, “It’s getting hot in here.” And in this kind of weather, really, who wants to cook hot food or eat hot food?

I am referring to “hot” in terms of temperature. Spicy food is different, of course. You want to eat spicy food in hot weather because it makes you sweat, and that cools you off (although ideally someone else should slave over the hot stove on your behalf; this is a job you should leave to the professionals).

You can eat cold cuts and salads and fruit, but that gets boring after a while. Even fresh, sweet, crisp summer corn and juicy tomato salads can get boring. 

That’s when it’s time to try something a little exotic and very cool (temperature-wise but also, you know, cool in the sense of hipster). My recommendation: cold Japanese noodles with a dipping sauce. 

Restaurants seem to favor soba noodles for dipping in cold sauce. Those are the kind of greenish/brownish noodles, made with buckwheat flour. They have a rough exterior texture, kind of similar to a cat’s tongue.

Certainly they are delicious and probably they are an authentic Japanese summer treat. But as you can probably tell from my description, they’re not my favorite noodle. 

I prefer the thin, delicate white noodles that are called somen (my daughter, who is more of an expert than I am on Japanese culture, pronounces it soo-men, with the accent on the second syllable).

The dipping sauce is kind of an inversion of that name, pronounced men-soo-you, with the accent on the middle syllable.

I have a recipe for the dipping sauce, below, but it’s actually easier to buy it by the bottle at Sharon Farm Market (which also  sells somen noodles). If there is more than one brand of sauce available, I’d say generally that you should buy the one with the shortest list of ingredients. 

To cook the somen, boil water in a deep saucepan. Don’t add salt or olive oil, as you might if you were making Italian pasta. When the water is at full boil, toss in one bundle of noodles for each person who will be eating (somen noodles come pre-bundled, with a little ribbon wrapped around each bundle). 

Let the water come back to a full boil, then turn off the heat and let the noodles sit in the water for one minute. Drain them in a collander and rinse them off with very cold water; throw a handful of ice cubes on top, too. You want to stop them from cooking.

I believe that some people serve their cold noodles in a bowl full of ice water. I usually just put them on a plate, with the dipping sauce in a small bowl on the side. To add flavor, grate some fresh ginger with a very fine microplane grater, so you end up with a little mountain of almost liquid ginger. Serve the ginger on the side.

I like to cut thin 1-inch strips of prepared, dried seaweed on top of the noodles. You have to do this at the absolute last minute or the seaweed will get soggy. 

It’s also nice to sprinkle sesame seeds and bits of chopped scallion on top of the noodles. I use both the green and the white parts of the scallion (and if you’ve bought really good fresh scallions with their roots on, and if you have a garden, plant the bottom of the scallion and it will regrow). 

You can serve the noodles with some cold leftover chicken or steak to make it more of a meal.  If you want, you can make vegetable tempura but that kind of defeats the purpose of making a cool meal. 

I personally almost never make dipping sauce if I can buy it, but if you feel ambitious, try this recipe from the Japanese Cooking 101 website (the how-to video is on YouTube at ).

The bonito flakes that the recipe calls for are common and easy to find, surprisingly. You can get them at Sharon Farm Market and at Guido’s. In the YouTube video, you will see that she uses the super big flakes, not the smaller ones that are such an important part of the iconic Japanese breakfast of tea and rice and pickles.

 Men tsuyu

1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/2 cup mirin (mirin is a kind of rice vinegar, you should be able to find it at Sharon Farm Market or Guido’s), 1/4 cup sake, a handful or two of fat shaved fish flakes.

Bring all the ingredients to a boil in a deep saucepan and then turn off the heat. Cover and let it cool completely. Strain out the flakes. You can store this in the refrigerator for several weeks. It is concentrated, so dilute it with one part sauce to two parts water.