cook

Water ratio: 42%

Humidity: 55%

Water source: Volvic

Cooking time: 90 seconds counted by Carolina

Location: Paris, France

Hot soba with grilled Age tofu, seaweed,

wild asparagus and scallion toppings. 

For my five-day trip to Paris, I packed my suitcase with mostly soba making tools, not clothes. I promised my friends that I will make them soba. I hear about chefs traveling with their own knives. I am starting to do the same. I brought not only the soba cutting knife, but also buckwheat flour, a measuring cup, a scale, a cutting board, bonito flakes to make dashi, wasabi and some homemade dipping sauce

concentrate.   

The little   kitchen that could.

I arrived at my Brazilian friends, Andre and Carolina's apartment with two bags full of food and equipment. Carolina came downstairs to help me carry the stuff up to the fourth floor. I panted up the stairs. Carolina told me about the ninety year old woman who lives on the 3rd floor of this apartment building. She does the stairs twice a day. Amazing. 

Andre and Carolina greeted me with great music and ambience.  I knew right then that we will were in for a fun evening.  

Kneading the dough on the counter. Wild asparagus are

cooking next to me.

Their kitchen was equipped with an electric stove, the kind that you are not sure if the heat source is on or not. I was concerned if the heat source would be hot enough to boil the noodles, but Andre gave me an instant solution. We used the electric water kettle to boil the water, and transferred it to the pot. You make do with what you have, and we did fine.

For starters, I served Tunisian tuna sashimi with grated wasabi.  The sashimi was tender, the flavor was good. We wrapped the sashimi with shiso leaves and ate it like a taco. There was also blanched baby spinach seasoned with roasted ground sesame salt (made by Andre and Carolina). A spicy sauteed carrots with Thai chili peppers. It was nearly a vegan night. Andre was supposed to make a vegetable and goat cheese frittata but the eggs never it out the fridge.

Cold soba served with a variety of seaweeds, dill,

chives, grated daikon and wasabi.

We made two types of soba - cold and hot. One like a salad, the other like a soup. They both tasted delicious. I garnished the noodles with some seaweed, chopped dill, and chives. This is deviating from the classic Japanese dish, which is served plain, but I couldn't resist the beautiful herbs I found at the market this morning. I am sure basil, chervil, parsely will also go well with soba, but if you want to enjoy the fragrance of the soba first, serve the herbs on the side.

Andre and Carolina loved the soba. Andre was preferred the Hot soba. Carolina loved both. For thirds, we had another round of hot soba. They said soba tasted pure, that it was exactly the kind of food they liked to eat.  That's what I love to hear. We talked about starting a buckwheat farm in Brazil.  Wouldn't that be cool? I am going.

We ate strawberries and chocolate for dessert. Yummy, evening. Beautiful friends.

Merci beaucoup. A bientot.