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The Noodle 100 · make it at home

Cold zaru soba with dipping sauce

25 min (plus 30 min to cool the sauce) · 2

The purest noodle: buckwheat, cooked briefly, chilled, and dipped in a dashi-soy sauce. In winter the same noodles go into hot broth (kake soba).

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The real one

You need

• 200 g (7 oz) dried soba (at least 50% buckwheat) or fresh soba
• For the tsuyu: 250 ml (1 cup) water, 5 g (5 cm square) kombu, 10 g (a big handful) bonito flakes, 60 ml (1/4 cup) soy sauce, 60 ml (1/4 cup) mirin
• To serve: 2 scallions finely sliced, wasabi, grated daikon (optional), a sheet of nori, cut in strips

How to make it

1. Tsuyu (15 min + cooling): Soak the kombu in the water 10 minutes, then heat until just before it boils and remove it. Add the bonito, simmer 1 minute, strain. Add the soy and mirin, bring to a boil, and chill.
2. Cook (5 min): Boil the soba in plenty of water, stirring at first, for the time on the pack, usually 4 to 5 minutes for dried. Add a splash of cold water if it foams up.
3. Chill (2 min): Drain into a colander and rinse under cold running water, rubbing the noodles between your hands to wash off the starch, then plunge in ice water. Drain well.
4. Serve: Pile on a bamboo tray or plate, scatter nori, and serve with cups of tsuyu, scallions and wasabi to stir in. Dip, then slurp.

Tips

• Save the cooking water (soba-yu); pour it into the leftover sauce at the end and drink it.
• Hot version: dilute the tsuyu with 3 parts hot dashi and pour over hot noodles.

Chef Amazing's own home version, in our words; not any shop's recipe.