lamb, miso

Dried mushrooms resemble fresh mushrooms hardly at all. Rehydrated, their texture is completely off. They're tough chewy little bastards and that is something one simply must learn to love. Their flavor is outstanding, concentrated from being abused that way. The soaking liquid is a flavor asset to the final soup or sauce.

It is perfectly fine to use Western-stye noodles for an Asian-style dish. Ming Tsai said so and that's good enough for me. Asians have wheat noodles too, dontchano.

Miso and water makes a great broth right there. Miso plus some kind of prepared stock is an improvement. Miso + stock + rummaging around for flavor punches =  soup broth extraordinaire. These are the punches pulled here:

* saki, a quick splash because I'm very moderate that way, and by quick splash I mean, glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug glug.

Kidding.

* shoyu, 醤 = sauce,  油 = oil, but together 醤油 = soy sauce. It is one of those odd language things that one accepts.  For instance, another odd thing that must be accepted is the following phrase:

 "I buried the old."

Seen all the time in formulaic funerary phrases that laud the behavior of the venerated deceased, along the lines, "I gave food to the hungry and clothed the naked. I buried the old and I did no wrong against people. I did not speak evil to my superiors and I put the low at ease." That sort of thing. But seriously, buried the old? That's just wrong. Hardly something to brag about.

Where was I? Flavor punches.

* Mirin. The sweet kind, not the icky kind.  Once I bought a bottle of mirin, took one taste and threw the whole thing away. I'll never make that mistake again. All these things in roughly equal parts; saki, soy, mirin. I considered adding fish sauce too, which is fermented anchovy and water, but decided against it.

* Black pepper. It needed heat, but I decided against any of a vast array of chile peppers available on hand in various forms. Left all those out just to be different for once.  Besides, I had charred red sweet pepper already included with the vegetables.

* Ginger and Garlic.

The rest is all scrounged vegetables, singed with olive oil in the same pot the noodles were cooked. Singing vegetables is my new thing. It makes me feel out-doorsy, uncultured, and rough. Plus I get to turn the burner to high. It's electric. I like to see it go red.

Could have used cabbage but didn't have anything like that.  Except for kimchi, which would have added heat and acid, but the texture of kimchi is not what I was looking for in this.

[Photography. Know what I should have done? Drizzle olive oil over the noodles so they'd glisten. Looking at that photo now, the noodles appear lifeless, not exactly dead, but not alive. As the Italians say, "to make it smile." If I were professional, I'd have to kick my ass for that oversight. Also keep at it until I got a shot that showed both the liquid surface of the broth and light passing through at least one piece of cilantro. For depth, for texture, and for ART.]