From Zero to Miso Soba in Under Ten Minutes

Whether it is for breakfast, lunch or dinner, Miso Soba has a way of hitting the spot, and all the ingredients are available right in our neighborhood, mostly at Chang-Li Market. Here is a quick way to prepare a 4-cup bowl of miso soba, in under ten minutes. That's a full meal. Make some salad for an appetizer, and you're living like a king...

Here is more or less all you need, in terms of traditional ingredients, clock-wise, starting in the upper left, dried Shiitake mushrooms, Soba Noodles, Hijiki, Organic Red Miso, Bonito shavings, and dried sardines.

Traditional ingredients for Miso Soba

For today, we will assume that the Dashi, the soupstock is already made, and another time I will write about how to make it both the traditional way and the vegan way. I often make Dashi for the week.
For vegetables a good choice is daikon radish, and some scallions (2-3).

Quick preparation - makes a meal-sized bowl

Use a 2-cup and a 1-cup Pyrex measuring cup.

1. Boil a bundle of soba noodles in boiling water, ca. 7 minutes.
2. Soak a tablespoon of hijiki in some fresh water.
3. Grate about a cup of daikon, and cut up 2-3 scallions in thin slices.
4. Drain the hijiki when it starts to get soft.
5. Cut up a ca 4 Oz block of firm tofu in small cubes.
6. Put the drained hijiki, grated daikon, sliced scallions in the 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup, and fill up with filtered water. Microwave, covered, on high for 3 minutes.
7. Drain the hot vegetable water in the 1-cup Pyrex measuring cup, and dissolve a heaping tablespoon of miso (to taste) in it.
8. Pour the Dashi into the 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup, with the drained ingredients and microwave for 2 minutes (the dashi should not be brought to the boil, but it should be hot).
9. When the noodles are done, drain them with a colander into the large soup bowl, so that the water heats up the bowl.
10. Dump out the cooking water out of the hot bowl, put the soba noodles in it and add the contents of the 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup, and then add the well-dissolved miso from the 1-cup Pyrex measuring cup.

Voilà, you now have a 4-cup meal-size miso soba. You can tweak the taste with some tamari or some Bragg's Liquid Aminos (Chang Li carries it, and it has less sodium than low sodium soy sauce, plus it is healthy as all get out).