Hi friends, let’s talk about pantry essentials today!
Other than the usual suspects of pasta and rice, I love to keep a variety of dried noodles in my pantry such as rice vermicelli, dried egg noodles, udon and soba. Noodles are versatile ingredients to work with. They are great in stir fry, salad as well as in soup and it doesn’t hurt that I am a huge fan of noodle dishes. 😉
Here is another type of noodles which has fallen out of my radar for a while – soba. The weather is warming up in Orange and I felt like having cold noodles for dinner. So I made an easy miso dressing which doubled as a marinate for the grilled tofu. Talk about killing two birds with one stone huh?
Some people may not like cold noodles, so this can be eaten warm as well as at room temperature, which means this is a great dish to bring to a potluck or a picnic. 🙂
Soba with Ginger-Miso-Maple Syrup Dressing topped with Grilled Tofu
What you’ll need for 4 servings:-
- 3 tbsps miso paste
- 1/2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
- 1.5 tbsp maple syrup
- 1/2 tbsp sesame oil
- 2 tbsps flavourless cooking oil
- 1 tbsp white vinegar
- 270g dried soba noodles
- 300g organic firm tofu, drained and sliced
- 1 stalk of spring onion (scallion), thinly sliced
- 2-3 chinese cabbage leaves (wombok), thinly sliced
- Chilli oil *optional*
Method:-
Add miso paste, ginger, maple syrup, sesame oil and cooking oil and whisk until smooth. Transfer 1/3 of the mixture to another bowl to be used as the tofu marinate. Set aside. Add white vinegar to the remaining 2/3 of miso mixture and whisk until smooth. Check for taste and adjust with more maple syrup and vinegar if you like.
Pat the tofu slices with kitchen towel until dry. Then using a teaspoon, lightly smear the miso marinate on both sides of the tofu slices and place on a preheated griddle. Grill until lightly charred over low-medium heat. While grilling the tofu, start cooking the soba noodles according to the packet instructions. Once the soba noodles are cooked to al dente, drain and rinse until cold running water to remove the starch and preventing the noodles from sticking together. If you like the noodles to be a little hot for consumption, run hot boiling water through the noodles again, which means you will need to undercook the noodles by 2 minutes off the recommended time.
Toss soba with the dressing and side aside. Once all the tofu slices have finished grilling, the dish is now ready.
To serve, divide the soba noodles equally on 4 plates and top with grilled tofu. Finally, scatter the sliced cabbage leaves and spring onions. Drizzle with some chilli oil if preferred.
So my dear friends, what are your pantry essentials?
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Ah I’ve been looking forward to my zarusoba with the impending summer! And I agree about pantry readiness. I have all the ingredients for this dish in my fridge/pantry now so I think I know what I’m having for dinner tomorrow!
this looks divine. i need to try cooking more asian recipes.
perhaps you can help a fellow food blogger out and vote for my mac n cheese in a recipe contest? i’d greatly appreciate it!! 🙂
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Voted! 🙂
Looks great, love noodles! Probably would have to change the tofu for pork to get hubby to eat it though since he is so fussy!
This looks soooo good. Now I’m really in the mood for anything sweet miso flavored.
Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Oh WOW! this looks amazing! Definitely be trying this out tonight! xx
Hi Rachel, I hope you will like the recipe. Happy cooking! Emily xx