Tempura, Udon and Soba
Originally posted on May 13th, 2014.
On the short trip with two of my friends from Ewha to Osaka and Kyoto we had a lot of Udon, Soba and Tempura especially in Kyoto.
Udon are thick wheatflour noodles which are served hot or cold in a soup base on dried bonito flakes or kombu which is called Dashi. If you want to know the historical and nutritional background of Dashi and Umami you can read more about it in my post from last year.
Udon can be combined with many ingredients like here with deep fried tofu called Aburaage, fish cake and black fungus. Or also with a variety of Tempura. Tempura are usually vegetables, meat or seafood which are coated with a special cold tempura batter which is then deep fried. By that Tempura becomes gets it's unique fluffy and crispy texture. The Tempura Udon I tried was included topped with prawn, eggplant, sesame leaf, kinoko yaki a japanese mushroom, carrot and pumpkin Tempura. It was really delicious and don't you also think that this Tempura Udon bowl looks like a piece of art?
Tempura can be also eaten with Soba. Here I tried cold buckwheat Zaru Soba with Tempura. The way to eat it is you take some of the Soba (with your chopsticks) and let it dive into the chilled Soba tsuyu. Tsuyu is based on dashi, sweetened soy sauce and mirin.
Kitsune soba is a hot soba dish and topped with aburaage. This one was my friend's favorite. 😄 My other friend ordered Kaktitama Soba which is a hot Soba variation topped with eggdrop.
Near the Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine we had lunch at a very nice small restaurant. Here I had the best Soba I tried so far! Comment on Otbover 13th, 2024: It is to this day the best Soba dish I had. Will try to eat it someday again.
It was a special kind of Tsuke Soba. This dish was served with Zaru Soba garnished with seaweed stripes and chili strands. Also there was fish powder which you sprinkled on the chilled Soba. This tsuyu was a real taste adventure! It was cooked with slightly fatty beef meat and added with sesame, tenkasu bits of deep-fried tempura batter, thinly sliced fresh green onion and some sort of Japanese mushroom. I "bathed" the with fish powder, seaweed, chili strands sticked on Soba into the tsuyu. *puuuh* There nothing else to say... just try to find this Tsuke Soba and experience yourself!!!
