Soba Noodles with Chicken

Grossman and I are trying to eat healthier (the Red Velvet Cupcakes and butter has kind of made us soft and lumpy), so I thought I’d try a new recipe.  I had some soba noodles on hand so last night I gave them a go.

Soba Noodles with Chicken

2 1/2 T. soy sauce
1 T. honey
Rice vinegar to taste
Sesame Oil (a few shakes)
3 or 4  boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 package of soba noodles
1 qt low-sodium chicken broth
1 T. lemon juice
1 1/2 cups mung bean sprouts
4 or 5 scallions, minced
Pickled ginger (optional)

Combine 1 1/2 T soy sauce, honey, rice vinegar, and sesame oil in a bowl and mix well.  Add in the chicken thighs.  Let them marinate for about 10 minutes.

Heat a skillet over medium-high heat and add the thighs and marinade.  Saute for about 5-6 minutes till done.  Remove from heat and set aside.

Bring 4 quarts of water to boil in a large pot.

While that’s coming up to a boil, make the broth.  Combine the chicken broth, 1 T. soy sauce, and lemon juice in a saucepan over medium-high heat.  Get it to an almost-but-not-quite-boiling point and keep it there.

While the broth is “simmering”, add a few pinches of salt to the boing water and then add in the soba noodles.  Cook for about 5 minutes or till al dente.  Drain and rinse under cold water.

Assemble!  Put some noodles in a bowl, put some chicken on top, sprinkle with mung beans, scallions, and ginger, and ladle some broth over it all.  Eat!

Just a note, Grossman wasn’t a huge fan of the soba noodles.  I liked it, but I like him more, so next time I’ll do rice vermicelli instead of soba.

Also, the chicken with the marinade was good eatin’.  It would be really good served with rice or on top of a salad.  We had a lot of noodles left over so I’m going to try a cold soba noodle salad thing today.

Vietnamese Cold Noodle Salad

This is one of my favorite dishes ever, and since moving away from Los Angeles in 2006, one I’ve had to learn how to make on my own. See, when we lived in LA, we’d just jet on over to this place around the corner called Le Saigon and order “two #8s and a 13″ and blissfully indulge. And yes, there are some Vietnamese places here in TX, but so far none of them have lived up to our Le Saigon standards. What can I say, we were spoiled. So one day I decided to scour the net for THE recipe.

Lo and behold, I found one! It took some doctoring, but it turns out, I can make it and it’s dang tasty! To make it taste like it does at Le Saigon, I used less fish sauce and garlic in the Nuac Cham, cooked the noodles a bit longer, and added more lettuce, cilantro, and cucumber.

Recently, I got the Best International Recipe Cookbook and discovered that they also have a recipe for Vietnamese Cold Noodle Salad, so I thought I’d give it a go tonight.

The verdict is in: When making a Vietnamese dish, it’s probably best to actually trust the recipe from a Vietnamese person and not the recipe from a bow-tie wearing round-eye. This one was FAR too limey for my taste, the fish sauce to garlic ratio was kind of off, and the brown sugar in the marinade was a bit cloying.

Of course, according to Cook’s Illustrated, their recipe is perfect in every way, is better than that of any Asian person, and I’m not allowed under any circumstance to modify it. Just ask them! This blog has turned me off of them completely, and I will never buy another of their books or magazines. I always thought Chris Kimball was a pompous prick, and that just confirms it for me.