Identity Through Food: Soba

I've been cooking a lot lately since I've gotten home, and to beat the heat, I made my family some cool soba to eat for lunch today.

For some background: soba are Japanese buckwheat noodles that are thin, easy to cook, and can be eaten hot or cold. It's served with a savory-sweet soup base and it's usually garnished with green onions, with the addition of vegetables, tempura, fish cakes, and fish or small amounts of meat, like pork. 

The soup base is usually served on the side, and you eat the noodles by dipping mouthful of noodles at a time (from another bowl or bamboo-mat-lined tray) into the sauce, then eating it right after.

However, I like to serve the noodles in the soup. It's just less dishes to clean and plus the noodles sitting in the yummy broth make it somewhat easier to eat and the flavors can intermingle. 

I place a serving of noodles in a large bowl. A large handful is enough.

Here, I added pan-fried tofu (fried with some olive oil and soy sauce) and Brussels sprouts. 

 When I make soba, I like to be really flexible with what I put in it. With the soba noodles as a healthier noodle to slurp, as it's made with whole buckwheat, it has the appeal of whole wheat spaghetti with a more tender bite (Admittedly, I've made whole wheat spaghetti and served it with all the soba fixings! It works!). I like to mix traditional Japanese toppings with some un-Japanese ingredients due to what's available in my fridge or what I'm craving. My family has just started falling in love with Brussels sprouts, and I found that caramelizing them with the soup base helps get rid of the bitter flavor they have. It's a delicious combo.
Adding a drizzle of soy sauce and a sprinkle of garlic sauce parties up the tofu. Slicing it thin guarantees that it will cook evenly, quickly, and all the way through. Plus the soy sauce adds an amazing golden color to it. It really does beat adding it in plain, in terms of flavor and texture.

Then two ladles of the soup base! 

Some chopped green onion adds bite, as well as a little toasted panko (Japanese bread crumbs) lends some crunch. I added some shichimi togarashi (Japanese seven peper seasoning) for some heat.

 I added some toasted panko crumbs as a garnish because I thought a crunchy topping would be good in combination with the softness of the noodles, the roughage of the Brussels sprouts, and the chewiness of the tofu. I just put a handful into the pan that I fried the tofu and Brussels sprouts in until it was golden brown. A good tip is to constantly stir it while toasting to ensure that it toasts easily and doesn't burn! It was a good addition.

I've eaten soba ever since I could remember. In a largely assimilated family, food was one of the only ways that my parents really connected to Japanese culture. We don't speak or even know how to speak Japanese conversationally, and holidays are more of an entertainment factor, and if we even remember when they are. Food is a way that I've been able to appreciate my heritage in my own way - even if it means tweaking the recipes and adding non-traditional components to fit my budget or lifestyle. I've never seen a Brussels sprout ever used in Japanese cooking, and it still tasted marvelous as it floated in the soup! While there's still more to explore in terms of how I can better appreciate my ethnicity, I'm still trying to facilitate a lovely marriage between my American identity and my Japanese background.
So far, it's proven to be a tasty match, indeed.