Recipe: Soba Salad

Ideal for a mid summer lunch, this refreshing soba salad draws on the principles of Japanese flavour with sweet, salty and sour accents. Alongside the moreish texture of buckwheat noodles, beware of becoming addicted!

Ingredients

250g soba noodles

5tb japanese soy sauce

1tb sesame oil

2tb rice wine vinegar

2tb honey

1 spring onion, finely sliced

4tb black sesame seeds

juice of 1 orange

100g tofu puffs, optional for when you want to make the salad a bit more substantial.

Boil the soba as per packet instructions. They normally take about 4 minutes in rapidly boiling water and should be soft but still a little firm to the tooth. Drain off the noodles and rinse under cold water, turning the noodles over as you go so as to ensure all the noodles are cooled.

Combine all the ingredients except the spring onion, sesame seeds and tofu in a large bowl and stir well.

Add the noodles and toss to coat. Sprinkle in the spring onion and sesame seeds and toss them through as well. If you are using tofu puffs, chop them in to manageable bite sized chunks and toss them through the salad too.

Let the salad sit in the fridge for about 20 minutes to let the flavours infuse, if you can wait that long, we never ever can!

A few notes and variations:

We use organic soba noodles and they seem to be a bit more robust or something. 

Also give green tea noodles a try instead of plain soba for a bit of variation.

Leo likes to put a few orange segments and a scattering of baby spinach leaves through his salad, which makes for a new level of texture. 

All the ingredients will be available at your local asian grocer.