Nabeyaki Udon

Another yummy offering from The Kind Diet! I am on a quest to try all the recipes from this cookbook. I've never cooked with udon noodles before (crazy, I know), but on a whim purchased a package of them at my local Asian grocery store a few weeks ago. So of course I had to find the perfect recipe for them.

This is a water-based soup flavored with the soaking water from dried shitakes. The recipe calls for maitake mushrooms too, but I didn't have any. There were three components to this dish that I was supposed to keep separate from one another but ... well, you'll see how that ended up. The udon noodles, a vegetable broth (bok choy, broccoli, carrots, napa cabbage leaves, and a leek. I omitted the bean sprouts because ugh, can't stand them) with tofu cubes thrown in, and a sauce composed of shoyu, ginger juice, and rice vinegar.

So here it is, properly separated. No picture of the sauce because it couldn't fit into the picture!

We crowded the table with all the various bowls. Four bowls per person, because I roasted a few yams as well. And it was very pretty, but quite ridiculous. Also, the idea was to dip the noodles and veggies into the sauce, which would have made for some messy eating.

So we did this:

Admittedly, not as pretty. But so much easier to chow down! I really loved the flavor of the shitake mushrooms and the ginger juice in this dish. I did add some sea salt and a few glogs of tamari to liven things up a little. Delicious! As my brother pointed out, I say that about just about everything I cook. But it's true!