Recipe for Soba Salad with Sesame and Crunchy Vegetables

Stéphanie de Turckheim has devised a recipe for a salad composed of soba noodles with crunchy vegetables. Broccoli, carrots, peppers, and red onions are all used to accompany these buckwheat noodles. 

This recipe is taken from Plats veggie du monde (‘Veggie Dishes from Around the World’), a book that offers a vegetarian world tour through a collection of one hundred recipes that draw inspiration from Japan, the USA, Italy, and the Maghreb. 

Soba are an iconic Japanese dish eaten warm in winter and cold in summer. It is traditional to eat them on New Year’s Eve as the bells ring. Known as toshikoshi-soba, the long, thin shape of these celebratory noodles is supposed to represent longevity.

Serves 4

Ingredients

100 g soba noodles

1 head broccoli

1 red pepper

1 sucrine

50 g mange-tout

1 carrot

1 to 2 red onions

1 pinch bicarbonate of soda

4 tbsp finely chopped coriander

2 tbsp cashew nuts

For the sauce

2 tsp soy sauce

2 tsp caster sugar

2 tsp instant dashi stock

2 tbsp yuzu juice

Method

Cook the soba noodles al dente following the instructions on the packet. Drain and rinse under cold water.

Wash and cut the broccoli into small florets.

Cut the red pepper into thin strips.

Wash and finely chop the sucrine.

Wash the mange-tout.

Peel the carrots and slice them using a mandoline.

Peel and cut the onion into thin slices.

Heat a saucepan of water, add a pinch of bicarbonate of soda, and blanch the broccoli and mange-tout in the pan for three minutes.

Cut the mange-tout lengthways. Drain and then rinse under ice cold water.

Prepare the sauce. Emulsify the soy sauce with the sugar, dashi stock, and yuzu juice.

Pour half of the sauce over the soba. Add the vegetables and the rest of the sauce, as well as the coriander and cashew nuts.

Mix. Store in a cool place or eat immediately.

Plats veggie du monde (‘Veggie Dishes from Around the World’) (2019), a recipe book by Stéphanie de Turckheim, is published by Hachette, and is not currently available in English. 

Stéphanie de Turckheim is an advisor in culinary creation and innovation. She also develops buffets for brands and press events and runs cookery workshops for children in Paris.