Cold Soba

Dried Soba Noodles; Nori; Wasabi; Dipping Sauce - 1 cup of dashi; 50ml of dark soy sauce; 50ml of mirin

Soba is a Japaese noodle made with buckwheat and has a greyish colour. They can be served in soup, with tempura, or, as here, eaten cold with a dipping sauce. This is a perfect seasonal summer food in Japan. Tokyo can hit the mid thirties with near 100% humidity at this time of the year.

Soba
Boil the soba in plenty of lightly salted boiling water for about 4 minutes - forget about al dente but they shouldn't be soggy. After boiling rinse in cold water and the I mix some ice in to cool them down. They can then be refrigerated.

Dipping Sauce
The dipping sauce can be bought which makes things easy. Failing that making it isn't too hard. Make the dashi stock from dried dashi powder (Ajinomoto's is the most popular), mix in the soy and the mirin and then chill.

Serving
Put the soba in one bowl with some ice to keep it cool. Each person has one bowl for their soba and another for the dipping sauce.
The sauce can go in a jug or just pour some into the dipping bowls.
Guests can add some narrow chopped strips of nori to their soba and wasabi and chopped scallions to the dipping sauce.
Grab some soba, give it a quick dip or two in the sauce and then slurp down. Holding the dipping bowl in the other hand helps.

Pasta salad is trash, as a cold summer carbohydrate loading this can't be topped. As an added bonus if you eat some just before New Year you'll have long life.