Cold tea noodles

Noodles + tea = dinner

Mugicha is barley tea, so refreshing when chilled that it is the taste of Japanese summer. Luckily, all that it takes to have a batch at the ready is to steep a packet of it in water in a pitcher. Ito-en was the go-to brand in my house growing up, and happily still readily available.

Once your tea is at the ready, it is a quick and easy meal to pour this chilled tea over a bowl of rice, with a taste of enough salt to make it interesting. Maybe it is an umeboshi, or a cluster of salted kombu, or a pack of instant dashi. For those that are in a pinch, this Nagatanien packet (there are fancier ones too) alone provides enough seasoning for the tea and for the rice. This is a summer ochazuke¹.

Summer vegetables from Suzuki Farms

As delicious as a summer ochazuke is over rice, did you know that the same principle applies to noodles? I mention this because it is not something that I had thought of until I saw this YouTube video, in which Mai replaces mugicha for tsuyu in a bowl of cold somen topped with the bits and bobs from her kitchen.

And so I boiled a bundle of somen (a summer favorite) along with the packet of okra from Suzuki Farms. I chilled the somen under cold water, plonked it with some ice in a bowl, and topped it with enough salty things to season the noodles and the tea.

1. salted salmon.

2. shiokombu (salted kombu)

3. katsuo (bonito flake)

4. Umeboshi (pickled plums)

5. okra;

6. natto;

7. sliced tomatoes;

8. myoga (a ginger of sorts)

9. I also sauteed some peppers and eggplant with mirin and soy.

These mishmash dinners become much easier when one has a pantry full of highly flavored items at the ready.

Here I present some of my pantry staples, from clockwise 12 o’clock:

1. Rayu flavored furikake from Kyoto to season a bowl of rice

2. chirimen jako - dried anchovies, also good on rice (or noodles);

3. umeboshi - classically eaten when one is under the weather, or try to make your own!

4. ume paste (unflavored - good for dressings);

5. shio (salted) kombu - for rice, for noodles, for everything.

And of course one cannot forget the enormous bag of katsuo (bonito flake). As a bonus, this is a huge favorite of cats (and shiba inus) and if you have this $6 bag 3oz bag on hand, you will not need to buy this $15 bag 1oz that has been branded as cat snacks (spotted of course, in Brooklyn).

Random notes

I picked up fig leaves from Lani’s farm after reading a Substack post on using them to make a panna cotta. I steeped my leaves in milk and was stunned by how much it instantly perfumed my apartment with the scent of fresh figs. The gelato that I made with it (750g whole milk; 25g corn starch; 150g sugar; and 30g fig leaves, steeped) also tastes exactly like figs. A little icy though.

In other dessert news, I am still cooking with yomogi and incorporated it into another Nagasaki castella, which we ate before I could photograph it. An entire tablespoon plus an additional tablespoon of water meant that the cake was sticker (in a good way) that before. I would use more yomogi next time.

I never turn down a chance to stop by Grand Central Oyster Bar and neither should you.

1. Ochazuke お茶漬け can also be hot in the colder months - a pour of hot green tea over a bowl of rice along with your accompaniments of choice.