I love summer because of the availability of lots of fresh local fruits and vegetables although it’s sometimes cold in San Francisco, California where I live. 🙁 I can get big zucchini at farmers markets this time of the year without paying too much.
My mom used to make cold udon noodles with sesame miso sauce during summer when I was growing up in Japan. I wanted to eat them again and made them with zucchini today.
I’m not a gluten-free person but I don’t eat a lot of food with gluten these days. I don’t turn down occasional vegan donuts and vegan pizza 🙂 but I feel better if I don’t consume too much gluten. You can make this dish with “real” udon made of wheat flour if you like.
I’ll show the step-by-step instructions here but the shorter version of the recipe and the list of ingredients are available at the bottom of this blog post. Let’s begin!
- Peel skin of zucchini and spiral (make big noodles)
2. Coat zucchini noodles with potato starch
3. Quickly blanch zucchini noodles (for just a couple of minutes) and drain
4. Put zucchini noodles in cold water until noodles become cold
5. Drain water
6. Put dried shiitake mushrooms and konbu with cold water and bring to boil for a few minutes to make “dashi”
7. Strain dashi. Discard konbu but do not discard shiitake. You can cook and eat them.
8. Put dashi in a pan and mix miso, mirin and say sauce into it. Bring to boil and remove from heat. Chill the sauce.
9. When the sauce become cold, add ground sesame seeds. The more, the better! Use toasted sesame seeds.
I like to eat this dish with cut nori and chopped green onions.
I add cut nori and green onions into the sauce and dip noodles to eat them.
By coating zucchini noodles with potato starch, noodles become silky and have the similar texture to udon. I can’t find a right English word to explain the texture of cold udon. We say “tsuru tsuru” (ツルツル). It means smooth.
I hope you try these noodles on a warm/hot summer day!
- 1 large zucchini
- 2-3 tablespoons potato starch
- *sauce
- 2 large or 4 small dried shiitake mushrooms
- 1 large or 2 small pieces konbu (dried kelp)
- 1 cup water
- 1 tablespoon miso
- 1 tablespoon mirin (or sweetener of your choice)
- ½ to 1 teaspoon soy sauce
- 2-3 tablespoons ground sesame seeds (toasted one is better)
- Peel skin of zucchini and spiral (make big noodles)
- Coat zucchini noodles with potato starch
- Quickly blanch zucchini noodles (for just a couple of minutes) and drain water
- Put zucchini noodles in cold water until noodles become cold
- Drain water
- Put dried shiitake mushrooms and konbu with cold water and bring to boil for a few minutes to make "dashi"
- Strain dashi. Discard konbu but do not discard shiitake. You can cook and eat them.
- Put dashi in a pan and mix miso, mirin and say sauce into it. Bring to boil and remove from heat. Chill the sauce,
- When the sauce becomes cold, add ground sesame seeds.
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