Tororo soba

Hmm... possibly nothing to say about FB today other than yes, I'm talking about that thing Arisa wanted when Kureno offered to buy her lunch. Tororo soba! I haven't had it since... well, long enough. We've got soba, ramen, and udon shops here, with both hot and cold noodles, and you can even get curry udon, but I've never seen tororo soba. But since it's so hot, I wanted to have it... so we made it at home, and it's *so* simple. *_* It's too simple to make really. The hard part is finding the "yam". It's usually called "yama-imo" or mountain yam/potato, but last time we were at the oriental food shop, it was called "mountain gobo." Gobo is usually burdock though. :-?

Ingredients (for 3):
Yama Imo (30-40 cms long)
Soba noodles (3 bundles)
Soba sauce (bottled)
Wasabi (tube)
3 Eggs
1/2-3/4 Cucumber

Making tororo soba:
- Wash, skin and de-seed the cucumber, then finely shred it using a mandolin (you can also finely chop some cooked ham or have some finely shredded egg I suppose) set aside in a bowl.
- Grate the yam to make tororo and set aside in a bowl (if you don't have a fine grater, there's also a special bowl you can get at oriental food stores to grate it in. It looks like a modified mortar & pestle with a ridged interior)
- lightly poach one egg per person (cooked white, half cooked yolk); set aside in small serving dishes
- boil soba noodles per instructions and set in a large bowl

Put together:
In a bowl (for eating) put a small amount of prepared wasabi along the inside rim, fill 1/2 - 2/3 full of noodles, and add some soba sauce. Coat the noodles (mixing in as much wasabi as desired). On top of the noodles, add shredded cucumber, spoon on a generous portion of tororo, and add the poached egg, then add some more soba sauce on top to flavour. Enjoy.

So basic, but it was better than a lot of the lunch places, but then, it has our own twist. Sometimes, you can get soba with a raw quail egg, and rarely with the poached chicken egg. Some places will skip the wasabi, and for tororo soba, most places don't have much in the way of veggies on top like the cucumber. It's noodle, tororo and that's about it. ^^; Tororo with the egg and cucumber all mixed in the noodles is just yummy. ^^;;

Oh, and since we cheated and used tubed wasabi and bottled soba sauce... beware of Hana-chan's angry dempa. That was the first CD Drama IIRC, where she kept popping up and giving advice about do's and don't's to good soumen. Which reminds me, about that drama, Momiji first says "nageshi" soumen instead of "nagashi." Another error a la rabbit. I remember looking up "nageshi" and deciding not to use it in the translation because I didn't understand it too well. Something about a horizontal level beam joining two pillars in Japanese building construction... Wow, it's in my newer dictionary... "Nageshi" is a "transom" - a bar of wood or stone that goes across the top of a door or window. Okay... I'll stick with throwing vs flowing in this case. Either that or end up with... keystone soumen? horizontal soumen? I'll take nageru vs nagasu instead. (forced justification) :P