How can we revive the flavor combination of buckwheat with meat and add new tastes to it? We found the solution! Instead of buckwheat, we used soba – noodles made from buckwheat flour, soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin, veal, and a bit of vegetables. And we cooked all this in a wok pan, quickly frying all the ingredients and bringing them together. Step-by-step notes of our experiment with photos of each stage of the process await you below.
Time spent: up to 30 minutes
Difficulty: 2 out of 5
Cost: average
We will need:
soba - 150 g
veal - 300 g
1 purple onion
half a carrot
200 g of champignons
3 cloves of garlic
soy sauce
rice vinegar
mirin (optional)
sesame oil (optional)
for serving – green onion and a mix of white and black sesame
Preparation
Almost all the vegetables will be cut into strips (the carrot using a slicer), half-rings (onion), or slices (mushrooms). We crush the garlic with a knife and chop it. We also cut the veal into strips.
At the same time, we put a pot of water on to boil, in which we will cook the soba. We recommend doing all these steps in advance, as once we start working with the pan, all processes will proceed very quickly.
We place the pan on the heat, fully heat it, keeping it over medium-high heat. We add cooking oil (we used sunflower oil), add the onion and garlic. We fry for no more than 2 minutes, stirring thoroughly.
We add the carrot slices and fry for 3 minutes.
After that, we add the mushrooms and at this stage, we add liquid spices: soy sauce for saltiness, rice vinegar for acidity, and mirin for sweetness. Since the mushrooms will release juice, all the vegetables will absorb the flavors.
From experience: we recommend tasting the liquid part for flavors. Since we will not be adding salt, we will regulate the salty taste only with soy sauce; at this stage, you can add more so that the vegetables taste slightly oversalted. The excess saltiness will be needed since we will still be adding unsalted meat and noodles to the dish.
When about half of the moisture has evaporated from the mushrooms, it's time to add the veal. We push the vegetables to one side of the pan, leaving the meat on the other side to soak in the vegetable juice. We fry for about 5 minutes, stirring thoroughly.
At the same time as adding the veal, we throw the soba into boiling water, reduce the heat, and cook for about 5 minutes until the consistency is al dente. We drain the water from the noodles, return them to the pan. We thoroughly mix all the ingredients, add 2 tablespoons of sesame oil, and fry for a few more minutes.
For serving, we place the soba with meat in a deep plate, sprinkle with green onion and sesame. Enjoy!
