When I was in college, or more specifically in April 2002, I was lucky enough to eat at Suzie’s Soba twice a week for six weeks. My school also paid which made a good thing extra fantastic. Since then I took a breather from soba noodles for a few years until 2005 when I discovered how forgiving they are to cook and how much easier they are to eat than spaghetti.
I made for dinner last night a bell pepper and tofu dish from the New York Times‘ “Recipes For Health.” Basically you marinate tofu in a soy sauce/sugar/oil/hoisin sauce marinade and then mix it together with stir fried bell pepper strips and add ginger, garlic, and more spicy sauce. I didn’t have the green onions the recipe called for but I did have some delicious buckwheat soba noodles.
I learned from this that the recipe is amazing — spicy but not too spicy — and it goes well with a light beer. I also learned that once you mix the extra sauce together and then serve the peppers etc. over soba noodles (and then reheat the leftovers) that the sauce permeates the soba noodles and just gets even more spicy and sweet. I’d love to photograph this and show you all how pretty it was — I used some adorable miniature sweet peppers in red, yellow, and orange to go with the green bell pepper so the colors were just lovely. 
The recipe called for a lot of peanut oil. I’m not honestly sure how the nut oils stack up healthwise, but the rest of the recipe was relatively light — 2 T of soy sauce (especially the low sodium kind) isn’t too much salt when it makes three servings of delicious.
It also means that I get to use leftover baby peppers with shrimps and goat cheese on our Wednesday pizza this week!
Planning ahead for tomorrow I’ll need to mix up the dough for Wednesday (and let it rise in the fridge). Tomorrow I’m getting home from work relatively late (7pm) and we’ll probably eat eggs — though I was thinking about putting together some Moosewood Carrot Soup? I wonder if I could do that in the morning before I leave?
Other interesting things on the food front: How long do parsnips keep? I have some in my vegetable drawer that have been there since at least June 15, 2009 and probably longer. They still look like “normal” parsnips and have the right “ripe” parsnip texture…are they OK?
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September 30, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Mom
Parsnips…have a pretty long shelf life. Much like carrots. If they aren’t rotten, they should be just fine, even if they’re a little limp. Once they’re roasted, you’ll never know.
Re: Oil. I’m beginning to think you can cut it in half for just about any recipe and you’ll never miss it. Sesame oil, used in small quantities, adds a really nice flavor. Peanut oil is often used for stir-fries, because of its low spatter factor.
I made a clean-out-the-frig stir fry last night and used olive oil, basil and oregano, to give it an Italian twist. Added some halved grape tomatoes near the end of the cooking time, and topped with Parmesan. Just like the tofu recipe, it improves with age. Leftovers tonight!