chicken yake soba

We found an Oriental grocery store the other day and were really, really, really happy about it. There is only so much you can do in a Latino grocery store when you've gotten tired of tortillas and tortilla look-a-likes. There was sushi ingredients, noodles galore, fish heads and all sorts of things that reminded us of Vancouver. Drew and I ran around all giddy and stupid and bought a massive bottle of sake and some Kirin to celebrate. A nice sized headache later, I realized that we bought some somen noodles on our trip and decided to make Yake Soba.

I found a recipe online for Veggie Yake Soba, which my recipe is slightly based on. Really, only the noodles and the sauce are the same - but those are the biggest parts of Yake Soba so I thought I had better give credit. I've listed the Tonkatsu sauce down here too so that you don't have to run all over looking for this stuff.

Ingredients:

1 large double sided boneless, skinless chicken breast

2 cups of broccoli

1 small bag of dried porcini mushrooms

400 g of chicken flavoured somen noodles

1 cup of sliced carrots

2 tbsps. of fresh sliced ginger

1 small onion

2 tbps. Of virgin olive oil

Tonkatsu Sauce

2 tbsps. Of sake

1 tbsp. Of dark soya sauce

1 tbsp. Of light Soya sauce

2 tbsps. Of ketchup

1 tbsp. Of worchesterchire sauce

1 tbsp. Of mustard

sugar to taste

To make the sauce, put the sake in a frying pan and boil it down to half. Add all of the other ingredients and stir until completely mixed. Take off of heat and put in a container in the fridge.

Put your olive oil in your frying pan or wok. Right now I am currently wokless, but I strongly suggest that if you have access to one - use it. This is a pretty large amount of food.

Preboil your carrots in the microwave/stovetop for ten minutes. Cut up your broccoli, onion and ginger (fine slivers), then put them in the wok with the carrots. Drain your mushrooms, squishing out excess water and throw them in too. Cook for about ten minutes on medium heat then add your chicken slices.

Cook the entire mixture until the chicken is done then add in the noodles. Fry for five more minutes then pour in your sauce. Smell the yake soba goodness. Fry for five to ten more minutes and then serve. Drew calls this dish Yummy Soba, and it's his favourite meal I've recorded to date.