We're going to do kind of a mashup.
We're going to use a classic Italian dish, pasta primavera,
or just spring vegetable pasta.
Normally, especially in America, it's made with a lot of...
It's kind of heavy.
It's made with a lot of heavy cream and butter
to toss with all those beautiful spring vegetables.
We're going to use about 12 ounces of soba,
or buckwheat noodles.
So, what we're going to do is take the soba,
they only cook for about four minutes.
We're gonna cook that last.
We're gonna prep all of our vegetables first.
We have some beautiful favas.
Favas come in large pods.
If you want to cook with favas,
they're worth it, they're delicious.
You simply open the pod just like you would peas, right?
You remove the beans.
But now we're going to take this and parboil it.
So, from this point,
you throw it into boiling water for about three minutes.
Then you take them out and cold shock them,
and that's what you get here.
Then you have to do one more step: pop them open
and push the center of the legume out like that,
and each one splits in two.
Then we have asparagus.
I cut them very thin on a bias.
You do not need to blanch these.
We're going to cook these in high temperature cooking oil
and just let them saute for two, three minutes.
You want them nice and tender crisp.
Then we're going to use spring onions and some greens.
The greens I got today are rainbow chard.
Those go in last second.
My favorite part of this
is what goes on top of the soba bowls.
Crunchy, crispy, Hen of the Woods mushrooms.
They're also known as Maitake.
You just pull them apart into very thin pieces,
and then I take a shallot or two, cut through the root end,
very very thinly slice your shallots,
then you cut off the root end and separate them,
and then we're gonna spray it down
and throw it in a super hot oven, 450, even 500.
You want the oven as hot as you can get.
Separate these fellas,
and I just use some simple cooking spray,
olive oil cooking spray (spraying)
salt and pepper, and let these go
until they're super crispy and crunchy.
I'm grating up some garlic to go into our soba primavera
and I also have some ginger root.
I've got about an inch and a half of ginger
and four cloves of garlic for our soba primavera.
Already cooking in the pan is our bundle of asparagus.
Our green onions, I've separated the whites from the greens.
The whites are in the pan,
the greens will be the garnish at the end.
I've shredded up one bundle of rainbow chard,
which we'll add right before we're ready to toss,
and then we'll make our quick little sauce.
Ginger and garlic.
We've got our edamame or peas,
or I have fava in there as well, our little fava beans.
Splash of acidity, you can use rice wine vinegar or yuzu.
Yuzu tastes similar to lime juice.
We need a little acidity in our sauce.
Couple turns of the pan with that, then mirin or sake.
Mirin is sweetened rice wine.
You get it in your regular grocery store.
We always serve sake with this meal,
so I would use sake at home, but mirin everybody can get.
Couple of turns of mirin,
and then as little or as much as you like
of your soy or low-sodium soy if you prefer,
if you're watching your salt.
I like three turns of the pan of this.
I just drained off our soba, 12 ounces of soba noodles.
I wilted in our rainbow chard to our sauce.
Now we're going to marry all of the pasta
with our spring vegetables, which include fava,
or you could use spring peas or edamame.
And we have asparagus, of course,
spring onions, garlic, and ginger.
All of that great flavor being absorbed
by the buckwheat soba.
And last second, we add in the green tops
of our spring onions
so that they don't lose their color and flavor.
Then the very last thing we do in the pan
is one turn of the pan of toasted sesame oil.
Then the noodles go into your serving dish of choice.
(audience clapping)
and then the really big finish
is sesame seed, toasted sesame,
and fresh from the screaming hot oven, oh, it's still warm,
your crispy Hen of the Woods mushroom and shallots.
(clapping) (cheering)