Modified Otsu

About two weeks ago, I decided to try making something with soba noodles, but didn't want to just go for some cold soba. So I searched around I came across this recipe for Otsu, which I made in a slightly modified form and thought was delicious. I'm not sure if the original recipe is especially traditional, but the more extensively modified version I made it today is certainly not. As daid described it, "it's about as Japanese as curry hamburger onigiri".

It's not that I don't use any Japanese ingredients at all, it's just that there are a few very definitely non-Japanese ingredients involved as well. In all, the result was pretty tasty so I thought it was worth sharing.

Ingredients 

The ingredients. Not pictured: ginger, olive oil, salt.

Dressing
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated (approx 3 cm long)
1 lemon, zested
5 mL salt
2.5 mL habanero pepper powder
Juice from 0.5 lemon
60 mL unseasoned rice vinegar
80 mL soy sauce
30 mL olive oil
30 mL sesame seed oil

Salad
180 g dried soba (or two servings, if your soba is portioned out like that)
15 mL canola oil
1 block tofu, chopped into 1 cm x 1 cm x 2 cm blocks (approx)
1 head broccoli, cut into bite-sized pieces
4 bunches mizuna, roughly chopped (approx 500 mL after being chopped)
0.5 long onion, finely diced
1 avocado, roughly chopped
Toasted sesame seeds for garnish

Instructions

Make dressing by first combining the grated ginger, lemon zest, salt and pepper in a jar (use a jar with a tight-fitting lid, if possible). Mix together well.
Add the lemon juice, rice vinegar and soy sauce. Give the jar a swirl to combine.
Add the oils. Put the lid on the jar and shake thoroughly. Set aside.

Put a pot of water with a bit of salt on the stove and bring it to a boil for the soba.
When the water starts to boil, add the noodles and prepare according to package instructions (or until the noodles seem soft) then drain.
Put cooked soba in a serving bowl and toss in about 2/3rds of the dressing.

While the water is coming to a boil, heat a frying pan. When the pan is hot, add a bit of canola oil and start to fry the tofu.
When the tofu is mostly browned (after about 5 mins), add the broccoli and when the broccoli turns bright green (after about 2 mins) add the mizuna and onion for another minute or two, then turn off the heat.
Put vegetables in a different serving bowl and toss with the remaining dressing.

Put avocado in a third bowl.

Serve by putting some soba into a bowl (or plate, if you really want), adding some vegetables, then some avocado (or really, you can do it in whatever order you prefer) and garnishing with some sesame seeds.

Enjoy!

Nom nom nom.

Notes

Makes about four servings.

I use a Japanese vegetable called mizuna (literally "water greens"), it's basically a leafy green that looks a bit like dandelion leaves, except not quite. Any other leafy green would probably work just as well as long as it doesn't have an especially strong taste (unlike dandelion leaves).

Similarly, I use half of a long onion, which you might note is pretty giant from the first photo (it's the thing that's longer than the width of my refrigerator). If you want to make this, but don't live somewhere that such giant onions exist, you can try about three green onions instead. 

In addition, I use habanero pepper powder because the grocery store nearby doesn't see it fit to carry cayenne pepper so my options were jalepeno, habenero, korean pepper and paprika. If you use something less spicy than habanero powder, you can probably add more (the original recipe calls for 0.75 tsp cayenne).

Finally, I note that if I had thought about it a bit more in advance, I would have picked up some additional veggies for more colour. I suspect that some red bell pepper would go wonderfully here.