About 12 months ago, I stumbled upon a big crate of yuzu on sale at Central Market. And throughout my kaiseki dinner from the previous post, yuzu seemed to be a recurring theme. That's right, November/December is yuzu season. Shortly after I got back from vacation, I did some shopping at Central Market and picked up a couple of yuzu so I could make something from it and enjoy that flavor again.
On my first day of Kyoto sightseeing, I popped into a random, empty restaurant called "Udon Soba Something-Something" and asked for whatever the owner/waiter/cook recommended that had beef and soba. After a bit of exchanging gestures and confused faces, what I ended up getting was soba noodle soup with sliced beef and green onions.
The beef was seasoned or marinated with what I'm assuming is yuzu, and it was fantastic. The kicker was the shichimi togarashi hot pepper powder mixed with dried sudachi zest for seasoning, served in a shaker made of a segment of a bamboo stalk... so sexy! The meal was simple, filling, and packed with flavor.
Out of all the meals I had in Japan, this was probably the only one I can reproduce in my kitchen. So when I happened to find a new shipment of yuzu at Central Market, I went for it.
The tricky part was figuring out how to make the broth correctly and figuring out how the beef was cooked at the restaurant. Typically, soba noodle soups are served in a dashi broth, made of soy sauce, sugar and/or mirin rice wine, and dried bonito fish powder/shavings. Unfortunately, I didn't write down my proportions of water, mirin, and dashi powder. But I did have a bottle of store-bought soba broth to compare against, and it was pretty close.
For the beef, I used a 1/2 lb portion of center-cut sirloin steak, sliced it thinly, and marinated it with 1 Tbsp of soy sauce and the zest of 1 yuzu for 30 minutes. I guessed correctly that the beef was just quickly dipped into the simmering broth to cook it and keep it tender.
The end result wasn't a perfect match, by any means, but it still really hit the spot. Plus, I added some shiitake mushrooms to the recipe, just for the hell of it, and they were great.
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