Recipe Meme

You've been invited to be a part of a recipe exchange. Please send a recipe to the person whose name is listed in the number 1 position above (even if you don't know them) and it should preferably be something quick, easy and without rare ingredients. Actually, the best one is one you know in your head and can type out and send right now.

I received this email on September 29 from bam over at Breathing Treatment. I have been a very bad (busy) friend because I was supposed to keep this moving along quickly. I even had a quick and easy recipe in my head that I could have typed in right away. In penance, I will post two recipes, the quick and easy one for warm weather and a seasonally appropriate one that Iris and I made minutes ago.

Cold Soba Noodles
Ingredients:

• soba (buckwheat) noodles
• veggie/chicken/fish stock
• soy sauce
• mirin (rice wine)

Preparation:

• Boil noodles until tender, drain and rinse under cold water until cool.
• While noodles are boiling, combine broth, soy sauce and mirin in a 6:1:1 ratio to make the dipping sauce.
• Serve noodles with dipping sauce on the side in a small bowl.

In Japan, you pick up the noodles, dip them in the sauce and then slurp up the noodles. When the noodles are gone, you pour hot water into the dipping sauce and drink it like soup.

Salad Option:

• In a large bowl, make a bed of mixed greens.
• Put cold noodles on top.
• Sprinkle with chopped veggies like shredded carrots, thin strings of cucumber and/or bean sprouts.
• Put a few cubes of tofu around the bowl.
• Then pour dipping sauce on top.

We eat this all summer.

I adapted the dipping sauce recipe from about.com's recipe. I was all stressed out about the complicated directions for the Konbu and Katsuo Dashi - Japanese Soup Stock. Then I had an epiphany. It is traditionally made with soup stock on hand. I have a freezer full of cubes of chicken or vegetable broth! You can even use bullion cubes and it will still taste great.

Iris and I are baking a Swedish Apple Cake right now. The new crop of apples just arrived in stores near me and we bake this cake in our house a lot. I got the recipe from my mom who got it from our Swedish neighbors in Kansas. (My dad went to grad school in Kansas and I lived there briefly.) I will list the original recipe with a healthier variant in (). It takes great either way, but my mom taught me to cut down on fat and sugar whenever possible. I am trying to replicate my mother's formatting on the 3x5 index card she gave me when I moved out.

Swedish Apple Cake

1. Mix
   
• 1 1/3 (1) Cup salad oil,
  
• 1 1/2 (1) Cup sugar
• 2 eggs
2. Add
   
• 3 Cups peeled (unpeeled) finely chopped apples
  
• 1 Cup raisins
• 1 Cup chopped nuts.
  
• Stir thoroughly.
3. Add
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp vanilla
4. Stir in 2.5 to 3 cups of flour until batter is stiff.
5. Grease a tube or bundt pan with salad oil, spread the lumpy batter as evenly as possible. Bake at 350° F for 1 hour or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.