Just came back from our Easter break in France (Normandy and Paris), it was a very nice holiday as the weather turned out to be better than forecasted which made the whole trip more pleasant.  I have organised the photos yesterday and trying to construct how and what to write about, writing travel stories is more work than writing up a recipe I find so hope you will bear with me that I am not that fast, I need to have the mood to do it. Anyway, after having so much good food in France, I intend to have simple meals for a while and if possible to eat less meat.

A lot of you would probably know that I love noodles of all kinds, tonight I have been struggling if I should make a veggie yakiudon, soup noodle or Pad Thai shrimp. And in the end I went to make wafuu pasuta, a Japanese style pasta which I have never cooked before. I have been looking for this type of recipes and there are actually not that many around. I found some recipes from Just Hungry and Tess’s Japanese Kitchen and have adapted it according to what I have available at home. The outcome came out so delicious and better than I thought that I have to blog it right away for future repeats. I was a bit skeptical with the idea of using soy sauce in pasta but you would not taste the soy sauce prominently, just remember that the sauce should just be enough to coat the pasta, then you are fine.

The most famous wafuu pasta is to use tarako (鱈子, salted cod roe) or karashi mentaiko (明太子, spicy pollack roe) but I cannot get either of them easily here, rather I have a sachet of mentaiko seasoning powder at home which can be tossed into the pasta alone but I find that rather boring so I have added to my wafuu pasta. Next time when I go to the Japanese groceries store in Zurich, I will try to find the Tarako or Mentaiko and then make this again.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 200g spaghetti or liguine
• 150g  shimeji mushrooms, washed and drained 
• 50g enoki mushrooms, washed and drained
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tbsp mirin
• 1 tbsp butter
• 2 sprigs spring onion, washed and finely chopped (use the thin one if possible, the Swiss ones are thicker than the Asian ones)
• 2 tbsp tobiko (flying fish roe)
• pinches dried shiso flakes or fresh shiso leaves
• Mentaiko seasoning powder (optional)
• 1/2 sheet nori seaweed, cut into thin strips
• pinches 7-flavor pepper powder (nanami tohgarashi)

Directions:

1. Cook the spaghetti as instructed on the pack + 1-2 extra minutes in large quantity of boiling salt water.
2. In the meantime, using saucepan, melt the sugar together with the soy sauce and mirin at medium high heat. When the sugar is melted add in the mushrooms and cook at medium heat for 2-3 minutes. Then add in the butter, stir to melt and simmer the sauce at low heat, the sauce will slightly become slightly thicker as some liquid would have been absorbed or evaporated.
3. When the pasta is cooked, drained to remove the water and toss into the mushroom sauce.
4. Add in the Mentaiko seasoning powder (optional), shiso, pinches of 7 flavor pepper powder and half of the spring onion. Toss to mix well.
5. Serve on hot pasta plates, sprinkle the remaining spring onion, spoon the tobiko on top and sprinkle the nori seaweed. 

Enjoy!!!

 Shimeji mushrooms also known as beech mushrooms, there are also white ones.

Print PDF