I didn’t really delve into Japanese food until I moved to New York City, where sushi bars and Japanese steakhouses seemed to be around every corner.  However, I had never tried yakisoba until I met my husband, who spent 3 years of his adult life living in Japan and grew up in a partial Asian household.  I remember him referring to it as a “refrigerator stew” of sorts – meaning that whatever was left over in the fridge, essentially ended up in this dish.  However, over the nearly 10 years we’ve been together (and 8 moves!), we’ve had yakisoba in a variety of places and you can usually count on the noodles, cabbage and carrots to be in place.  Last week, napa cabbage was on sale and though I’ve never cooked with it before, I decided that I would give it a try.  When I did a search with this ingredient, chicken yakisoba was one of the first items to pop up and I was happy to try my hand at it.

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=222437

Cooking Light, MARCH 1998

Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 2 cups)

Ingredients

  • 7  tablespoons  low-sodium soy sauce, divided
  • 1/2  pound  skinned, boned chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces
  • 2  teaspoons  vegetable oil, divided
  • 2  cups  vertically sliced onion
  • 1  cup  (2-inch) julienne-cut carrot
  • 6  cups  coarsely shredded napa (Chinese) cabbage
  • 1/4  cup  sake (rice wine) or dry sherry
  • 1  tablespoon  minced peeled fresh ginger
  • 2  teaspoons  sugar
  • 1/4  teaspoon  salt
  • 4 1/2  cups  cooked soba (about 9 ounces uncooked buckwheat noodles)

Preparation

Combine 3 tablespoons soy sauce and chicken in a zip-top plastic bag; seal and marinate in refrigerator 30 minutes, turning occasionally.

Heat 1 teaspoon oil in a large nonstick skillet or wok over medium-high heat. Add chicken; cook 3 minutes or until done. Remove chicken from skillet; keep warm. Add 1 teaspoon oil, onion, and carrot to skillet; stir-fry 2 minutes. Add cabbage; stir-fry 2 minutes or until cabbage begins to wilt.

Combine 1/4 cup soy sauce, sake, ginger, sugar, and salt. Pour sake mixture over cabbage mixture. Add chicken and soba; toss well to coat. Cook 1 minute or until thoroughly heated.

Nutritional Information

Calories:386 (10% from fat)
Fat:4.4g (sat 0.8g,mono 1g,poly 1.9g)
Protein:23.5g
Carbohydrate:57.4g
Fiber:3g
Cholesterol:33mg
Iron:2.7mg
Sodium:946mg
Calcium:137mg

Notes:

Well in usual fashion, I didn’t read my ingredients right (I really need to learn to sit down, read through slowly - before I start!) and it wasn’t until just now as I was formatting this blog entry that I realized that it called for rice wine…not rice wine vinegar - no wonder it tasted a bit vinegar-y!  Yes folks, I’d like to think I’m intelligent, but I know I don’t appear so from my countless cooking errors.  One thing is for sure, I’m like the tasmanian devil in the kitchen, I make a terrible mess and I try to accomplish multiple dishes at once which probably leads to my confusion.  It also didn’t help matters that my dear hubby was reading to me about tax liens as investments (hubby is a government employee by night – literally – and investment guru by day) so there were a couple of times that I had to sweetly ask him to refrain from reading aloud so I could concentrate on my directions.  Ah well…  :)

Verdict:

Even with the vinegar-y tinge, this was still pretty good – not as oily and salty as you would get in the restaurants, but good CL style.  I’m sure it’s even that much better made the right way, so I’ll be sure to not make this mistake twice!   I was also pleased with the 2 cup serving which is very satiating!  The amount of chicken seemed a bit light in this recipe, that is, until I noticed that they all fell to the bottom of the pan, so be sure to dig for these.  You can usually find soba noodles in the Asian set of your local market and they really have a unique taste/texture that compliments this dish nicely. 

Keep in mind that you will likely have 1/4 to 1/2 a head of cabbage remaining, so be sure to utilize it in other ways.  I tried using the “ranch slaw” on the CL site but knew right away it wouldn’t taste right, so I quickly changed gears and found an Asian Cole Slaw recipe on the AllRecipes site.  I halved the recipe, only used the remaining napa cabbage I had on hand (in lieu of the other types of cabbages) and added the other ingredients in (including PB, soy, ginger, garlic and brown sugar and some chili paste I had on hand to give it a little bite) and it was fan-freaking-tastic!  Here’s that recipe in case you’re curious:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Asian-Coleslaw/Detail.aspx

Mmmm Mmmm…