White Potage Curry Udon
There’s an anime called Shokugeki No Soma (Food Wars) that’s about a hyper-competitive high school with genius cooks. There isn’t an episode that doesn’t have a recipe I want to try someday. Today we did our first one. This white potage curry udon comes from the character called Zenji Marui, who specializes in research to improve his dishes. He’s part of a group that uses history and study to find and combine techniques to make new dishes. This dish uses potage, which is French porridge basically, combined with Asian curry and Japanese udon. This tops off with more French with a Vichyssoise (VISH-ees-WAHZ) which is also just a thick broth made from the leeks, onions, potatoes, and cream stock. We messed up quite a bit while making this, but it still tasted better than almost anything I’ve ever eaten. Let’s jump right in. This makes two bowls. Liz was back as my sous chef, and our friend Chris helped as well.
Ingredients:
Pack of Japanese udon noodles (I found this at Kroger)
2 tbsp ground coriander
2 tbsp ground cumin
2 vegetable stock cubes
2 tbsp sesame oil
1/2 tbsp tamari soy sauce
3.3 tbsp butter
3.3 tbsp flour
3 large potatoes
2 tbsp heavy cream
1 c water
1 onion
1 large leek
Salt/Pepper
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 eggs
Handful of light hard cheese (white sharp cheddar works great)
Prep
Udon Noodles
Cook the noodles in water until it gets soft. Believe me, don’t go longer.
Once you can stir it, pull it off the heat and strain it.
Dump this in a bowl and set it aside.
Mix the spices, one stock cube, 1 tbsp of oil, the soy sauce, and 1 cup of water.
Pour this over the noodles and leave it to marinate.
Roux and More
Peel and slice one potato. Add this to a pot and boil it until tender to be mashed with butter later.
While the potato is boiling, peel and slice the leeks and onion. Peel and thinly slice the potato.
Grab yet another pot and melt the butter. Slowly, and I do mean slowly, add in the flour and stir. If you go too fast it’ll get clumpy. Add the onions and leeks, and cook for about fifteen minutes until it gets soft.
Add the rice wine vinegar and oil. Add the sock with the last cup of water. Add the last of the thinly sliced potatoes. Simmer the entire pot until it’s super tender. This is all important; we messed up here. We diced instead of sliced, and this made the potatoes too tough and we couldn’t do the next part.
If the potato is done, go ahead and mash it and mix with butter. We used a fork since I don’t have a mixer still to do this. Set this aside.
Add the noodles to a pot and add some water and boil to finish cooking and to keep the mixture a liquid.
Take the roux (flour, butter, veggie mix) and liquidize it. Food processor, fork, whatever it takes. Send through a strainer until it’s a liquid. Thin potatoes will be the key here since since you need to make this a thicker soup/porridge. Add the heavy cream to enrich the soup. Season as desired.
Split the noodles in between two bowls without straining it. Pull the noodles out.
Split and add the roux on top.
Crack the 2 eggs into the boiling water to poach them. Take a spoon after dropping the egg in the water and gently turn the yolk and white bits to make a wrapped yolk.
Add the eggs on top with the rest of the bowl.
Add the cheese (grate if you didn’t buy shredded) and a scoop of mashed potatoes.
Afterthoughts:
We messed up a few things, as mentioned. The potatoes were diced for the roux so it couldn’t be turned into a soup and was more of a thick, creamy, chunky porridge without a soup element. We let the noodles sit too long after boiling and overcooking them, and didn’t add any water, so the broth thickened. I didn’t have any of the noodles but my companions loved it. That said the taste was freaking wonderful. The egg was what brought it together. It was a creamy beautiful mix. Salty and savory with a creamy backup. The egg was a glorious tender, supple taste that tied everything together. I feel like there’s so much more to say, but I can’t describe it.