Lotus Root and Soumen Noodle Nests

My first attempt (right) was not too bad... From the picture in the book which I cannot replicate here... some notes on how they differ...

• 1. the noodles look a little thinner and darker... much more nest-like than mine... Look for the thinnest soumen noodles that you can find... it's not just that they look better, but there will also be more space between them when embedded in the lotus shell...

  2. He also uses what he calls Sweet-cooked chestnuts which look more orange... Sweet chestnuts that are brown don't quite stand out... it needed a different colour and all I had was a handful of macadamias to hand... I considered creating speckled eggs with nori flakes in rice, rolled into little balls... red speckled with flecks of umeboshi paste... But I was running out of time.. (it had taken long enough already!)

  3. I cut back the daikon only as far as the top of the nest for the above round... which means that none of the soumen stick upwards and the oil could not get in and cook the dough on the inside... on my second attempt I cut back the daikon a little further...

  4. Maybe my daikon diameter was too narrow... Next time I think I'll try making the daikon mould a little bigger and spread the lotus dough thinner.. and get some much thinner (therefore more fragile!) soumen...

Translated and cooked by Oliver from Nishikawa Genbo's Dare ni demo dekiru Shojin Ryori II

Ingredients

• • 150g Lotus Root (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelumbo_nucifera) - One root segment about 20cm was roughly enough.

  • 100g Daikon (aka Mooli) - again about 20cm - but the weight is not too important... it is only used as a mould for the nest and handle for dipping the nest into the hot oil...

  • 1 tablespoon of Plain Flour

  • Pinch of Salt

  • Soumen Noodles - as thin as you can find... they are fragile tho...you only need about 20 noodles.

  • Sweet chestnuts or Macadamias or other small egg-shape food, e.g. a small smooth ball of rice flecked with nori

Method

Be prepared to take a little time over this... it's very fiddly the first time round... Tip! get guests to make their own! :)

1) Remove the skin from the Lotus Root and rinse. Remove any bad (dark) bits that you can see. Finely grate the whole root. In Japan this is called suri-oroshi. The idea is to grate it into a pulp. Then squeeze out the moisture from the pulp until you have a fairly solid lump. Just enough so that it sticks together. Either keep the liquid for cooking or discard. The amount of lotus root will no longer look like much! I was surprised how small they actually turned out to be... But Shoujin Cooking is about small and elegant. Add one tablespoon of plain flour and a pinch of salt and mix well with the lotus paste. This should form a nice dough. Remove any hard bits from the lotus root...

2) The dough from above is going to be moulded around the end of a daikon... but you need to cut the daikon back a little (see the picture below). I think mine were cut back too much... cut down the stem more than you need - 5cm is about right perhaps. The dough only moulds down about 2cm. A diameter of about 3cm of daikon is about right... The daikon will act also as a handle to hold the nest in the cooking oil.

Cut the soumen noodles into 2cm lengths. (See picture left) They are fragile... I took about 7-10 strands, measured the width of my thumb + tiny bit and very slowly squeezed all strands between my other thumb nail and forefinger to break them where I needed... but I started out on a cutting board, which ended up like noodle tiddly-winks... :)

3) Mould the lotus dough from (1) above around the end of the cut daikon. And stick the 2cm pieces of soumen into the lotus dough like a birds nest. Right is pictured my first attempt... none of the soumen would point above the nest top... so on the next round I cut the daikon down further. Because the soumen were quite thick they were tricky to overlap each other within the dough... so get them as thin as possible... this bit took the longest the first time round... Put as many as you can in... also be gentle, as you do not want to pull the dough apart..