Miso Nikomi Udon

Description
Translated from a Japanese language cookbook (Shinkatei Hyakkajiten Vol. 1, Kodan-sha, 1967). I have recently made this, and will rearrange the directions to be more user-friendly by the end of April '05. Please regard the amounts of chicken, eggs, kamaboko, as suggestions. Udon are the comparatively thick white Japanese noodles made with white wheat flour. Weighing the miso would be most accurate, but my conversion chart says 160 g miso is equal to 140 ml, or 1/2 US cup plus 1.4 tablespoons. Please use caution, because miso is very salty.



Ingredients

 * 280 g fresh udon noodles, uncooked
 * 120 g chickens
 * 4 small dried shiitake mushrooms (black mushrooms)
 * 1 (65 g) package aburage (2 slices thinly sliced and fried tofu)
 * 1 small burdock root (gobo root)
 * 4 slices kamaboko (commercially available fish paste product)
 * 4 hard-boiled eggs
 * 2 green onions
 * 160 g red miso
 * 1400 ml dashi (Japanese soup stock)
 * 200 ml milk
 * ground japanese brown pepper (sansho)

Directions
Cut the chicken into small pieces and salt lightly. Soak the shiitake in water until the tops (but not the stems) are soft. Remove the stems and cook briefly in a small amount of water flavored with soy sauce and sugar, to flavor mildly; I would use about 1/4 cup water with 2 to 3 teaspoons each soy sauce and sugar. Prepare the aburage by placing it in a metal sieve in the sink and pouring 1 to 2 cups boiling water over each side, being careful not to burn yourself. This is to remove some of the oil. Rinse in warm water, squeeze dry and cut into 3 by 1/2 cm rectangles. Wash and scrape the gobo with the edge of a knife (the most flavor is just below the surface of the skin, so don't scrape too deeply; the scraped areas will darken almost immediately, this can't completely be helped), and cut into slivers, as if you are sharpening a pencil, into a bowl of water.<BR> Cut the green onion into thin slices.<BR> Peel the hard boiled eggs and slice horizontally.<BR> Stir the miso and dashi together and strain.<BR> Place miso mixture into a large pan; add the milk and just bring to a boil.<BR> Immediately lower the heat to simmer.<BR> Boil the udon in a lot of boiling water in a separate pan.<BR> Stop cooking when the udon is still a little firm; drain and rinse under cold running water to remove starch.<BR> Add the drained udon, chicken, drained shiitake, aburage, and gobo to the pan containing the simmering miso mixture, in this order.<BR> When the udon and chicken are cooked through add the kamaboko and green onion and increase heat so that the soup will just boil up once more.<BR> Remove from heat, divide into individual bowls, garnish with hard boiled egg slices and sprinkle on sansho.