kawahagi with buckwheat noodles in a light miso

recipe courtesy of Chef Simon Bryant

takes about an hour
makes about 2 serves

for the soup:
½ leek end, chopped
½ small daikon, chopped
3 dried shiitake mushrooms
mushroom stems from enoki
1 onion
1 clove garlic
3 cm piece kombu seaweed
1 tbsp dried anchovy
800 -1000 ml water
3 tbsp white miso paste

remove the heads of the enoki mushrooms and set aside with the ingredients for the “garnish”. halve garlic and onion, roughly chop leek and daikon. place in 1.5 litre pot with dried shiitake mushrooms, enoki mushroom stems and water. simmer for 30 mins, add the anchovy and kombu, simmer a further 30 mins and strain, reserve the shiitake mushrooms.

add miso to the strained stock and whisk until dissolved, keep warm.

miso marinade for fish:
1 large (or two small) kawahagi trunks
3 tbsp white miso paste
50 ml sake
75 ml mirin
1 tsp sugar

heat sake, mirin and sugar, then flame. once the flame has cooked out, remove from heat and stir in miso paste. dip the fish segments into the miso marinade. then place fish in 180°C oven for about 12 mins to cook through.

soup “garnish”:
50 g soba noodles
2 tbsp grapeseed oil to fry mushrooms
50 g enoki mushrooms (stems previously removed to use in the soup – see above)
3 shiitake mushrooms (reserved from the soup – see above)
75 g oyster mushrooms
pinch dirt(y) spring bay tasmanian wakame
1 stem spring onion greens, cut diagonally
½ sheet nori, julienned (roll it up and cut with scissors into 2 mm wide “noodles”)

put soba noodles in a large pot of boiling water, add a cup of cold water and bring back to the boil, add another cup of cold water and bring to the boil again. simmer for 8 mins. strain and run under cold water until starch from noodles is removed.

rip oyster mushrooms apart. using the shiitake mushrooms from stock, remove and discard stems and slice caps thinly. in a hot pan sauté the mushrooms briefly in grapeseed oil, remove.

heat soup with noodles, mushrooms and pinch of wakame. place the noodles in the centre of the plate and ladle the hot soup over. rest roasted ocean jackets on top of the noodles.

garnish with spring onion curl, and nori julienne.