Experimental Noodle House: Curry Udon

Today's dinner was (and tomorrow's will be...and the next day's...and the next's...until I run out) curry udon. I had been craving udon for a while, so I finally decided to make some. While my favorite kind of udon is kitsune udon, which features triangular pieces of fried tofu, I was in the mood for something different. As I was browsing the web for ideas, curry udon came up. The curry udon that I saw, however, was basically regular Japanese curry with udon noodles in it, but I felt like having something a bit more soupy. And so, with the idea of curry udon in mind, without any particular recipe, I began my experiment.

I didn't have ready-made noodles on hand, and I usually find them to be kind of gross and too-soft anyway, so I made my own. Here is a great link on how to make noodles, which I followed pretty closely, except I halved it. Boy, do I need practice. I'm not particularly skilled with cutting, so my noodles were really fat, which made them slightly too chewy after boiling. They also had creases where I folded them over, so I have to figure that out as well. Hopefully I will resolve those issues since I plan on making more udon in the future. Wow, I just had an epiphany; since I halved the recipe, I probably didn't need to fold the flattened dough so many times, and all the folding probably resulted in excessive creases. I love sudden realizations!

My attempt...

The broth was an interesting one. I made the base by boiling chicken legs and dried anchovies (myulchi in Korean) in some unknown amount of water. After boiling the chicken drumsticks for the stock, I removed them, pulled the meat off the bones, tossed the bones, and put the meat back into the pot. I also removed the dried anchovies. As for everything else in the soup, I'm not quite sure what the ratios of anything were since I basically grabbed everything on my shelf and threw it in there to see how it would alter the taste. In no particular order, the additional flavorings were: soy sauce, mirin, salt, curry bullions, sugar, fish sauce. I'm sure any authentic Japanese udon-lover is crying in horror at what was in there, but hey, it tasted pretty good. I also sliced onions and carrots and added them in to make the soup seem more curry-like. I was too lazy to peel the potatoes, so I left those out.

I put the noodles in a bowl, topped them with chopped napa cabbage, and then poured the curry soup on top. In the end, I got a nice soupy udon with a touch of curry flavor and some veggies.