Coffee Daze

Today is International Coffee Day. Its origins are a bit obscure but who needs facts to celebrate coffee!!

I was wondering what I should do for my blog to honour this day and thought I could talk about the different types of coffee or the different ways to make coffee or coffee paraphernalia but I just wasn’t inspired. Then I thought I could share some of my favourite coffee photos or share some of my coffee recipes. That’s when inspiration struck! I was about to have a late lunch and feeling lazy today I was going to make my “Cheat’s Sushi” which is simply a bowl of rice mixed with tinned tuna – I do season my tuna and add other ingredients so it’s not as boring as it sounds 🙂 But, in the spirit of International Coffee Day, I decided to make a lunch that featured coffee.

The thought of combining coffee, rice and tuna wasn’t grabbing me but boiling udon noodles in coffee and adding seasoned tuna was! So here is how I went about creating my fancy named:

Coffee Udon Noodles with Sesame Tuna

I started by bringing to the boil 4 cups of water and 4 tablespoons of instant coffee.

I added 90g of udon noodles to the boiling water and, following the packet instructions, cooked for 10 minutes.

While the noodles were cooking I opened a 125g tin of tuna in oil and drained most of the oil before placing the tuna in a bowl and lightly flaking. I added a 1/4 teaspoon of white sesame seeds, a 1/4 teaspoon of black sesame seeds and a sprinkle of ground ginger and mixed them through.

Once the noodles were ready I drained and rinsed them under running water before placing them in a serving bowl. I added the tuna and tasted my creation. The noodles definitely tasted like coffee but they had a slight bitterness which wasn’t pleasant. I thought a bit of sweetener might work so I added some mirin (a type of Japanese sweet rice wine) and tasted. It was nearly there. After splashing in some tamari (Japanese soy sauce) I was ready to eat!

This is definitely a dish in progress and I will explore different flavour combinations. I really want to try it with fresh tuna. The basics of tuna, coffee and noodles is a real winner for me. If you give it a go just add enough mirin and tamari to suit your personal taste. You can also play around with the amount of coffee if you want weaker or stronger flavoured coffee noodles. It would be great served with Asian greens.

You can see my food and other photography at my Red Bubble site v-something  🙂