Homemade Spring Noodles with Ginger Scallion and Miso

Preparation

Make dough

Put spinach and a cup of water in a blender, blend until smooth. Pour spinach mixture through a sieve into a container to get the spinach liquid. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, salt and 3/4 cups of spinach water and mix together until clumpy. Then with your hands, start kneading the dough until it becomes smooth and the surface is uniform, about 8-10 minutes. Cover and let dough proof for an hour.

Make sauce

While the dough is proofing, pour mirin into a sauce pan and cook on high until it boils. Let it simmer for 20 seconds to cook off the alcohol, then turn heat to medium and add in miso and soy sauce. Stir continuously until it is fully incorporated, set aside in container until ready for use.

Roll and cut noodles

In a pot, boil some water with a generous pinch of salt. While your water is heating up, start preparing noodles. Lightly dust a work surface with flour. When your dough is ready, take out of plastic wrap and cut in half. Roll out each dough half until you have two rectangles the size of your hand. Fold each rectangle into thirds and once again continue to roll the dough out lengthwise with your rolling pin to flatten until you have two long rectangles. As you're rolling the dough out, lightly dust your dough if it starts to stick to the work surface. With a little elbow grease, roll out each half to desired thickness. I usually stop when the dough is just thin enough where you can see a light shadow of my hand. Generously dust yout long rectangles of and then fold each one evenly into thirds or quarters length-wise. Take a large knife and evenly cut across your folded doughs to desired noodle width. Unravel your noodles and sprinkle with generous amount of flour after cutting to keep from sticking to each other.

Cook and assemble noodles

When your noodles are ready, place them into boiling water and cook for one minute. Remove from water and strain. In a mixing bowl, coat your freshly cooked noodles with your miso sauce, and mix until incorporated. Top each bowl with garnishes to desired amount. Then, heat 1/4 cup of neutral oil (I used extra virgin olive oil) and heat until it's sizzling and close to smoking. Very carefully spoon or pour desired amount of oil over garnishes in the noodle bowls to intensify the aromatics, serve.