Today, I took a long, hard look at the décor of my new apartment and saw that it was strongly reminiscent of…my blog.

Really. My sofa is white, with orange cushions. My dining table is white, with red chairs. The walls are white (well, a pale beige), the wardrobe and the chest of drawers are white, and here and there are scattered square blocks of bright color. It’s almost as though tapping on one of my cushions will pull up a Recent Post.

I guess I’m just a one-aesthetic pony.

At least I’m trying to mix it up a little bit in my cooking. For reasons of economy, I was considering making egg salad for dinner. “I still have ten eggs in the carton I bought for salade niçoise,” I plotted. “If I use one of them to make the mayonnaise, I won’t have to go shopping at all!”

Then I remembered the horrible indigestion I got last night just from one hard-boiled egg, and thought better of eating four or more in one sitting. (Having just returned from an all-beef wedding reception in Massachusetts, my stomach is somewhat compromised.)

And so I made a delicate, chilled antidote to a full-throttle weekend.

Soba noodles are magic. Want to know why?

What happens when you cook pasta ahead of time and let it sit? Unless you think fast and coat it in olive oil, you end up with a clump that could clog the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. The only remedy is a dunk in boiling water.

Not so with buckwheat soba. It’s gluten-free, and comes untangled in cold running water. Which is awfully convenient, since one of the traditional ways to serve it is chilled.

My variation on zaru soba replaces the traditional soba tsuyu (a dipping sauce composed of soy sauce, mirin and dashi) with a pseudo-ponzu made with pink grapefruit instead of yuzu, a Japanese citrus fruit that’s hard to come by in Brooklyn. For flavor and texture, I’ve added dried shiitakes, reconstituted in a salty oyster sauce broth, and grapefruit supremes. Spring onions, sliced finely on the bias, top it all off. It’s a refreshing, practically fat-free summer salad; gently tangy and even a little bitter from the grapefruit.

I love to slice citrus fruits into supremes: it’s a bit fiddly, but once you’ve tried them stripped of their pith, there’s no going back. (Instructional video here.) If you’ve never had an orange or a grapefruit this way, imagine the sensual impact of peeled versus unpeeled grapes, times ten. With no sinew to stand between your tongue and the teardrop-shaped cells, each sac of pulp gives up its juice on contact.

Work over a bowl to make sure you catch all the juice. Even if you miss some of the flesh (I was especially clumsy today, since I lost my paring knife during the move and had to work with my French knife), squeezing the core of pith will ensure that not a single drop of juice is wasted. To me, the process of extracting the supremes to reveal the grapefruit skeleton is very nearly as sensuous as eating the bald segments themselves.

Chilled Soba With Grapefruit, Shiitake and Ersatz Ponzu–Serves 2

INGREDIENTS

2 bundles of buckwheat soba (a package typically contains 4-6 single-serving bundles)
1 grapefruit, cut in supremes and juice reserved
6 dried shiitake mushrooms
3 tbs oyster sauce
Small bunch scallions (green tops only), sliced thinly
1/4 cup soy sauce
Cold water

METHOD

Cook soba in boiling water according to package instructions (usually 6-7 minutes). Drain and immediately rinse under cold water. Cover and chill until ready to use.

Place mushrooms in small saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil and stir in oyster sauce until dissolved. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, or until mushrooms are completely softened. Drain, remove stalks and slice thinly. Chill.

Combine soy sauce and reserved grapefruit juice in a small bowl. Adding a little cold water at a time, dilute to desired flavor.

To serve, refresh chilled noodles under cold running water. Drain, and place in a shallow bowl with grapefruit supremes, mushrooms and scallions. Pour over grapefruit ponzu, or serve in a separate bowl, dipping each mouthful before eating.

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