Summer Eats: Sesame Sōmen with Shrimp and Edamame

When the temperatures soar, who feels like eating large, hot meals? We certainly don't. High summer is the perfect time for a cold pasta salad such as the one I made the other night with sōmen, thin wheat noodles from Japan, poached shrimp, shelled edamame, and a soy-sesame dressing augmented with a healthy dose of crushed red pepper flakes.

Summer Salad: Sesame Sōmen with Shrimp and Edamame

The really great thing about this salad is that you can make it in the morning in just a few minutes, put it in the refrigerator, and it will be ready for you when you get home from doing whatever it is that you do on a wonderful summer day.

Although at the restaurant, I developed a standard recipe for the soy-sesame dressing, at home, I don't bother with a recipe, preferring to eyeball it instead. I use roughly equal parts of soy sauce (or tamari), unseasoned rice vinegar, and toasted sesame oil, which I whisk together roughly with a fork just before dumping in the warm wheat noodles.

I pour a bunch of frozen shelled edamame onto the warm noodles; they will defrost quickly in the salad.

For salads, I use small shrimp which I dump into boiling salted water which I turn off. I let the shrimp stand in the hot water until they are just cooked through, a minute to three depending on size. They go into the bowl of warm noodles along with sliced green onions and a healthy pinch of crushed red pepper flakes.

Toss the salad well and let it cool a few minutes before putting it in the refrigerator. Don't worry about seasoning the salad until you are ready to eat. It will take a few minutes for the noodles to absorb the dressing, which can change the seasoning balance. The flavors are better if you let the salad warm up a few minutes on the counter before serving. Just before serving, taste and season as necessary.

Summer Sipper: Txakoli

What to drink with this salad? The obvious choice for a lot of somms is Riesling. Others might go with a Chenin Blanc or even a fragrant Sake. For my part, living in one of the great Riesling producing parts of the world, I drink a gracious plenty of Riesling in the summer. While I am not over-sated on Riesling by any stretch, I do like to taste wines from elsewhere on occasion. Moreover, I like serving obscurer wines that others might not have tasted. Summer screams to me of Vinho Verde from Portugal, but these days, it is ubiquitous. So for me in my quest for obscurer wines, branching out to its Spanish cousin from Basque country makes a lot of sense.

Txakoli (or Txakolina as the bottle in the photo above is called) is a great lightly effervescent alternative to Vinho Verde. Pronounced CHACK-uh-lee, this wine, like Vinho Verde, comes in white, red, and rosado forms, though most people know only the white form made from Hondarrabi Zuri grapes, if they know the wine at all.

It's a high acid, low alcohol, clean and easy-to-drink wine. Depending on the producer, it may be vinified in a riper, more aromatically fruity style, or as is my preference, in a more lemony and saline style reminiscent of great Albariño that has been picked slightly early.

Here's to cold salads and crisp wines to beat the summer heat!