Green Tea Soba with Smoked Salmon and Tangerine Salt

If you’re a regular of The Breakaway Cook, you’ll recognize that this post was inspired by his most recent post about Matcha Soba with Veggie Medley.

Eric makes a variety of wonderful flavored salts such as Matcha Salt, Tangerine Salt, Lavender Salt, Smoked Paprika Salt and Kaffir Lime Salt. He shows you how easy it is to make those flavored salts on his blog and if you are a visual type of person, you can watch his video on Youtube. Basically, you take a very flavorful ingredient and mix it with good quality salts in a spice grinder. It’s simple and yet so brilliant!

I haven’t tried them all yet, but matcha salt and tangerine salt are definitely worth the try. You’ll be surprised how well you can incorporate them in your everyday cooking. It also creates a lovely fragrance in your kitchen as you’re making it.

I prepared this dish in two different ways while most ingredients were kept the same: 1) served cold with a drizzle of ponzu, 2) quickly stir-fried and served warm. Both were unique and very tasty in different ways. Yes, the one shown in this photo is the cold kind before adding ponzu. I blanched edamame and asparagus, shocked them in cold water and tossed them in cold cooked noodles with some smoked salmon and sprinkles of tangerine salt. The second kind was made by stir frying cooked noodles and blanched vegetables with a little bit of butter. Just after turning off the heat, I added smoked salmon and sprinkled a pinch of tangerine salt and pepper. Both are topped with cut Nori, adding another Japanese twist.