New Year's Eve Soba and Nabe

Like many holidays I grew up celebrating, New Years is all about the food!  My husband and I have celebrated this holiday in a "Japanese fashion" for most of our marriage.  It really is the only holiday he really looks forward to all year long.

We always eat soba at some point on New Year's Eve.  This year, we ate it for lunch.  The eating of soba represents letting go of the hardships from the past year and welcoming the journey ahead of the new year.  Soba noodles also symbolize longevity, which is a great thing when starting a new "chapter!"  A park mom friend told me where we could get really good soba.  So, my husband and son went and picked up some freshly made soba this morning.  He used the strong broth they sent with the noodles to make it more mild.  He created a lovely dish featuring a tempura nest and the noodles nestled in a warm bowl full of broth and topped with green onions.  I'm sorry to report that I forgot to take a photo, but it was delicious! 

Photo curtesy of: udon.es

For dinner, we always eat nabe on New Year's Eve.  Each year we switch up the feature ingredient, but the style of cooking is what is the tradition.  Nabe is a soup cooked in the middle of the table.  We have a single burner induction range for our table that we use with an enameled cast iron shallow pot. We start by simmering broth in the pot while we bring plates of soup ingredients to the table.  This year we featured monkfish, oysters, and mushrooms.  There were several other ingredients as well, including daikon, scallops, cabbage, mizuna, and cod. 

We added about 1/3 of the ingredients to the stock and let it simmer while we put homemade ponzu (a citrus soy sauce) in our bowls.  Once the soup was fully cooked, we pulled various items out and into our bowls.  We dug in as quickly as we could, only the heat of the fish could hold us back!  We then put another 1/3 of the ingredients in and repeated the cooking and eating process.  After the final round, we had a beautiful strong broth with lots of little bits of the various ingredients.  To that, we added 2 heaping bowls of cooked rice and let it simmer for a bit to absorb the broth.  Finally, we added two whisked eggs to finish off the risotto. 

The meal is very, very filling.  But it is also so much fun as it takes time and everyone sits and chats while enjoying the delicious fish and vegetables and risotto. 

For us, it doesn't feel like New Year's Eve without these dishes!  We alter them a bit from year to year - changing the type of nabe or how we serve the soba - but the tradition makes the holiday for us.

As a bonus, we received a package from some dear friends today that made us all so very happy and feel so loved.  One of the items from the package was a box of Fran's chocolates.  We dipped into them before our son's bedtime as a special treat.  We used to live really close to the factory of this talented chocolatier and have several fond memories of visiting the factory together.  We're sad not to be spending this night with our beloved friends that we have rung in the new year with so many times.  We missed them (and other friends that also regularly join us) as we ate our soba and nabe, but the package helped us know that we are together in spirit.  It also led to an hour long FaceTime chat, which is always so fun.