Cold Tahini Soba Noodles With Date Syrup and Chilli Crisp

Cold sesame noodles are one of the most copied dishes in the world, and most versions run on a Chinese or Japanese sesame paste made from heavily roasted seeds. Tahini is the same idea from the other end of the trade route, ground from seeds toasted much more lightly, which makes it paler, looser and slightly bitter.

That bitterness is why this works. A sesame dressing needs something to push against the sweetness, and tahini brings it built in. Date syrup supplies the sweetness in return, and it does the job mirin usually does: clean, rounded, not sharp.

The kinship is real rather than invented. As one survey of the fusion pantry observes, tahini and Japanese sesame paste are textural cousins, while date syrup and mirin both bring a clean rounded sweetness. Keeping the edit small is the whole discipline here, a point Culinary Arts Switzerland makes when it warns that piling soy, tahini, gochujang and pomegranate molasses into one bowl is not fusion. This dish changes the paste and the sweetener and stops.

Ingredients

Serves 4 as a light main. Total time: 25 minutes, no cooking beyond boiling noodles.

• 300 g dried soba noodles
• 120 g tahini, well stirred
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce or tamari
• 1.5 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1.5 tbsp date syrup
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
• 1 garlic clove, grated to a paste
• 2 tsp finely grated ginger
• 80 to 120 ml ice cold water
• 2 spring onions, sliced on a steep angle
• 1 cucumber, seeds removed, cut into matchsticks
• 100 g shelled edamame, blanched
• 2 tbsp chilli crisp, plus more to serve
• 2 tsp toasted sesame seeds
• A handful of coriander leaves

Method

1. Bring a large pan of unsalted water to a rolling boil. Soba needs volume and does not want salt, unlike Italian pasta.
2. Cook the noodles for the time on the packet, usually 4 to 5 minutes. Test a strand a minute early; overcooked soba turns to sludge and there is no recovering it.
3. Drain and rinse immediately under cold running water, rubbing the noodles gently with your hands for a good 30 seconds. This washes off surface starch and is the difference between separate strands and a solid block. Drain very thoroughly.
4. Whisk the tahini, soy, rice vinegar, date syrup, sesame oil, garlic and ginger in a bowl. It will thicken and seize alarmingly. This is expected.
5. Add ice cold water a tablespoon at a time, whisking constantly, until the sauce falls from the whisk in a smooth ribbon. Cold water emulsifies tahini far better than warm.
6. Taste and adjust. It should be assertively seasoned, since cold noodles mute everything. More vinegar for sharpness, more date syrup for roundness, more soy for salt.
7. Toss the drained noodles with about three quarters of the sauce until every strand is coated, then fold through the cucumber, edamame and half the spring onions.
8. Top with the remaining sauce, the chilli crisp, sesame seeds, coriander and the rest of the spring onions. Serve cold or at room temperature, within an hour of dressing.

Why tahini seizes, and why that is fine

Adding liquid to tahini makes it thicken violently before it thins, which looks like a mistake and is not. Tahini is a suspension of ground sesame in its own oil, and introducing water forces a switch from an oil continuous mixture to a water continuous one.