Iced Clear Noodles with Toppings and Dipping Sauce Recipe

Combine vinegar, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a small saucepan and heat, stirring, just to dissolve sugar. Set aside.

To prepare dipping sauce, mix dashi or chicken broth, mirin or sherry, soy sauce, and the remaining 1-1/2 teaspoons sugar in a small saucepan and simmer, stirring, until sugar dissolves. Chill.

Sprinkle cucumber slices with salt and rub the salt into the slices with your hands. Set aside for 30 minutes, then squeeze out liquid. Pour reserved vinegar dressing over cucumbers and mix thoroughly. Set aside for about 15 minutes.

Soak noodles in warm water for about 25 minutes, cut into 3-inch lengths with kitchen scissors, then cook in 3 to 4 quarts boiling water until very al dente. Drain and rinse in several changes of cold water, leaving noodles in the last bowl of rinse water until ready to serve.

At serving time, place noodles in individual shallow bowls filled halfway with cold water and several cubes of ice. Drain cucumber slices and arrange them on a tray with crab, tofu, daikon, chives, wasabi, pickled ginger, enoki mushrooms, and ginko nuts. Let everyone select favorite toppings to add to bowls of noodles. Distribute dipping sauce among small individual bowls or cups at each place. Use chopsticks (or forks) to dip salad into sauce.

One of the most cooling dishes you can serve on a hot day, this soup-salad relies on Japanese clear noodles made from mung beans. Use chopsticks to pick up noodles and toppings for dipping into individual bowls of sauce.

In place of the cellophane noodles, choose somen (very thin Japanese wheat noodles) or any thin pasta. Dashi, fish and kep stock, is available in instant forms in Japanese markets.