{"id":1423,"date":"2007-09-04T22:51:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-04T22:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2007\/09\/04\/the-old-switcheroo"},"modified":"2007-09-04T22:51:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-04T22:51:00","slug":"the-old-switcheroo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2007\/09\/the-old-switcheroo\/","title":{"rendered":"The old switcheroo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alright, people. That\u2019s it. Enough of this wedding hoo-hah. Enough gushy, gloppy, lovey-dovey stuff. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve noticed, but it\u2019s September<\/span>. Like, end-of-summer September. Back-to-school September. Early-season-apples September. The calendar said it was coming, but still. It\u2019s something we should talk about.<\/p>\n

As a kid, I always loved September. It meant a reprieve from the pounding heat, for one, and in Oklahoma, that was no small potatoes. It also happens that September is my birth month, which meant balloons and cake and a slumber party. It was also the time of year when my mother would take me out for school supplies, protractors<\/a> and compasses<\/a> and other crap that I would never really use, but that made me feel right<\/span> somehow, and ready<\/span> – the way superheroes feel, I imagine, about their special capes and costumes. Of course, September also meant school, and getting up early, and spelling tests, but the blow was soft and measured, never more than I could take.<\/p>\n

These days, it\u2019s not always so easy. I miss summer already. It rained last night on Seattle – a sure sign if ever there was one – and I sighed this morning, when I opened the front door, to find the yard matted with yellow leaves. Soon, I\u2019ll bet, the grass will be completely covered with them, and then there will be more rain, and more rain, and maybe even snow, and oh wow, OH NOOOO. But then, you know, that old September feeling comes again, and from my safe perch inside the house, with the door closed, I can almost love the puddles and the leaves and the cars splish-splashing past, each one whooshing September! September! SepTEMberrr!<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, I don\u2019t know what to say. I guess September is kind of great, in its way. It keeps you occupied with pretty, shiny things so that you won\u2019t really feel the pinch. It\u2019s a kindly old doctor with a quick syringe. It\u2019s a wise magician, a master at sleight of hand. It\u2019s the old switcheroo. Sure, September means the return of real life, the nitty-gritties. There are no two ways around it. But it seems to want to please, and that makes it pretty hard to dislike.<\/p>\n

Plus, it\u2019s a perfect time to talk about Brandon\u2019s favorite soba noodles, a dish that doesn\u2019t give a flying hoot what the season is.<\/p>\n

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I first mentioned these noodles a while back, in the process of telling you about another one of Brandon\u2019s standby meals, a very simple chickpea salad<\/a>. This soba is something that Brandon devised when he was living in New York, in the months before I came along. He used to make it for breakfast because \u201cit was fast and easy,\u201d he says, and then he would pack up the leftovers and tote them out to Brooklyn, where he was in school at the time, and eat them for lunch. He made this soba for me on one of my first trips to visit him, in June of 2005, and we ate it one hot, sticky morning, straight from a dented aluminum mixing bowl. There was a box fan propped in the window, and I had my bare feet perched on the edge of his chair, and our chopsticks made a faint plink<\/span>! against the bowl, and I remember thinking how very Brandon<\/span> those noodles were, messy and delicious, spiked with two hot sauces.<\/p>\n

When he moved to Seattle, he brought that dented bowl with him, and he keeps using it, even though we have better ones. Sometimes he even digs all the way to the bottom of the stack to get it. I like that.<\/p>\n

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Several of you have written to ask for this recipe, but until now, there really wasn\u2019t one. Brandon makes these noodles by eye and by taste, and the first time we tried to quantify the ingredients, it came out all wrong. Plus, it\u2019s not a terribly attractive dish – brown-on-brown, with some pink and orange – so I was reluctant to share it with you.<\/p>\n

But those seem like silly excuses, really, when I think about what a perfect lunch it is. Especially now, in this back-to-real-life season. For one thing, it\u2019s quick to make. It\u2019s also filling, but not too much so. Best of all, it uses somewhat seasonless vegetables, the sort of neutral roots and greens you might already have lolling about, biding their time in the crisper drawer. Just bang \u2018em all together, chuck it in your bag, and with a piece of fruit to finish, you\u2019re all set. You\u2019ll be so well occupied, you won\u2019t even feel the pinch.<\/p>\n

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Soba with Peanut-Citrus Sauce<\/span><\/p>\n

When Brandon makes the sauce for these noodles, he almost never measures. As a result, they taste a little different each time. What you see below are the amounts he used on his most recent go, and a pretty delicious one at that. Really, so long as you taste and tweak, it\u2019s hard to go wrong.<\/p>\n

Here are a few variations to play with:<\/p>\n