Tempura Soba (天ぷらそば)

Tempura soba should look almost too restrained: clear broth, brown-gray noodles, one shrimp tempura leaning across the bowl. One. If you bury the surface under fried things, you've made a different appetite, not a better bowl.

The hesitation is understandable. Dashi, soba, tempura, all in one evening sounds like a small examination. It isn't, if you keep the order straight. Make the dashi first so it can be clear and calm, cook the soba separately and rinse away the starch, then fry the shrimp at the very end. That last timing is the first secret: the crust should meet the broth while it still has life in it, crisp at the edges and beginning to season the soup underneath.

Soba has a fine bitterness, especially when new buckwheat, shin soba, appears in autumn. The broth must be clear enough to carry that fragrance, not heavy enough to drown it. Tempura brings richness, but only a little. We eat the shrimp first while the coat still crackles under the teeth, then taste the dashi after a few crumbs have given themselves to it. Restraint shows.