Me too tired to make a miso (soup) joke

Whoa. My first cooked meal in, what... over two months. Reason being, of course, my decorating adventures on the edge of sanity. We'll leave the explanation at that for the time being for fear of undoing all of Liz dear's good work (yes, we must keep the Disrupter at bay). Anyway, so having brought some kind of closure to this particular self-indulgent and sadomasochistic period of my life, and having hurriedly tidied the residual mess on the promise of a visit from a fair maiden, voila, my flat is habitable once more. With the tub of miso that a badminton partner procured for me (and only now retrieved from aside my badminton shorts), I ease myself back into the epicurean fold with an old favourite.

LVR's Really Simple Soba
In essence this is a quick 'n' simple dish, a mid-week staple of mine, that requires little thought but returns consistent and undiminished satisfaction. The ingredients have increased slightly as I've honed and evolved the dish over months if not indeed years but it can and it does get stripped back to bare basics when necessity demands. It endures in my mix of meals as it ticks all of the stringent criteria I set for such a dish: it does not require lengthy preparation, 15 minutes should normally do it; it's healthy (hmmm... trying not to think about salt levels in miso); the ingredients are cheap and the fresh ingredients are easy enough to pick up as and when (the miso and other exotic additions I will already have), and taste-wise I really never do tire of it.
A suggestion of really quite random ingredients:

• sesame seeds
• dried red chilli flakes
• clove of garlic
• knob of ginger
• rice vinegar
• carrots
• broccoli
• buckwheat soba noodles
  
• toasted sesame oil
• miso paste
  

1. dry roast the chili flakes and sesame seeds in a pan for a minute or two to toast 'n' roast ever so slightly but not burn. You should smell the chilli in particular come at you when it's about to turn
2. throw water in, enough for the whole broth
3. give the garlic a squish between your fingers (skin off please), slice the ginger in thin rounds and throw both into the saucepan together with a slosh of rice vinegar
4. leave this to simmer for 5 minutes or so. The longer the better. If it reduces too much, guess what, you add more water
5. when hunger or just plain impatience becomes overbearing, return to steam your vegetables over a separate pan - broccoli in little florets, carrots in thin rounds (anything but batons!)
6. now drop a good blob of miso into your nascent soup mixture. I buy the mid range one that has a touch of rice, kombu and other flavouring bits and bobs already mixed in. Kaiseki quality it's not but for soup they're a most welcome addition.
7. It's probably a good point to get the noodles going now. I throw them in the water I'm steaming the vegetables with. Incidentally, Arigato on Brewer St. in Soho sell these the cheapest in London I find
8. Back to the broth. Add a few drops of the sesame oil and perhaps a another slosh of rice vinegar. Turn the heat up, take it to the boil then turn off and leave to settle.
9. The noodles will take 3 minutes-ish and should find themselves finishing shortly behind the soup with the vegetables in toe. When they do, drain and arrange noodles, veg and then broth in what should be your widest, weightiest bowl.
10. shovel and slurp