Soba

[Hiroyuki]

Soba, or buckwheat noodles, are very limited in use, at least in my family. We almost always eat them with cold, soy-sauce-based tsuyu (soup). We never eat them with miso-based soup, and when we want to eat noodles hot, we turn to other types of noodles such as udon. We could use buckwheat noodles in salad, but have actually done that only once.

I once had deep-fried buckwheat noodles, like these:

http://soba.cocolog-nifty.com/soba/2004/04/post_31.html

They are not a main dish but "sake no sakana", something to be eaten with alcohol.

One more thing: "Yakisoba" noodles are not made from buckwheat.

[torakris]

I am still not a huge soba fan, I will pick udon over it anytime.

Thus I have never really paid attention to the soba that I bought , I am going to pay more attention to the variety out there. When I do purchase soba it is usually the type that is "flavored" with something else, like the wasabi and ashitaba ones I picked up in Shizuoka. I was dissapointed in te complete lack of flavor in the wasabi one though. The ashitaba one I really enjoyed, it almost didn't taste like soba......

[smallworld]

Soba is my favourite noodle and I could eat it everyday! It's what we usually eat when I'm too busy or tired or lazy to cook a proper meal- nothing could be easier, yet it's always satisfying.

I agree with Hiroyuki that hegi soba is the best. But at home, I find country-style soba with higher percentages of soba is hard to cook without breaking, so I usually buy a type with a high percentage of wheat flour. And I usually ignore the directions on the package- the cooking times are always too long. I don't want my soba to turn into mush!

I never eat it with wasabi (unless I'm at a fancy place with real wasabi), I think shichimi is best.

[danjou]

Some of the best soba I tried was bought at a basement food department of a big department store on Ginza ( I think it was Matsuzakaya, although I am no longer sure ..), it was made by a soba chef from Yamagata prefecture.

The best soba I have ever tasted was an "Omori" portion of nihachi soba from a soba restaurant in Tokyo called "Yabu" I think, to which I was invited to several years ago on my second visit to Japan....I wish I could have gone back to the restaurant again...and again, but the kids had to go to Disneyland, and it was really really difficult for a foreigner like me to decipher the train system.

At home, I love to make hiyashi sansai udon as well as natto soba.

I love ika somen at the sushi bar..

and I am crazy about soba ju too...

[HKDave]

Nabeyaki soba. Never really liked the udon version, but the first time I tried it with soba it was love at first bite. Got to have a raw egg floating in it, poaching in the hot soup... and heavy lashings of S&B Nanami Togarashi.

There's a restaurant here in HK that makes its own soba. Very nice stuff...

[jrufusj]

I've gotten hooked on a takeout soba dish from the depachika in the Mitsukoshi by my office. I'm sure I pay more than I need to by eating there, but the dish is under my skin (and it is so convenient).

Zaru soba with sauce ... onsen tamago ... okra ... aonegi ... kaiware ... nattou ... katsuobushi.

I've eaten it three out of four days this week for lunch.

Jim

[Jordanzmd]

Hi,

Does anyone have a good recipe for yuzukiri noodles. Preferably from ingredients available in the states, or can one mail-order premade yuzukiri soba in dry-pack??

Thanks!

[torakris]

welcome to egullet and the Japan forum!

I have never heard of yuzukiri soba until you just asked....

A quick look at the internet tells me they are soba noodles with the addition of yuzu rind, if you know how to make soba noodles you could probably just add some yuzu rind to the "dough".

I doubt you will be able to find mail order sources outside of Japan though....

[nikko]

I've heard it's very hard to find yuzu in the States.

Maybe you can add dried yuzu rind (which you should grind)?

[Hiroyuki]

Yesterday, while watching a TV program on NHK, I learned about mizu soba. 100% buckwheat noodles are boiled, rinsed, and put in a bowl , into which subsoil water is poured. It is served at Kiriya Yumemi Tei in Aizu Wakamatsu city, Fukushima prefecture.

http://sobajuku.net/jyuzu/kiriya.htm

I was intrigued by its simplicity.

[torakris]

Toshikoshi soba (年越しそば), translates as soba for crossing the years or crossing into a new year. This is often eaten at midnight on December 31 either at home or in a noddle shop and the Japanese believe that:

(1)It is thought that soba is a bringer of good luck, family fortunes, and longevity because soba is physically long.

(2) On the contrary, since soba is easy to bite, it is also considered to forget and sever any carryover of hardship and disaster that may have happened during the year.

(3)The third opinion is believed that soba collects fortunes; During the Edo period , a gold and silver craftsmen used balls made of kneaded buckwheat (=soba) to collect splattered gold and silver pieces in the working area, and burned the ball over hibachi (= Japanese heating appliance using charcoal as fuel) to catch residue gold and silver pieces.

from http://www.jpn-miyabi.com/Vol.12/toshikoshi-e.html

My family doesn't wait until midnight, we are all long asleep , rather we will eat it for dinner.

What kind of soba will you be eating tonight?

[Hiroyuki]

My family doesn't wait until midnight, we are all long asleep , rather we will eat it for dinner.

What kind of soba will you be eating tonight?

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I posted a photo of my toshikoshi soba here:

http://hiroyuki-shiozawa.at.webry.info/200412/article_2.html

Very simple toshikosi soba. The soba is a 300-g pack that I bought at the 100-yen shop! I made two types of tempura, kakiage with onion, carrot, and shrimp, and gyoniku (fishmeat) sausage tempura. How frugal we are!

[torakris]

I posted a photo of my toshikoshi soba here:

http://hiroyuki-shiozawa.at.webry.info/200412/article_2.html

Very simple toshikosi soba.  The soba is a 300-g pack that I bought at the 100-yen shop!  I made two types of tempura, kakiage with onion, carrot, and shrimp, and gyoniku (fishmeat) sausage tempura.  How frugal we are!

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Hiroyuki,

Do you always serve the topping and the noodles separately?

I was planning on being frugal but ended up spending 300 yen ($3) a piece on pre-cooked shrimp tempura and store bought pickles.

The Tokyo area got dumped with snow and almost every freeway in the city and out of it was closed, so everyone was on the local roads and the 15 minute trip from the movie theatre to my house took 1 and 1/2 hours!! I wasn't in any mood for cooking.....

[torakris]

we had two kinds of toshikoshi soba,

nishin (herring) soba and shrimp tempura soba

and we had some pickled Chinese cabbage and eggplants

eaten in front of the tv watching the 3 hour long Doraemon special.... it just doesn't feel like new years eve if we aren't in front of the tv....

[Hiroyuki]

Hiroyuki,

Do you always serve the topping and the noodles separately?

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Yes, always. We don't want the soba soup to become oily.

I was planning on being frugal but ended up spending 300 yen ($3) a piece on pre-cooked shrimp tempura and store bought pickles.

The Tokyo area got dumped with snow and almost every freeway in the city and out of it was closed, so everyone was on the local roads and the 15 minute trip from the movie theatre to my house took 1 and 1/2 hours!! I wasn't in any mood for cooking.....

Now you know you don't have to be jealous of those living in snowy regions.

Seriously, though, you will be amazed to see how frustrating and costly it is to live with snow.

[Kiem Hwa]

Here we are eating our soba as cold noodles, put into a ponzu dipping sauce. I'm not sure if it is more customary to eat Toshikoshi soba as a soup?

In any case, we are also eating it as the first course for our dinner (since my BF and I are leaving right after to go eat dinner again at my Aunty's house).

Then we are going to pop fireworks all night until midnight to bring in the New Year. (Do Japanese pop fireworks too, or is this the Chinese influence in Hawaii?)

[helenjp]

We didn't get to eat our toshikoshi soba until yesterday, though we boiled the water for it several times

Two people had it cold with sauce, but it's definitely more usual to have it hot in soup.

When I make it at home, we often have it with naruto-maki, negi, and some shungiku (chrysanthemum greens) tempura, and sometimes some shredded steamed chicken breast.

Hiroyuki, there wasn't enough snow to make kamakura where we were in Hokkaido (it doesn't snow that much in eastern Hokkaido until late in the winter...). However, my husband and his siblings had many memories of eating in kamakura in winter - they said they even used to take a charcoal kotatsu out into the kamakura, and sit there eating mikan and eating noodles, with hot water bottles on their laps. It wasn't warm enough for the kamakura to melt, but it would gradually shrink as the moisture evaporated, until the opening was too small to crawl into!

[Hiroyuki]

I posted a photo of hegi soba here:

http://hiroyuki-shiozawa.at.webry.info/200...article_21.html

Click on the photo to view an enlarged version.

Note that the container is a regular one, but a wooden container called a hegi.

We all like hegi soba very much. The nodo goshi (throat passing) is sooo good.

[SuzySushi]

Zaru-soba all the way, preferably cha-soba, which makes me natsukashii for my first trip to Japan in the sweltering summer. Nothing like having freshly made cha-soba in a little open-air soba-ya across from Kinkaku-ji. (I wonder if it's still there, 20+ years later.)

I can easily find zaru-soba in restaurants here, but not cha-soba, so I buy the noodles and cook them myself at home. Yesterday we had wakana soba (spinach soba?) marketed (imported? or made by? - the package doesn't say - a local Hawaii company). It tastes almost exactly like cha-soba. I wish someone sold them here fresh, though.

[easternsun]

today i was in a shop that exclusively sells products from okinawa. one of the products was tacos-soba

i gather the military base has had some influence on the local cuisine!

[torakris]

today i was in a shop that exclusively sells products from okinawa.  one of the products was tacos-soba

i gather the military base has had some influence on the local cuisine!

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Taco soba????

Almost didn't believe you until I pulled up this!

though you can't see it well, there is soba in the bottom of the cup.....

[shinju]

I have lived in Japan for over 10 years and have never bought fresh soba before....

not even sure if I have seen it.....

torakris: i tried to make a few times - tastes ok, but looks like UDON

my first experience with soba making was in tottori. there is a soba making centre attached to a soba restaurant. everyone makes their own zaru soba. these lovely little obachans who are total pros help you through it. quite a lot of fun. i highly recommend it!

thanks for finding the tacos soba pic !!

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I also make soba sometimes and it's wonderful tasting. I attended a cooking demonsration in San Francisco 5 years ago by a soba master from Japan. After making the first batch, he asked for a volunteer to come up. I frantically waved my hand and I was the lucky one. It was a great experience for me as I learned how to make soba properly. He was surprised that my attempt at working with the dough and rolling (a different motion requierd from regular pasta though) was pretty good for a beginner. I explained to him then that I was used to making homemade pasta and udon. The cutting part is still very hard for me though. It never comes out evenly although my husband made me a device (a wooden guide) for cutting soba and udon.

[Hiroyuki]

On October 22, this year's last event of the kodomo kai (children's association?) was held. The event was soba uchi (soba making), and my son and I participated in it.

Wooden bowls each containing 8 parts buckwheat flour and 2 parts wheat flour:

We were going to make ni-hachi (two-eight) soba.

Special ingredient of soba in the Uonuma region: Funori (a type of seaweed):

The soba master showed us how to spread the soba dough:

Finished product, not bad for the first try:

We had the soba with some tempura, vegetable pickles, and another dish I forgot the name of:

Edited October 25, 2005 by Hiroyuki (log)

[torakris]

Hiroyuki,

That looks wonderful!

Does the soba with the funori have a specific name? Do you know if they sell it dried?

[SuzySushi]

On October 22, this year's last event of the kodomo kai (children's association?) was held.  The event was soba uchi (soba making), and my son and I participated in it.

Wooden bowls each containing 8 parts buckwheat flour and 2 parts wheat flour:

We were going to make ni-hachi (two-eight) soba.

The soba master showed us how to spread the soba dough:

Finished product, not bad for the first try:

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That looks great! What's the method? Standard mixing & hand kneading, like bread? How much liquid did you use? Water only? Did you need to let the soba dough rest before cutting? Did you run it through a pasta machine or cut it by hand?

Curious minds want to know! I have buckwheat flour in the house right now because the other day I made crepes... Soba is one of my daughter's favorite dishes!