Japanese Cuisine e pasta. Yes, because in addition to the well-known sushi and ramen, pasta occupies a prominent place in the Japan's culinary tradition, where there are many types of pasta, including the soba noodles.
Prepared with buckwheat flour, are spread across the country and represent a popular meal, sold on the street, in hawker kiosks or in theme restaurants. And soon they became rightfully part of what is called the Wahoku i.e., the food the Japanese traditionally eat, and that includes everything from culinary culture, etiquette, rituals, and the organization of the convivial environment.
What are Soba: the food of Japanese fast foods
With the Soba term in Japan particulars are indicated noodles, made by kneading buckwheat flour and water. Originating most likely in the 1600s, when the technique for making long dough was introduced in Japan, the soba spread throughout the country in the 1800s, starting in the city of Edo, where there were the largest number of restaurants dedicated to this type of long pasta, very tasty and fragrant, which symbolized longevity.
Their origin takes us back to China, from where they were then taken and brought to Japan by Buddhist monks in the late Jomon period.
I soba are therefore a kind of noodles which are usually cooked in boiling broth, as is the case with the ramen and are enjoyed hot, in the form of soup, or cold, depending on the season. In winter, for example, the soba noodles are served in a broth made with dashi, soy sauce, and shoyu sauce, while in summer zara soba is popular: after cooking, the noodles are drained with the help of a bamboo basket and served with nori seaweed, tsuyu sauce, and two bowls containing shallots and wasabi.
There are two ways to eat soba:
- Morisoba, which consists of soaking noodles in a soy sauce-based gravy
- Kakesoba, which involves pouring a soy sauce-based broth over noodles and is usually served hot;
Soba and "Tsuru-Tsuru"
In the well-established imagination of the Japanese cuisine, also accomplice to cinema and cartoons, the Soba are enjoyed with chopsticks and following a now-iconic gesture, which also involves noisily sipping the pasta. This aspect, which in Western culture is seen as a sign of bad table manners, in the Japanese culture is far from doomed and has a specific name: tsuru-tsuru, a technique that is used, among other things, to cool the paste. The word choko denotes the cup in which a sauce is placed contained in the tokkuri, an earthenware bottle, to which thinly sliced spring onion and wasabi are added.
There are restaurants now famous for Soba, such as the Edo Soba Hosokawa, which specializes in preparing dishes made from this noodle, for which a highly prized type of buckwheat is used. Hosokawa Takashi is considered a true master of soba preparation. The art of making soba has a particular name which is "sobauchi" and requires good dexterity, especially because buckwheat flour contains little gluten, which usually acts as a glue. So it is very difficult to "create" these noodles, especially it is important to know how to dose the amount of water for the dough, especially when the ambient temperature is high.
How to prepare Soba: manual dexterity in Japanese cuisine
To prepare soba some important steps must be followed. Choosing quality raw material will make the result optimal, and experience is another important aspect that should not be underestimated.
- First you need to prepare the dough with water and buckwheat flour. The water is added little by little in an amount equal to half that of the wheat flour
buckwheat, straining it evenly with fingertips and palms. - You then roll out the ball of dough with a rolling pin until you have a thin layer that you fold into several layers.
- A special ruler is placed next to the dough and spaghetti with the thickness of 1 mm and the length of 50 cm is cut.
Important and not to confuse them with the Udon, which are instead prepared from wheat flour.
The seasonings for hot soba
There are many varieties of ingredients to season hot soba, and each mode gets a different name:
- Kake soba, with thinly sliced negi and, if desired, with a slice of kamaboko (whipped and cooked fish)
- Kitsune (in Kantō) or Tanuki soba (in Kansai), with aburaage (fried tofu)
- Tempura soba, with various kinds of tempura, especially shrimp
- Tanuki (in Kantō) or Haikara soba (in Kansai), with tenkasu (small pieces of fried tempura batter)
- Tsukimi soba, moon noodles, with raw egg, floating in the hot broth and resembling the moon
- Tororo soba, garnished with tororo, the puree of nagaimo (sweet potato)
- Wakame soba, with wakame (a dark green seaweed)
- Sansai soba, served with cooked field vegetables typical of Japanese cuisine (sansai), such as tara no me (aralia elata sprout), warabi (aquiline fern sprout), etc.
- Nanban soba, served with leeks, to which chicken (Tori nanban) or duck (kamo nanban) is often added
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