In case you do not know what soba is, it is buckwheat noodles. You can eat it hot (soup) or cold (you dip the noodles in a sauce and eat them). Nagano is famous for soba, among other things, so it only seemed right that after 3 years here, I would attempt to make it at least once.
Before we get to the soba making, Crystal and I took an accidental awesome detour on the way to the place to make soba and we discovered INSANE amounts of snow!! These pictures were taken on April 30!
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| walls of snow. WALLS!! |
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| Did I mention this was taken on April 30? I have short sleeves on!! |
Ok...so we took some pictures, got back in the car and made our way to a place called Mori no Ie. It's a cute little lodge of sorts that offers all kinds of classes and hiking and snow shoeing and skiing, etc. They also have these cute little huts you can rent for a night and stay in.
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| Crystal and Mori no Ie |
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| Isn't it cute?!?! |
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Anywho...we made soba. I will let the pictures tell the tale.
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| Our supplies/tools |
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| I empty the soba flour into our bowl |
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| add a little water, a little bit at a time and mix carefully |
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| add a bit more water and try to get the dough to be...well a dough. |
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| knead about 300 times |
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| we took turns on the kneading part |
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| soba dough!!! We named it Abos. aren't we clever! (that's soba backwards, in case you are like, wtf?) |
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| roll it out |
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| its supposed to be square...ours looked like a fish! |
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| more rolling...it needed to be about 2mm thick |
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| fold |
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| fold again |
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| someone gave me a knife. mwahaha |
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| cut cut cut!! |
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| all cut and ready to be cooked |
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| about a minute in boiling water, then rinse in cold water and eat! You mix onions and wasabi into this amazing sauce, dip the noodles in the sauce and then eat them. At the end, when the noodles are gone, you pour some of the hot water that the noodles were cooked in into the sauce cup and drink the rest. It is AMAZING! |
Well, there you have it. I did something traditional that did not involve going to a concert or even leaving Iiyama!
Coming up...I go to Kyoto, Hiroshima and Miyajima.
That is awesome! I'm so jealous - noodles are super cool!
ReplyDeleteWhat's in the sauce?! You have a recipe?
we did not make the sauce, but I looked it up just now and it seems to be made of soy sauce, mirin and dashi. Easy enough.
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