This morning I went to Soba Noodle and Japanese Calligraphy Classes at Shouya Maruhachi which was a 160yr old house near Iwatake. Tom went snowboarding.
Recipe for Soba Noodles
200g Buckwheat Flour
50g Plain Flour
125ml Warm Water
Extra Buckwheat flour for dusting board
* Combine Flours in bowl and mix well together
* Add 2/3 of the water and bring the mixture together
* Then add the other 1/3 and finish mixing the dough together
* Knead for about 5 mins until it is all combined and very smooth to touch
* Sprinkle flour onto bench and form dough into a ball and then roll dough out into a square and about 2mm thick
* Sprinkle flour on half of the dough then gently fold in half
* Repeat as above
* Cut noodles with a very sharp knife about 2mm thick and place in a tray ready for cooking
* Cook noodles until tender
* Serve as desired, traditionally served cold with a dipping sauce
Dipping sauce
Soy sauce
Sake
Sugar
Fish Sauce
* Combine all the above using a splash of each
After eating all the noodles any left over sauce can be made into a soup by adding hot water!!
Ok..now for the pics of me doing all this...I was having trouble cutting the noodles as the blade was flat on one side and I was trying to use the curved side and the Soba Master saw this and got me a Left Handed knife...it was a so much easier then!
After the noodles were cooked we sat down and "learnt" how to eat them, which is by picking them up with chopsticks and dipping them in the sauce the slurping them up in one go.
Once we had eaten our noodles it was time to learn how to do Japanese Calligraphy...
This is before the mess began!
These are my efforts...I was happy with them :)
We got to bring some of these home and I will possibly frame the better ones when I get home.
It was a great morning and had a lot of fun learning new skills.
Yutaka picked me up and dropped me back at the lodge and as my shoulder was going into spasm all the time I booked in for a massage at "Fun Fun" at 3pm. The massage was painful but I knew the next day I would feel so much better.
I met Tom after he had been out snowboarding all day and we caught the bus home and had a nap.
Tonight we went out for dinner at "Shinshu Dining"...the food was nice but the menu wasn't very extensive so we picked a few things to share. The place was full and busy and a little chaotic, and as with all restauarants in Japan they allow smoking and they just light up whenever they feel like it and don't bother about the person next to them so this spoilt the night a little so we didn't hang around long after we had finished.
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