I am in Japan to bring back some fresh buckwheat flour for our upcoming Pop up soba event and soba workshop at Breadbar, West Hollywood.  Here is the link to Breadbar. 

Sado, Japan

Water ratio: 42%

Humidity: 55%

Water source: Volvic

Cooking time: 90 seconds counted by Carolina

Location: Paris, France

Hot soba with grilled Age tofu, seaweed,

wild asparagus and scallion toppings. 

For my five-day trip to Paris, I packed my suitcase with mostly soba making tools, not clothes. I promised my friends that I will make them soba. I hear about chefs traveling with their own knives. I am starting to do the same. I brought not only the soba cutting knife, but also buckwheat flour, a measuring cup, a scale, a cutting board, bonito flakes to make dashi, wasabi and some homemade dipping sauce

concentrate.   

The little   kitchen that could.

I arrived at my Brazilian friends, Andre and Carolina's apartment with two bags full of food and equipment. Carolina came downstairs to help me carry the stuff up to the fourth floor. I panted up the stairs. Carolina told me about the ninety year old woman who lives on the 3rd floor of this apartment building. She does the stairs twice a day. Amazing. 

Andre and Carolina greeted me with great music and ambience.  I knew right then that we will were in for a fun evening.  

Kneading the dough on the counter. Wild asparagus are

cooking next to me.

Their kitchen was equipped with an electric stove, the kind that you are not sure if the heat source is on or not. I was concerned if the heat source would be hot enough to boil the noodles, but Andre gave me an instant solution. We used the electric water kettle to boil the water, and transferred it to the pot. You make do with what you have, and we did fine.

For starters, I served Tunisian tuna sashimi with grated wasabi.  The sashimi was tender, the flavor was good. We wrapped the sashimi with shiso leaves and ate it like a taco. There was also blanched baby spinach seasoned with roasted ground sesame salt (made by Andre and Carolina). A spicy sauteed carrots with Thai chili peppers. It was nearly a vegan night. Andre was supposed to make a vegetable and goat cheese frittata but the eggs never it out the fridge.

Cold soba served with a variety of seaweeds, dill,

chives, grated daikon and wasabi.

We made two types of soba - cold and hot. One like a salad, the other like a soup. They both tasted delicious. I garnished the noodles with some seaweed, chopped dill, and chives. This is deviating from the classic Japanese dish, which is served plain, but I couldn't resist the beautiful herbs I found at the market this morning. I am sure basil, chervil, parsely will also go well with soba, but if you want to enjoy the fragrance of the soba first, serve the herbs on the side.

Andre and Carolina loved the soba. Andre was preferred the Hot soba. Carolina loved both. For thirds, we had another round of hot soba. They said soba tasted pure, that it was exactly the kind of food they liked to eat.  That's what I love to hear. We talked about starting a buckwheat farm in Brazil.  Wouldn't that be cool? I am going.

We ate strawberries and chocolate for dessert. Yummy, evening. Beautiful friends.

Merci beaucoup. A bientot.

Flour ratio: 40% Dattan Flour, 40% Buckwheat Flour  20% All-Purpose

I finally got around to making Dattan Soba at home.  Of the 50kg of buckwheat flour that I brought back from Japan, I had 5 kg of Dattan buckwheat from China.  I didn't expect to like Dattan when I was first introduced to it.  People warned me that Dattan tastes bitter and medicinal. But it did not hit my tastes buds in that way at all.  I love the grassy flavor and the mustardy color of this buckwheat. You feel healthy just looking at it.  

Dattan soba is prized in China and Japan for its medicinal properties. Dattan is grown by the Yi tribes inhabiting in the highlands of Sichuan and Yennan province. This soba has almost 100 times more Rutin than normal buckwheat. The popularity of Dattan has slightly cooled off in Japan but there are people who eat this soba and drink its tea regularly to stay healthy. The Yi tribe who eat Dattan everyday is said to have no adult lifestyle related diseases.    

I make a mild Dattan soba by mixing the flour with standard Japanese buckwheat and all purpose flour. You don't taste the bitterness but there is a hint of grass in the flavor.  It is best eaten cold or as a salad.  I used vegetables I found in my fridge - tomato, avocado, enoki mushrooms and scallions.  Any salad vegetable goes with soba.

Recipe:

Makes 4

4 servings of fresh soba noodles  but recipe calls for a ratio of 40% dattan flour, 40% Japanese soba flour and 20% all-purpose flour.  See instructions below.  Or use1 bag dried soba noodles, and cook them according to package instructions.

1 avocado peeled, pitted and sliced vertically, about 1/4 inch wide

1 tomato, sliced thinly, 1/4 inch wide

1 bag of enoki mushrooms, ends removed

Yuzu or lemon rind,  a small sliver for each person

Wasabi to serve at the table (optional)

 Dipping sauce  (here is the link to a quick dipping sauce)

1-2 tsps olive oil or sesame oil to taste (optional)

Make the dipping sauce first and keep it chilled.  

To make Dattan soba noodles by hand, use boiling water, instead of water , as called for in the standard recipe I provided.  Use a paddle to mix the hot flour.  When the water is incorporated into the flour and cooled down, then use your hands to mix the flour and proceed according to the soba recipe. Cook the noodles just before serving the dish. Add some oil to the noodles. (optional). 

Slice the vegetables.

Arrange the soba noodles on a plate and arrange the vegetables  and Yuzu on top.  Pour the sauce at the table,  just before serving.  Serve with wasabi (optional).

Option: You can use other vegetables of your choice - sauteed shitake mushrooms, asparagus, lettuce, spinach, etc.

In case you wonder why I have not finished writing about "My Flour Days", it is because I am still in the middle of my soba apprenticeship at the Tsukiji Soba Academy and I can't seem to find enough time in the day to sit down and blog.  But during my short visit back to LA a  week ago, I invited a few of my foodie friends and had them taste my soba.   My friend Lora Zaruben of LA Times Magazine blogged about the fun evening. 

I will get back to blogging in a couple of weeks.  

Sifted flour

Playing with dough has always had a calming effect on me. There was my mother's dough, which she used to make apple pies. What impressed me about her dough was the enormous amount of butter she used.  She never measured. She didn't even go by a recipe. Yet, when it came to how much water to add to the dough, she was very careful. I believe she even used a measuring cup. She instinctively knew what can make or break a pie crust.  

Sifting the flour

LESS IS MORE

Trying to figure out the optimum amount of water to add to the flour, Kasuiritsu, is one of the critical tasks in soba making.  In January, Tokyo was drier than the rest of the year, ranging from 25% to 35% humidity. So the amount of water we used to make soba ranged between 41% to 45%. Most of the time, we stayed around 41-42%. We relied on the scale and the measuring spoon. A small error  can ruin your soba and your day. There was no formula for figuring out the optimal amount of water for making soba.  Experience helps. Akila said he did not believe in adding more water than necessary because it affected the flavor and texture of the dough. Less is more, he kept saying. All I wanted at this point, was to turn out something that looked like dough, and not a crumbly mass of flour.

LET THE FLOUR TAKE A JOURNEY

After the greetings and lecture, Akila made one batch of soba to demonstrate h is technique. I stood next to him and watched his hand movements.  With soba, the initial mixing of flour with water is done mostly with your finger tips.  Like a piano player who is playing with his finger tips standing on the keyboards. the soba maker too moves the tips of his fingers quickly, making sure that there is no flour that is sitting still.  The hand movements are circular, fingers spread apart. My hands are small to begin with so it isn't easy to keep the flour moving in the large bowl. "Let the soba take a journey," Akila would say. It reminded me of the old saying, "Send your loving child on a journey." which means that the child will mature better by learning to stand on his own feet. Same thing with soba.  The only diffference was that soba had to take the first part of this journey in 30 seconds.

The fingers moves quickly to bind the flour with water. 

LET'S NOT WASTE FOOD

Any flour that was stuck on the fingers were wiped off and combined with the dough in the bowl. The whole idea of cleaning the bowl and removing the flour on your finger tips  were to keep flour waste to a minimum.  In class, we used a large and heavy stainless steel bowl. I could hardly lift it.  The traditional soba bowls, Hachi, are made of wood and are much lighter and more beautiful but Akila explained to us that it is difficult to find a tree trunk that is suitable for making a Hachi, bowl, plus the life span of such bowl is not very long. The stainless steel bowls are friendlier for the environment and more sanitary.

Once the initial mixing was done, the next step was to continue mixing but this time with the heel of your palms.  This step ensures that every cell of buckwheat is fed with water and there are no dry cells left. As you work the flour, you can feel the moisture in the flour building.  The smell of buckwheat is slightly yeasty. Now I am ready to bunch the flour together and start kneading, Kone.

GLUTEN FREE 

Buckwheat flour contains no gluten. Gluten is the Latin word for "glue". It is the glutens in wheat flour that gives kneaded dough its elasticity. So how do we bind soba if there is no gluten?   

When flour is mixed with water and kneaded, the process adds strength to the dough, elasticity and helps bind the flour together wihtout relying on gluten.   At the Academy, we practiced making 100% buckwheat soba, Kikouchi, and Nihachi, 2:8 ration of all-purpose wheat flour and buckwheat flour, and some other variations. I found Kikouchi the tastiest of all Soba. 2:8 ratio was by far the easiest to handle while retaining good flavor and adding some elasticity to the dough.

s.  

  The Flour combined with water is darker and mosit.

It is gathered in the middle of the bowl and ready to be knead.

I will talk about more about kneading, next in Flour days: Living and Kneading in Tsukiji (4)

Natto pasta with scallions

When it comes to fusion cusine, Japanese often do things that I find quite daring mixing native ingredients with foreign imports.  Take pasta, for example. The most popular Wafu, Japanese style pastas are Tarako, salted cod roe and Natto, fermented soybeans. Both ingredients have strong flavors.  Tarako is salty, some are spiced with chili, in which case they are called Mentaiko.  Natto is smelly like cheese and slimy like okra. It is an acquired taste.  Fusing Tarako with Pasta is understandable because Tararko is similar to Bottarga, the dried and cured roe, which is used in Italian pasta.  But there is nothing I can think of that comes close to Natto in Italy. The Japanese figured, if Natto works on top of rice, it can also work on top of pasta, and it does, more or less. 

Pasta Carbonara with Bacon, Mentaiko (salted cod roe) and Chives

When my son Sakae and his girlfriend Bina were in Tokyo during the winter holidays, I took them to an inexpensive neighborhood pasta place in Shibuya that's been here since the early fifities called Kabe no Ana, Hole in the Wall.

We ordered the two quintessential Wafu style pastas. The Natto spaghetti came with a generous mound of whipped natto (fermented soybeans) seasoned with raw egg, soysauce and mustard and served over buttered spaghetti. It was slimy as Natto  should be. People either love Natto or hate it. My son loves natto but he was not crazy about this dish. He said he prefers Natto over rice and not pasta.  I feel the same but many Japanese eat Natto this way and love it.

Bina ordered the Mentaiko pasta, carbonara style.  It was your basic egg pasta with bacon which was coated with spicy Tarako, salted cod roe. She ordered the large plate. Compared to the Natto spaghetti, this one was a winner. I orderedTarako, salted cod roe, and with Squid and Shiso.   Bina's dish tasted better. We all ended up taking a bite or two of her pasta. 

Both Natto and Tarako pasta can be easily made at home. WIth natto, you just take it out of the container, mix it with whipped raw egg, a teaspoon or two of soy sauce and mustard and pour it over hot buttered spaghetti.  Not much to it really.  Sesame oil works instead of butter, too. WIth the Mentaiko pasta, you take the cod eggs out of the egg sac with a spoon, or slice it in half, and mix the loose roe into the hot pasta. Toppings such as chopped shiso, scallions, nori seaweed, roasted sesema seeds, daikon sprouts work for both pasta dishes.