Soba Making

My family from New Zealand comes to visit us a lot - which is great, but means that we are always looking for new places to take them that will interest them as well as my kids.  When my mother came to visit in December we decided to try the "soba making experience" in the town next to ours.  The town is trying to promote themselves as a soba town so have started a place where you can go and they will help you to make soba noodles or actually learn to make them professionally over a number of sessions if you want to.

It was the second time my son had made soba and so we let him do the whole thing.  I found it fascinating.  I never realised there were so many complicated steps in getting the dough formed perfectly and then the dough rolled to exactly the right shape and size.  I would never be patient enough to do it each time and  I could never remember all the steps!  From memory it took about and hour and a half for the whole process.  The other thing that impressed me was that there was zero waste.  All bits that were stuck to hands were carefully scraped into the mixture, every speck of flour was carefully swept up from the table and reused. 

Masaki's favorite part of the whole process was using the huge knife to chop it all up.  He has now decided that after he becomes Olympic champion he is going to start a soba shop....
The soba was all taken home and it was quickly devoured by all!