Using Your Noodle

Noodles are a big deal across Asia and Japan is no exception. The two most popular varieties are 蕎麦 (soba; buckwheat noodles) and うどん (udon, wheat noodles). Soba is the snobby northern noodle, thin and grey, and udon the cheaper, more laid-back southern variety, thick and slippery and white. Japan newbies often take to the chewy udon noodles more quickly, but they are devilishly tricky to eat with chopsticks; they slip away, slither around in the bowl, and if you get them hot, splash broth all over you in retribution. I've been witness to a visiting friend grab an escapee noodle and hide it under the table cupped in her hand because the waitress was approaching and she couldn't get it into her mouth with the chopsticks in time.

Udon, containing more gluten than soba and thus forming a stronger dough and less fragile noodle, is easier to make than soba and so the noodle novice starts there. The dough is formed from a medium-strength flour (less gluten than bread flour but more than cake flour). You start by mixing flour and salt water in a large lacquer noodle bowl, let it rest a while, then through that shit on the floor in a plastic bag and stomp all over it for a while. This is very therapeutic in addition to kneading the dough. Rest, repeat for a total of three times, then roll it out using a special technique that forms the now very-stretchy dough into a square.

This is scattered with flour and folded over, and now true skill comes into play: cutting the noodles by hand. Noodle knifes are wickedly big and heavy and look like a massive cleaver with the handle over the blade instead of to the side so that your weight is evenly distributed along the blade and you can cut straight, sliding a board across the dough with your left hand to guide it.

Fugu Senpai let me use his new blade; it set him back $800.

My first try, closely supervised, went pretty well. I've been chopping enough vegetables to have achieved a lower-level zen with my knives and this was basically the same movement even though the shape of the knife was different. My noodles were mostly the same size and didn't break. My keepers were pleased.