Japanese BBQ & Mount Fuji

Our days at the mountain house have been so magical and an experience into a culture so steeped in tradition.

At 6pm every evening a cute Japanese song comes over the loud speaker from the village below and the music wafts up to greet us like a rising mist from the valley. This is to announce to us and the rest of the community that it is the end of the working day in the fields around us and that dinner is soon on the table. Kens 90 year old mother is ready to eat and as she is the head of the family that's what time we all eat ...

But today is extra special as we are being treated to a Japanese BBQ on the front deck with Mount Fuji as the backdrop.

Good things come to those who wait and me wanting to work for my keep was let's loose on some gardening,  I offered to trim a pine hedge that had spring up a meter too high in the front garden and starting to hide THAT view so with a blunt saw, and trimmers I persist and several blisters later the view is reinstated.

Ken is mowing the lawn with an little electric toy mower and with ALL his safety outfit on he looked more like a spaceman, Ken is more at home in front of a computer!!!

Meet some great locals while I was in the front garden pruning the hedge and before you know it we are all invited to some neighbours places for garden and house tours over the next couple of days. Hiroko was amazed and said that they have been coming up country for the past several years and have not managed an invite but me being me will befriend everyone...

Over the next few day while we were out walking the lanes is was like we were royalty and the local cars would slow down and wave to the 2 Aussies. The old market gardner over the front lane I also befriended and got to walk around his plot, he had pretty good English and before you knew it I was bringing home veggies for the family, Hiroko didn't know that he even spoke English.

So after the gardening was finished Ken sparks up the portable BBQ on the front lawn and with a blow touch and a Japanese fan it is not long before the charcoal is smoking and food is sizzling.

Tonights BBQ dinner is very casual dinner still in our work cloths and is at a more appropriate hour as the sun is still very high over Mount Fuji and with several beers in all hands and a happy 90 year old mother in a chair dinner is served late on the deck and around the BBQ.

The BBQ was more of a as it is cooked you would eat it and than other foods are then cooked. We started with boiled salted soybeans in their pods with a beer or three, so a bit similar to a Aussie BBQ!!! The furry pods 50 mm long are warm and you squeeze the 3 or 4 salty beans directly into your mouth, a great salty warm snack with a beer a great way to start. The whole skewered local freshwater fish and sardine are first on the BBQ and the smell is devine, got to say it was a bit trick eating fish off the bone with chopsticks but one soon masters the art! or at least with a few beers no one seams to notice a way-would finger or two too help....

Followed by high altitude corn basted with soy sauce and the flavour was so sweet. Burnt potatoes that you cracked open and smothered in butter, long baby green pepper cooked on the stove in mirin, soy sauce, sake and bonitto flakes ( the magical 4 ingredients ) then roasted on the BBQ.

Zucchini rounds, rice balls painted with soy sauce during the cooking processed they were crispy and also yum. 

Cold pumpkin cubes that had been boiled in bonitto flakes, sake, mirin, sugar,salt and soy sauce, they had such a delicate hit of flavour and great as a side salad + fresh green salads, young ginger shoots blanched in boiling water for a minuet then pickled in mirin and sake. What a taste sensation this BBQ was.

Before you knew it, it is 10pm and the sky has turned into a bluster of pinks and muted mauves and Mount Fuji starts to again disappears into the mist of the nights sky so with a local Japanese scotch in hand admiring the view and still sitting around the fire to keep warm than followed by a hot Japanese  bath what a great way to finish a day. 

Traditional Soba Noodle Cooking Lesson

So today it is off to a soba cooking lessons in a traditional Soba Noodle cooking  school in the small town down the road from the country cottage. Hiroko will be our interpreter for the day as the lesson is taught by an old lady from the village that speaks only Japanese,  how traditionally  amazing will today be.

We arrive for our lesson and even in this style of country business it is still the tradition of taking off your outside shoes and replacing them for scuffs.... kitchen scuffs... Not OH&S footwear by anyone's standards thats for sure!!

The scuffs are a plastic slip on version of the house scuffs that covers your toes.. well they would cover all your toes if you have a size 7 foot but if you have been paying attention to my past posts my feet are a delicate size 12 so the scuffs only manage to cover the top digit of my toes and go nowhere near the heal so I look more like miss piggy than a kitchen hand . 

This seams to bring much entertainment to the japanese teacher but no action on her behalf to rectify the situation.... Well I'm guessing they don't get many non traditional students in this class so far off the tourist tracks. So feeling like a naughty school boy when she is not watching I unplug them from my big toe...and stand behind my bench on top of my scuffs. Normally I may have requested a solution to the problem ... BUT today princess suck it up as you are in there world and not yours... Now their  holds the next " little" issue ... the benches are so low ... I'm in a world of short people, very short people with little, very little feet !!! So all I can do is laugh and watch on as the lesson is about to start.

The kitchen is a large cooking class with several benches and workstations and several huge stainless steel vats of boiling water for many students but our beautiful Hiroko has organised this private lesson today so we can have one on one with the teacher.

First we make the Soba Sauce it is a simple process but as it is where most of the flavour comes from I should pay attention, so no Sake drinking in these class this is deadly traditional and serious stuff!! unlike some of the Italian classes.

Soba Sauce

Put Bonetto flakes into simmering water for about 5 minutes place in a cloth bag to strain off the fish flakes

Add soy sauce and Mirin to taste 

Serve Soba sauce in a jug next to the noodles with  sliced shallots and wasabi.

At the end of the meal put the remaining sauce with some soba noodle cooking water and drink, nothing is wasted in Japan. Hmmmm

It is said in Japan that buckwheat ( Soba Noodle ) is cooling for your body and the hot liquid at the end of the meal warms your body back up again.

So now it is onto the Soba noodles preparation this is the part I've been waiting for to compare Japanese noodles technic to the Italian pasta. Should be fun to see the difference and " wow " what a difference their truly was. 

Italian pasta is so much more forgiving to make, rough and tumbled, fun and easy to achieve for the novice. Throw it around ... add in to many a different sauce or ragu, make it into many a different shape even turn it into a ravioli,

so versatile and such a huge part of the Italian staple diet. Something that anyone could and should try at home, can't wait to get home and give it a try.

Now the Japanese Soba Noodle .... that's a whole different ball game ...

Looks easy enough but even our host Hiroko won't make it at home and she is an amazing and traditional Japanese cook. Most Japanese won't even attempt to make Soba, this is why they have so many Soba Noodle Houses and that's basically all they serve is the Soba Noodle. The cultural food between the two countries is so varied and diverse and unlike Italy, Japan use so many more different ingredients in their diet and cooking.

Soba is so full of technic and gentle handling and of course tradition.

500 grams flour to 250 mls water

8 parts soba flour ( Buckwheat )

2 parts 0 flour

Water cold 1/2 to flour weight

So as you can tell from the 2  ingredients that you need a sauce...

Today

Sift all the flour,

Add 150 mls water into a 5 litre timber flat bottom container and work with fingers tips to make look like the size of rice grain.

Couple of minutes than add another 50 mls and keep working to keep still as loose like rice grains, this is how they work the glutens.

Last 50 mls water, still using tips of fingers now it is starting to look more like bread crumbs.

As the flour we are using today has come from a dry season ( go figure that that would make a difference but apparently it does ) so we need to add another 20 mls today. Once it has come together in the timber bowl start to knead very gently for 5 minuets, very gentle, not like Italian pasta, don't stretch.

Gently knead into a round in your palms and folding into the middle as you go and you will eventually form a belly bottom on the bottom side. About 5 more minutes of gentle kneading then use your palm to knead and thumb to turn to form a cone with an outy belly button look. Flour lightley, very lightley the timber bench, sit it on the bench and squash ever so softly, the belly button will disappear.  

Using your palm only, gently squash and turn to form a disk there will be a rise in the middle which you squash gently as you go. You need to get the round to about 250 mm dia by hand, then with a timber roller (about 900 long x 25 mm dowel, much thiner than the Italian one ) gently roll and turning at 45 deg. While rolling, now this is the tricky technic, run the palms of your hands from the outside of the dowel to the centre. Don't put to much pressure on the pin you need to be gentle. 

This is to make it about 400 mm round and level, very level.Hmmm years of practice still needed, many years, proberly still need some more practise in Japan !!!

Once you have it to 3mm thick you roll it onto the pin and roll once with hands pressing gently on outside, one turn then move hands in, one turn, then hands to the middle one turn.  Repeat several times.

Remove from the pin and you will have rectangle forming. Amazing how did she do that a round into a square and into a rectangle super cool technics.

Roll the Soba diagonally back onto the pin again and repeat to form a square. Your dough should finish about 1, 1/2 mm thick. Sounds complicated well it was and is !! Years of technical experience and Japanese patience. This had better taste good for all this work.

Now lightly flour the large rectangle and fold both ends into the centre repeat and then fold the other way. You will have a thick block now cut in 2 mm wide strips unfold to reveal the noodle at about 300 mm long 

Cook in a large pot boiling water, add dipper cold water after 30 seconds to stop the boil then bring back to boil for another 30 seconds.

Bring noodles out and drop into cold water and gentley wash off the flour and drain.

Place twirls of noodle on individual bamboo serving trays and put sauce next to for service. Find a low traditional table and some comfy cushions on the floor take of your cooking scuffs and put on your eating scuffs sit back and enjoy with friends new and old...

A very delicate process shrouded with traditional technics, loved the Soba Noodles and will always enjoy them at a traditional Soba Noodle House.