Noodles ── Soba
Mikuriya Soba
Mikuriya Soba — soba in a chicken broth, bound with wild yam
From the Mikuriya area of Gotemba, Shizuoka: hand-cut soba in a chicken-bone broth. It's said to have begun with binding the dough using wild yam instead of water, giving the noodle its easy, smooth swallow.
- Origin: Shizuoka Gotemba
- About 90 km southwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
The core is soba flour, wild yam, chicken, carrot, shiitake, and scallion. In place of water, grated wild yam (jinenjo) binds the dough, giving the noodle a smooth, easy swallow. The dashi runs mainly on chicken bones, sometimes rounded out with bonito and kelp.
How it's made
Dashi is drawn from chicken bones, then julienned chicken, carrot, and shiitake are simmered in it and seasoned with soy sauce and sugar. The buckwheat flour is kneaded with wild yam instead of water and hand-cut. Boiled soba is topped with this broth to finish.
Why it took this shape
Mikuriya was farm country that grew a great deal of buckwheat and wheat, and on land where water was hard to come by, farmers are said to have hit on using wild yam to bind the dough instead. Drawing dashi from chicken bones, too, is said to have grown out of a life built on making broth from whatever ingredients were close at hand.
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Dishes in the same style
- Baniku SobaFrom the Aso area of Kumamoto: hot soba topped with horse meat simmered sweet and salty. It's said to carry the history of a region where horse meat took root as a restorative food for the injured and ill.
- Cha SobaA kawari-soba made by kneading powdered green tea, often matcha, into the buckwheat dough. It takes on a faint green tint along with tea's own aroma. It is said to be one of the playful noodle variations devised during the Bunka-Bunsei era (1804–30), alongside yuzu-flavored soba.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Shizuoka
- Abekawa MochiFresh-pounded rice cake is dusted in soybean flour mixed with sugar. Named for the Abe River, it's said to have been famous among Tokaido travelers as a teahouse specialty and to appear in the travel novel Tokaidochu Hizakurige.
- BokumeshiSteamed eel and shaved burdock are simmered together and folded into freshly cooked rice. Its name is said to trace to oversized eels unfit for sale, used in staff meals at eel farms along the Oi River — a mixed rice dish of the region.
- Fuji KinkaBred by Shizuoka Prefecture by crossing its own Duroc line, Fujirock, with Jinhua, a rare breed from China's Zhejiang province — found only in Shizuoka. Said to combine Jinhua's tenderness with Fujirock's marbling.
- Fujieda Asa RamenA town that eats ramen at breakfast — often a hot bowl followed by a cold one.
- Fujinomiya YakisobaIt grew up as a postwar snack at Fujinomiya's candy shops and okonomiyaki stalls. Its identity rests on three local staples: chewy steamed noodles, pork-lard cracklings called nikukasu, and a sardine-powder topping called dashiko.
- GawaRaw bonito is minced and mixed into a chilled miso broth with cucumber, pickled plum, and shiso. Its name is said to come from the "gawa-gawa" sound of stirring miso into ice water aboard a fishing boat — originally a summer meal made at sea.