Noodles ── Soba
Sarashina Soba
Sarashina soba — pale, refined noodles milled from the buckwheat grain's innermost starch
Soba made from sarashina flour, milled only from the pale starch at the center of the buckwheat grain, with none of the darker husk or bran mixed in. The result is noodles pale enough to look almost white, with a texture said to sit somewhere between ordinary soba and somen. The flour is said to have first appeared in mid-Edo-era writing as a luxury product.
Lineage
What it's made of
The flour is sarashina-ko, also called ichiban-ko, or "first flour" — only the pale starch at the very center of the milled buckwheat grain, with none of the husk or bran folded in. Where a darker soba carries a stronger aroma and taste, sarashina soba is said to trade those for a smoothness that lingers on the tongue instead. The bite is said to feel like neither ordinary soba nor somen, but something of its own.
How it's made
The grain is milled in stages, and only the purest flour that emerges first — from the very center — is set aside for use. It is the opposite process from hikigurumi, which mills the whole grain including its husk, and producing a flour this white is said to demand considerable skill. An essayist writing in the Bunka era is said to have already remarked on how rare such pale soba flour was.
Why it took this shape
The name sarashina is said to trace to 1789, when a man from Shinshu hung a sign reading "Shinshu Sarashina Soba Shop, Nunoya Tahei" in Azabu Nagasaka-cho, Edo. Pale soba is said to have existed even earlier, known by names like yukimaki-soba, and it is unclear just when the name sarashina came to stand for that whiteness. One account holds the name combines Sarashina, a district known as a hub for Shinshu buckwheat, with the character "-shina," granted by the local Hoshina clan.
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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
Contrast
- HikigurumiSoba flour milled from the whole buckwheat grain — husk and all — without separating it into first-flour, second-flour, and so on by stage. Because it grinds in flour close to the husk, the color runs dark and the aroma comes through strong, sitting at the opposite end of the spectrum from sarashina flour.
- Inaka SobaPlaced at the opposite end of the spectrum from sarashina soba, inaka soba is thick, dark, and carries a strong buckwheat flavor. Also called yamaga-soba, the name is said to have marked it as rural or mountain-village soba, set against the more refined Edo style. A shop by the same name is said to have existed in Edo itself in the closing years of the shogunate.
Derived style
- Kawari SobaSoba whose dough has a second ingredient — tea, egg, wild greens, and the like — kneaded in for color or aroma. Noodles with especially vivid color are singled out and called irimono. The oldest known example is said to be tamago-sobakiri, an egg noodle from the Edo period, and the practice is said to have flourished as a playful variation during the Bunka-Bunsei era.
- Sarashina-keiOne of Edo's three great soba lineages. It is said to trace back to 1789, when a man from Shinshu hung a sign reading "Shinshu Sarashina Soba Shop, Nunoya Tahei" in Azabu Nagasaka-cho, Edo. The lineage is said to have built its name on pale sarashina soba alongside colorful kawari-soba.