Noodles ── Soba
Soba Dojo Nabe
Soba Dojo Nabe — buckwheat dough stretched loach-thin into a hotpot
From Mimasaka and Kagamino, Okayama: buckwheat dough stretched loach-thin and simmered in a hotpot. Said to be easy on the stomach and warming, it's cherished as a winter dish in mountain country.
- Origin: Okayama Mimasaka
- About 500 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
The core is buckwheat flour and egg, vegetables — burdock, fried tofu, carrot, napa cabbage — and a dashi built on river fish. Buckwheat dough kneaded with egg is stretched thin and long, shaped like a loach, and dropped straight into the pot, landing somewhere more delicate than suiton dumplings and more rustic than udon.
How it's made
Egg is worked into buckwheat flour, then hot water is added little by little until the dough reaches an earlobe-soft firmness. Dashi goes into the pot with burdock, fried tofu, carrot, and napa cabbage, oil-blanched first. The dough is torn off and stretched loach-thin straight into the simmering pot, then seasoned with soy sauce, mirin, and sake once cooked through.
Why it took this shape
The Mimasaka-Kagamino area is mountain country, and the dish is said to have been valued in winter for being easy to digest and warming to the body. Drawing dashi from river fish, too, is said to reflect the ingenuity of an inland mountain community. Dropping the buckwheat dough straight into the pot, stretched long rather than boiled first, is what lets its starch thicken and flavor the whole broth.
Before you go
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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 Okayama
- Ami to Daikon no NitsukeTiny Setouchi shrimp called ami, richest in early autumn, are simmered with daikon in soy sauce and sugar — a pairing said to have grown from the two coming into season together, with a salted version kept for winter when rough seas kept boats ashore.
- Bachi JiruThe offcut ends of hand-stretched somen, called bachi for their resemblance to a shamisen pick, are simmered with daikon, carrot, and fried tofu in Asakuchi's Kamogata — said to hold a firmer bite than the somen strands themselves.
- Buri ZoniIn southern Okayama, New Year's zoni is built around yellowtail, a fish that changes name as it grows and so is read as auspicious, simmered with spinach, daikon, and other root vegetables — a dish passed down through the generations for the New Year's table.
- Chiya GyuJapanese Black raised in Niimi, Okayama, tracing to one of the oldest documented "tsuru-ushi" pedigree lines from the Edo period — said to benefit from the clear Takahashi river and fertile soil.
- Demi KatsudonA freshly fried pork cutlet is doused in hot demi-glace sauce over rice, a bowl said to have been devised by the founder of an old Okayama City restaurant after being won over by Western-style cooking at a Tokyo hotel — toppings vary shop to shop.
- FunameshiCrucian carp caught in the waterways of the reclaimed Kojima Bay farmland, at their least fishy in the cold season, are minced by hand and simmered with root vegetables, the rich broth then ladled over hot rice — also known as tonto-ko-jiru for the sound of the knife against the board.