Making Of Soba Noodles

The following pictures say it all on how to make soba noodles. These were taken during the Salmon Festival in Rokkasho Town. We have to wait for this Japanese guy to finish making soba noodles without saying anything. I will do the same thing.....enjoy browsing the photos!






















Finally he smiled :-)

I should have brought my video camera rather than taking pictures of each steps hehehe, sorry I forgot to bring it.

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According from Wikipedia:
Soba is a type of thin Japanese noodle made from buckwheat flour. It is served either chilled with a dipping sauce, or in hot broth as a noodle soup. Moreover, it is common in Japan to refer to any thin noodle as soba in contrast to udon which are thick noodles made from wheat. It takes three months for buckwheat to be ready for harvest, so people can harvest it four times in a year; it is harvested mainly in spring, summer, and autumn. In Japan, buckwheat is produced mainly in Hokkaido. People call soba that is made with buckwheat that has just been harvested "shin-soba". It has more sweetness and taste than soba.

In Japan, soba noodles are served in a variety of situations. They are a popular inexpensive fast food at train stations throughout Japan and are served by exclusive and expensive specialty restaurants. Markets sell dried noodles and men-tsuyu, or instant noodle broth, to make home preparation easy.

Salmon Festival- Rokkasho Town

Salmon Pool (without the salmons)- this is supposed to be the pool for the catching of the salmons

Don't ask me what the sign says, I guess it's Salmon Festival hehehe


Salmon 500 yen ~ $5.61 and 800 yen ~ $9



How to fillet the salmon


How to reach the huge bowl of soup lol


spiral sweet potato


This is not a pizza dough, this is how they make the soba noodles

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Salmon Festival- Rokkasho Town

Oct 23, 2009- we went to Rokkasho Town to witness and see their Salmon Festival; last year we missed this event and so I was hoping I could see the catching of the salmon this year. We arrived at around 12:30pm already, we didn't wake up early to get any free tickets for the first 400 people. I knew I'm not that lucky enough to get those free stuff especially if you have to be early, well we're always late :-). As usual we didn't buy any advance tickets to catch the salmon but we were hoping we can buy just 1 ticket from the festival and I'll let my son do the catching. Unfortunately the catching of salmon was canceled, they said they were not able to catch the salmon from the sea because there were too many jellyfish that may catch up along with the salmon and may break their fishing nets (that's what I heard hehehe). So there was a long line for those people who bought the advance tickets; they have options: to get their refunds or to get their frozen salmon (at least they still get the salmon but they don't have to catch it).

So we ended up eating in one of the food stalls, and bought a 500 yen salmon, a bag of persimmon and a bag of tangerines for 500 yen per bag (~15pcs/bag).

Well, there's another Salmon Festival in Shimoda this coming November 14, we'll try to be there too although we went there last year.

Making Mochi

When we went to Salmon Festival in Oirase we stopped by one food stall that was selling mochi and we saw the old lady and the man were pounding the grinded sweet rice so I took pictures of them from pounding, kneading and cutting of mochi. I missed the mixing of sweet ricce and its ingredients. This is the traditional way of making mochi. I bought 3 bowls of mochi. One small bowl is 300 yen and it has only 3 pieces of mochi on it. The mochi is not sweet unlike the commercially made mochi which has sugar in it and sometimes it comes in different colors like pink, light green and light yellow. They have 3 different types of sauce for mochi. Sorry but I forgot to take pictures of them since I was so excited to taste the mochi. One was with sesame seed black in color (eewww I didn't try that one), one was powdery green and tastes like peanut butter and looks like wasabe and the last is mashed soy beans maroon in color. I'm not sure the name of that beans :-) maybe it's kidney beans but tiny

By the way, mochi is made of sweet rice, sugar and coconut milk. I know how to make mochi, I learned it from my co-worker when I used to work in Honolulu, Hawaii. Mochi is very popular in Hawaii, aside from local Hawaiians, Hawaii is mostly dominated by Japanese people second is Filipinos ( I think) :-)

Ohhh I love mochi!!!

By the way, I searched the meaning of mochi from wikipedia and this is their definition:

Mochi (Japanese: 餅; Chinese: 麻糬) is a Japanese and Chinese rice cake made of glutinous rice pounded into paste and molded into shape. In Japan it is traditionally made in a ceremony called mochitsuki. While also eaten year-round, mochi is a traditional food for the Japanese New Year and is commonly sold and eaten during that time.

Mochi is similar to the Chinese rice cake nian gao; however, mochi is shaped from cooked glutinous rice right after it is pounded, whereas nian gao is steamed directly to its final form from a batter made of uncooked glutinous rice flour.

In the Philippines, it is called palitao in Tagalog and is coated with sesame seeds and grated coconut.

Shimoda Salmon Festival

Last Saturday, Nov. 15 we went to Salmon festival in Oirase or the Shimoda Salmon Festival. We didn't catch the salmon but we just watched the people who were catching live salmon by their bare hands in an 8 inch deep pool. It's fun even we just watched them and they even have the salmon race (second picture) where they use stick to nudge the salmon to swim to the opposite end.

Entrance is free but if you want to catch a salmon you have to pay 1200 yen when you buy from ITT or from Shimoda mall it's only 1000 yen. Boots and gloves set for rent for 200 yen and fish cleaning is 300 yen.

This is our first salmon festival experience here in Japan. We also enjoyed the festival by eating some snacks from the food stalls :-)