The Buckwheat Stops Here

The three Buddhist monks dressed in shimmering robes seemed out of place at first as they chanted o-kyo verses and tossed silken lotus petals into the air amid the machinery of the factory in Walnut. But they were performing an important service: blessing Cold Mountain, California’s first Japanese-style buckwheat milling factory.

As the monks finished the rite, there was a soft rumble, the sound of refrigerated buckwheat rushing through pipes to the new milling machine the monks had just blessed. Minutes later the first batch of warm, fresh soba flour was passed around for the assembled crowd to taste.

“Our soba,” says Noritoshi Kanai, owner of Cold Mountain, “is soba of America, by Americans, for Americans.” The buckwheat comes from farms in North Dakota, the factory’s employees are American and the product is geared for the American market.

Cold Mountain’s flour goes to a Pasadena noodle factory, where soba noodles are made under the brand name Miyako for Mutual Trading Inc., Kanai’s food distribution company based in downtown Los Angeles.

Although the Los Angeles company Nanka Seimen has been producing buckwheat noodles since before World War II, Californians traditionally import soba from Japan. Even so, much of the imported soba is made from American buckwheat. More than 90% of North Dakota’s buckwheat crop is exported to Japan, Kanai says. Although buckwheat has long been grown for pancake mix and Russian-style roasted buckwheat groats (kasha), the North Dakota varieties were developed to suit Japanese tastes.

“We have the raw materials here,” Kanai said. “We don’t need to send it to Japan to be made and then import the noodles.”

Soba, as lovers of Japanese food know, means both buckwheat and a light-brown noodle made from a mixture of buckwheat and wheat flours. Once considered the food of people who couldn’t afford rice, today it’s Japan’s supreme fast food. People there buy it at stand-up tachi-gui counters in subway and train stations, from roving dispensaries like hot-dog carts and even in exquisite rustic restaurants, where the noodles are attentively made by skilled artisans.

Japan has about 40,000 soba noodle establishments, with more than 11,000 in Tokyo alone. Soba delivery is a bigger business in Japan than pizza delivery here, and every day tons of soba, dried and fresh, are sold in Japan’s markets for cooking at home.

Kanai, an impassioned soba promoter, has traveled around Japan to learn the art of soba making for himself. From time to time he can be seen demonstrating his soba-making techniques to groups of friends. He believes that fresh soba is about to break into the American market in a big way and that the noodles will eventually be as popular as sushi was in the ‘70s.

“Soba is the kind of food Americans are starting to eat now,” he says. “It’s extremely healthy.” Kanai notes that it is high in fiber and minerals and has cholesterol-lowering properties.

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To help his optimistic prediction come to pass, Kanai’s company prepares and packages his soba noodles as ready-to-eat convenience products. These are common in Japan, where soba can be purchased precooked or fresh-frozen with packets for a sauce or soup base.

Soba lovers are fussy about the flavor and style of their noodles. To meet their standards, the Cold Mountain mill refrigerates its grain and flour so the flavor keeps better. Kanai has also imported Japanese noodle-making machines that emulate the te-uchi or handmade noodle techniques of soba artisans.

These machines mix the noodle dough in a vacuum, a process that imitates the hand kneading required to get soba flour to absorb water thoroughly. The dough is then flattened between rollers that simulate the pressure of the wooden dowels soba makers use to roll out their dough. Finally, the machine slices the dough into the square-edged noodle shapes of knife-cut noodles.

For soba purists, the Cold Mountain factory also makes sarashina soba flour. Unlike the whole-grain buckwheat flour used for regular soba noodles, sarashina is milled from the inner layers of the buckwheat kernel.

Because it’s lighter and softer than the whole-grain product, it can make a more intensely buckwheat-flavored noodle. Buckwheat contains no gluten, and regular soba noodles have to be about 40% wheat to retain their shape. But gannen soba noodles, made from sarashina , need be only 20% wheat flour. Mutual provides some restaurants with this flour and will soon begin manufacturing its own gannen noodles.

For anyone who wants to try making soba at home, Japanese markets carry two-pound bags of Cold Mountain soba flour. Directions for making noodles come with the package. Air-tight aluminum-coated bags containing oxygen-absorbing packets keep the flour fresh.

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Before the Edo period, when workers from the countryside introduced buckwheat to Tokyo, buckwheat flour was usually made into dumplings. Cold Mountain also provides a recipe for soba dumplings (and for crepes) on its flour package.

How do you eat the dumplings? Serve them with a dipping sauce made from soy sauce and a splash of water seasoned with a little sugar and grated ginger. Or put them in an American country-style chicken-vegetable soup; after all, this is soba for Americans.

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Traditionally, soba noodles are served two ways. Mori soba is served cold with a dipping sauce on the side. Kake soba comes in a hot broth flavored with soy sauce. The noodles may be topped with various garnishes like minced braised chicken, tempura shrimp or seafood.

You’ll often see the term zaru soba on soba-ya (noodle house) menus. The zaru in question is a bamboo basket that holds the cold noodles. They are sprinkled with roasted nori seaweed and served with a little heap of minced green onions. There’s a dipping sauce you can doctor with the famous Japanese hot condiment wasabi (available in markets in squeeze tubes or as a powder to mix with water).

CHILLED SOBA WITH ORANGE-WALNUT DIPPING SAUCE

Miyako provides a dipping-sauce concentrate with its fresh soba noodles, but some cooks prefer to make sauce from scratch. This is my favorite dipping sauce for cold soba, a somewhat unusual recipe embellished with walnuts. You can create a similar recipe simply by adding minced walnuts and grated orange zest to six servings of any commercially prepared soba dipping sauce. To eat, pick up a bite of the noodles with fork or chopsticks and swirl it around in the sauce.

ORANGE-WALNUT SAUCE

2 1/2 cups prepared dashi (dried bonito broth)

1/2 cup Japanese-style soy sauce

1/2 cup rice vinegar

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup sake

1/4 cup katsuobushi (flaked bonito), optional

2 tablespoons minced orange zest

2/3 cup walnut pieces

Simmer dashi, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, sake and katsuobushi in saucepan for 2 minutes. Stir in orange zest, remove from heat and pour into bowl. Chill.

Mince walnuts and set aside.

CHILLED SOBA

6 servings soba, raw or frozen precooked

Water

4 or 5 green onions, sliced thin

If using raw soba, bring about 2 gallons water to boil in large pot (or use 2 medium-sized pots). Add raw soba and boil until tender, about 1 minute. Drain in colander and rinse thoroughly with cold water, tossing noodles gently with hands. Chill noodles in ice water several minutes. Drain well. If using cooked, frozen soba, just thaw and rinse with cool water.

Spread cold noodles on paper towels and pat dry. Put noodles in plastic bag or covered bowl and chill. If noodles stick together, rinse in cold water and pat dry again.

Serve in bowls or on zaru (Japanese bamboo serving baskets). Just before serving, sprinkle each portion with about 1 1/2 tablespoons of minced walnuts and stir remaining nuts into sauce. Garnish with green onion and serve dipping sauce in small bowls.

Makes 4 main-course or 6 first-course servings.

Each main-course serving contains about:

423 calories; 1,789 mg sodium; 8 mg cholesterol; 10 grams fat; 79 grams carbohydrates; 18 grams protein; 1.98 grams fiber.

* Note: Dashi comes in various forms from liquid concentrate to packets that look like tea bags. The latter form is the most practical. The boxes include directions. Generally you boil three cups of water, add the packet and simmer 10 minutes--no more. Remove the packet and your prepared dashi is ready. (This recipe calls for only 2 1/2 cups of prepared dashi, but use all three cups of water to make it or the broth will be too strong.)

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MIYAKO NOODLES

(available at these locations)

* Pacific Market, 1620 W. Redondo Beach Blvd., Gardena, (310) 323-7696.

* Nijiya Markets, 2130 Sawtelle Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 57-3300; 2533-B Pacific Coast Highway, Torrance, (310) 534-3000; 2121 West 182nd St., Torrance, (310) 366-7200.

* Yaohan Stores, 333 S. Alameda St., Los Angeles, (213) 687-6699, and at other locations in Torrance, West Los Angeles, San Gabriel and Costa Mesa.