Sanuki Udon

Kagawa's thick wheat noodles, kneaded underfoot and cut square, with a springy resistance the Japanese call koshi, in a clear dashi broth

Origin: Sanuki, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan

From the journey of Wheat.

Kagawa, the smallest prefecture in Japan and the old province of Sanuki, eats more udon per head than anywhere else and has built an entire local economy on it. Self-service udon shops open at dawn, and the noodle is judged on one quality above all others: koshi, the springy, resistant chew that a properly made and properly rested dough gives and that a hurried one never does. Wheat noodles reached Japan from Song China with the Zen monks, and the tradition holds that Kūkai, the monk who founded Shingon Buddhism, brought the technique back to his native Sanuki in the ninth century. The legend is almost certainly too tidy, but the geography behind it is sound: Kagawa has a dry, sunny climate that suits wheat, poor conditions for rice, and salt fields on its coast, which is three of the four ingredients. The dough is stiff, salty, and famously kneaded with the feet, wrapped in plastic and trodden, because the gluten needs more force than hands can easily give. It is then rested, rolled flat, folded, and cut into thick square-sectioned strands. Japan's wheat story has a second chapter that is much more recent. American wheat arrived in enormous quantities under post-war food aid and school lunch programmes from the late 1940s, and it turned bread and noodles from a regional habit into a national one. The ramen boom belongs to that period, and so does the Japanese wheat market as it now stands.

Ingredients

Noodles

  • 500 g plain flour (medium protein, or half strong and half plain)
  • 230 ml water
  • 25 g fine sea salt
  • 3 tbsp cornflour, for dusting

Broth

  • 1.2 litres dashi
  • 4 tbsp light soy sauce (usukuchi)
  • 2 tbsp mirin
  • 1 tsp caster sugar
  • 0.5 tsp salt, to taste

To serve

  • 4 spring onions, thinly sliced
  • 2 tbsp tenkasu (tempura crumbs), optional
  • 1 tsp shichimi togarashi

Method

  1. Dissolve the salt completely in the water. Pour it over the flour in a bowl and bring together into a rough, very stiff, shaggy dough.
  2. Turn out and knead briefly, then wrap the dough tightly in a plastic bag, put it on the floor, and tread on it for five minutes, folding it in half every minute or so.
  3. Rest the dough, still wrapped, for two to three hours at room temperature.
  4. Tread it again for two minutes, then rest for a further thirty minutes.
  5. Roll the dough out on a cornfloured surface to a rectangle about 3 mm thick, keeping it as even as you can.
  6. Dust generously with cornflour, fold the sheet over on itself in three, and cut across into strips about 4 mm wide. Shake them loose.
  7. Meanwhile warm the dashi with the soy, mirin, sugar, and salt, and keep it hot without boiling.
  8. Boil the noodles in a large pan of unsalted water for ten to twelve minutes, stirring at the start, then drain and rinse very well under cold running water, rubbing them with your hands.
  9. For a hot bowl, dip the rinsed noodles briefly back into hot water to reheat, divide between bowls, pour over the hot broth, and top with spring onion, tenkasu, and shichimi.

Notes

Treading the dough is not a novelty. It is the standard method in Kagawa and the dough is genuinely too stiff for comfortable hand kneading. The cold rinse after boiling is the step most often skipped and most damaging to skip. It is the difference between slippery and gluey. For a vegetarian bowl use kombu and shiitake dashi in place of the katsuobushi version; the broth is a little sweeter and works well. Fresh udon freezes better than almost any other noodle. Portion it, freeze on a tray, and cook from frozen with two minutes added.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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