Hiroko’s Kitchen | Blog

The flavor of yuzu citruss fruit continues to make a “buzz” in American culinary scene.  Yuzu is a tangerine-sized citrus fruit with a thick, bumpy rind.  Bright green in summer, yuzu turns golden yellow in autumn when it is ripe.  Like lemon, yuzu is valued for its rind and juice, which are bursting with fragrance and a slightly tart and bitter flavor.  The yuzu is not generous, producing only a little less than a tablespoon or so of juice per fruit.  To get 1/2 cup of the juice from fresh fruit, you will be spending lots of money even in Japan.

In America today pure yuzu juice packed in a bottle is available at many Japanese food stores.  So, you can enjoy using it in the preparation of yuzu granita, yuzu ice cream, yuzu dressing, yuzu mousse, yuzu chocolate, yuzu coctails and other yuzu juice flavored dessert creations. 

Today Japanese companies are bringing higher quality Japanese products to America, and yuzu juice is a part of that trend.  When I was in California at the beginning of March, I was introduced to a “this is it” yuzu juice.  The name of the brand is Yuzu Passion and it is produced by Kitomura Company in Kito Village, Tokushima Prefecture.  The company uses a traditional wood press to extract juice.  This prevents the bitter flavors of the fruit from being overly extracted into the juice.  To produce 500ml of yuzu juice, they press 50 to 60 fruits, against using 10 to 20% fewer fruits and more harsh pressing method used at other factories.  Check-out www.yuzupassion.com for more product information.

When you taste Yuzu Passion you will be amazed by its robust fragrance and pure appealing flavor with a wonderful smooth touch.  In addition to the juice they also carry yuzu ginger conserve.  Wow, I cannot stop lapping them up on toast, crackers or other good bread.  So Delicious!

Vicera (be-cera), ceramic knife company, sent me two made-in-Japan ceramic knives for evaluation.  One is a Santoku knife with 5.5-inch blade, and the other, a Chef’s knife with 6-inch blade.  Because of my job as a chef-consultant/chef-instructor, I never thought of owning a ceramic knife.  The image of the ceramic knife has been that it is delicate, fragile and unable to polish by the owner.  Taking care of my steel knives with polishing stones has been my professional responsibility, pleasure and pride, even though it requires time and effort.  This was not possible with previous ceramic knives.

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After writing about Chef Kotani’s soba making, I became hungry.  So I will make soba for my lunch today using ready-made dried noodles.  There are three important tips for making good soba noodles.  First is that, unlike pasta, you do not need to add any salt to the cooking water.  The second is that after cooking the noodles no matter how you serve them – hot or cold – you must rinse the noodles under cold running water to remove starch that coats the surface of noodles during cooking.  When you serve the noodles in a hot noodle broth, you should warm them quickly in new boiling water.  Because of this second cooking, you should cook the noodles the first time to a quite al dente state.  The third is that you should not discard the soba cooking water, but enjoy consuming it as the base for a cup of soup following consuming cold noodles.

We call the cooking liquid “soba-yu“, which literally means soba water.  When you order a cold soba dish at soba restaurant in Japan it is a custom that as the staff notices you finishing your noodles they will bring you a pot of soba-yu when you are ready for it.  (In this country you may ask for it.)  It is traditionally served in a square-shaped lacquer ware wooden pot with a spout.  After finishing your cold noodles, you find left over noodle dipping sauce in the sauce cup that was served with your cold noodles.  Pour out most of the sauce from the cup, leaving about 1 teaspoon (5cc).  Fill the cup with soba-yu, if you like, sprinkle in some shichimi togarashi (seven spice powder), stir it up gently with chopsticks and enjoy it.  Discarding most of the leftover sauce is a good idea, since it is quite high in sodium.  The soba-yu contains several excellent nutrients beneficial to health, including water soluble chemicals such as rutin (an antioxidant) and B vitamins.

I used own an udon noodle rolling pin that I purchased at my neighborhood Tokyo Hands (the Japanese version of Home Depot; some say that Home Depot patterened its business after Tokyo Hands that began in the early 1980s in Japan).   I spent only 500 yen (about $5) for it.  But the soba noodle rolling pins that Chef Kotani of Soba Totto in NYC uses are not such a cheap junk.  Here I can show you his collection of rolling pins (menbo). 

They are stored in this rack just to the right of his noodle-making station.  Among these rolling pins he has favorites – one made of hiba (a kind of cypress) and the others made of asada wood from a tree similar characteristics to a cherry tree.  All of the rolling pins are hand-made, and finished and polished with a carpenter’s pliers, not a sand paper.  If you see and touch them you will recognize that they are truly art objects.

The hiba rolling pin has a slightly rough surface and is light, so it does a perfect job of rolling the dough into a very thin sheet down to 1/5mm thickness, says Chef Kotani.  The asada rolling pin, on the other hand, is very hard and heavy.  Its smooth surface resemble the surface of a polished marble counter top, so he uses this pin at the very end of rolling the dough to give it the most silky, flat surface.  The rolling pins are quite long, about 3.6 to 4 feet in length, and 3cm (1.2 inches) in diameter when made.  Chef Kotani has been using the hiba rolling pin for eight years.  He showed it to me and explained that through use the diameter of the pin has shrunk to 2.5cm (1 inch) over time.

When Chef Kotani begins the rolling process the dough has a round disc shape.  As he thins it out, Chef Kotani moves the edge from which he start to roll several times, so thaqt the round dough gradually becomes roughly square and finally to a completely perfect square shape.  This is an amazing transition to see.  The final thinned out dough resembles a smooth, fragile fabric. 

His soba making station sits next to a yakitori station (chicken pieces on bamboo skewers grilled over Japanese bincho-tan charcoal) where dry air and some heat blows towards him.  According to Chef Kotani this is not a perfect place to do his delicate work.  As he rolls out the dough thinner, it dries out much quicker than doing it in a properly conditioned room.  So, Chef Kotani moves swift and accurately with his-hop background music to complete the process.

The quality and variety of Japanese knives today are well known to the world of professional chefs and demanding avocational cooks.  When it comes to soba knives, they are not much talked about yet.  For cutting soba professionally one must use a knife specially made for the purpose.

This is Chef Kotani’s soba knife.  The long blade is about 1 foot (33cm) in length.  Using this knife the chef cuts the wide folded dough in one stroke.  The knife weighs about 2 pounds (1.2 kg).  The price is heafty – he spent about $1,000 for it eight years ago.  The handle cover was hand-made – glued in place by him.  After searchiong for materials for the grip – it should be comfortable to touch and stable for the grip – he found that shark’s skin also used for the grating for wasabi rhyzome was the best choice.  With this knife Chef Kotani rhythmically cuts the folded dough into precisely 1.5mm wide strips – every strip is miraculously exactly 2mm …..perfection is his motto.

On my next blog I will post about soba-yu.