



After having watched soba chefs at work at restaurants such as Honmura An (formerly in New York, now in Tokyo) and Matsugen (the one in the Ebisu neighborhood of Tokyo), I never imagined making my own fresh noodles. Making soba looked hard. Haruhiko Ishidoya at Honmura An, for example, would roll out the tough dough into a thin sheet that looked like fine fabric, fold it and cut it by hand with a special cleaver into thousands of straight, even noodles, a feat that takes years of practice.

But a couple of months ago, I visited Akila Inouye's soba school in Tokyo, and Inouye himself stopped by The Times Test Kitchen to demonstrate a way to make soba at home, in a small amount so that no special equipment or as much exacting technique is required. It is actually easy. I want to make my own soba all the time now.

Click here for the full story.

-- Betty Hallock

Photo: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

