Globalization has brought us delicious dishes from distant lands, including all the pasta consumed in Japan, like these homemade soba noodles that we can prepare with the KitchenAid robot's pasta accessory and that we put in an orientalizing vegetable broth. Yum.

Soba is the Japanese word for buckwheat or buckwheat, a pseudocereal that does not contain gluten. This grain is the second most used traditional grain in Japanese cuisine, after rice. For the traditional style of making soba noodles, called ni-hachi , a ratio of 20% wheat flour to 80% buckwheat flour is commonly used.

As buckwheat lacks gluten, the addition of wheat flour makes the pasta more manageable when preparing it and less brittle, giving it more body even with that small proportion of gluten. Although purists prefer a higher percentage of buckwheat because the closer the proportion is to 100%, the more intense is the particular flavor that buckwheat confers. In our recipe the proportion is around 27% to make things easier for us... if you like the experience you can always repeat increasing the proportion of buckwheat, but always at your own risk...

The traditional way of eating soba noodles is very simple; We have opted for a vegetable broth instead of the traditional dashi , fish, and some vegetable chunks as well.

The Japanese soba masters say that this pasta, of course, can be made with an electric pasta machine like the one we have used, but that the grace lies in the process, in the manual kneading and cutting... We have no doubts about it, but We will leave this for another day.

WMF kitchen scissors 21 cm , WMF pouring ladle , Revol porcelain round plate , KitchenAid and KitchenAid pasta accessory

Ingredients

Homemade soba noodles:

• 160g buckwheat/buckwheat flour
• 60 g of plain wheat flour
• 115 ml of water

Broth accompaniment:

• 600 ml of homemade vegetable broth
• 1 onion
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 good splash of sunflower or olive oil
• 3 tbsp. of tamari sauce
• 100g of mushrooms
• 2 carrots
• Chives to taste

Elaboration

homemade soba noodles

1. Weigh the flour and sift it with a sieve if it is wholemeal like the one I have used; This way you avoid the tears that the bran can cause when laminating and cutting the noodles. If you want to get the most out of it, run the bran through a clean coffee grinder and return the well-ground bran to the flour.
2. Put both flours in the bowl of a robot (with the shovel, if you do it in KitchenAid ) and mix them. Add the water and mix until the dough cohesive. If it does not cohere, you may have to add some water to adjust, because each flour is different and has a different absorption capacity.
3. You should get a soft dough that feels moist, but not sticky. Make a cake, put it in a plastic bag and let it rest for 30 minutes.
4. If you make the pasta with a rolling pin , thoroughly flour the table, roll it out to a thickness of 1.5 mm and fold it in three parts, like letter paper, and cut it finely into long spaghetti.
5. If using the KitchenAid Pasta Maker Attachment, divide the dough into thirds, keeping the part you don't stretch in the bag, and roll the dough through the sheeting roller on setting 1 several times. Once you have a strip wide homogeneous (more or less), change the accessory, lightly dust the pasta band on both sides with flour, as well as the pasta accessory itself, start the robot and form the noodles. Be careful because the dough is fragile and the weight itself can cause the noodles to break. Flour the formed noodles a little again so they don't stick to each other.
6. Group the formed noodles into nests and, if you're not going to cook them right away, freeze them in zip-lock bags.

accompaniment of broth

1. Finely chop the onion and garlic, and sauté them in the oil.
2. Add the broth, thinly sliced ​​or shredded carrots, thinly sliced ​​mushrooms and soy sauce, and cook until vegetables are tender.

Plate mounting

1. When the broth is ready, cook the noodles in plenty of water, in a separate pan without salt, until they are al dente, about 2-3 minutes, you have to taste them.
2. Drain the soba noodles well and cool them under cold running water until the water runs clear. Let drain thoroughly and divide them into 4 bowls or plates.
3. Pour hot broth over soba noodles, garnish with chopped chives, and serve immediately.

If you are fond of Japanese cuisine, you will love these homemade soba noodles that are much more aromatic than the store bought ones. I'm sure that a Japanese soba master would give them a hard time... but we'll settle for it.

KitchenAid Pasta Attachment