Udon Noodles in Japan!

http://www.shichihukuudon.com/
If you want great noodles, where do you go?  I'm sure there are many places in Japan to get great noodles, but as the case my be, my family actually owns an Udon noodle shop in Hanoura.  We visited there for lunch today and to my delight, after I enjoyed a bowl of Udon noodles and some Japanese pastry desserts, I was given a tour of the kitchen and a lesson in how to make Udon.

Before we head into the kitchen, let's check out the final product Udon:

We didn't know what to order so they brought us  6 bowls of Udon and a couple of bowls of special rice.

My host provided me a lesson on how to eat noodles in Japan.  He coached me on the differences between American style and Japanese.  Americans = silent.  Japanese = Noisy.  He said I need to slurp the noodles loudly and mix the noodles with air.  I'm not sure if this is for flavor, to cool the noodles or both.  Here is his demonstration video :)

Making Udon doesn't seem too hard, however, like most things, there are subtleties that make it an art form.  To make Udon, you first make the dough.  In my case, we were already dealing with pre-made dough.  Udon is a flour based noodle though while Soba is made from buckwheat.  The dough is pretty much in a 3-5 inch thick dough ball about 8 inches wide.  The trick is to flatten the dough into the perfect thickness and shape so the noodles can be cut.  Then the noodles are cooked for the perfect amount of time, cooled in a cold water basin to kill the cooking process, then scooped into the right portion and left to drip-dry.

I have a great video of the master at work preparing the dough but my blog provider seems to be unhappy with the size of the video.   I did manage to get one photo of her though as she's cooking the noodles.

Mattie and I were invited to try various stages of preparing the dough.  Here is photo of Mattie stomping on the dough-ball to flatten it into a manageable size:

I took over from there and attempted to roll the dough into a flat 24 inch square...

My teacher was getting clearly annoyed with how badly I was mangling his dough.  Come on man, I'm family! 

You alternate between rolling the dough and then sticking it in this
machine that helps mush the dough thinner. A master can do it in 7 cycles... Mine sucked after about 10.

Cooling and Portioning the noodles

Placing them on the drying rack