Make your own fresh soba noodles at home

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. 

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-- Betty Hallock

Photo: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times