New Year’s Eve Toshi Koshi Soba: Noodles with Aubergine Nibidashi
Did you know that Japanese people traditionally welcome the new year with a hearty bowl of buckwheat soba noodles in steaming broth? Toshi koshi soba is quite a minimalist dish, a simple dashi based clear soup, with soba noodles and toppings. However, the pleasure is in the subtle depth of flavour created by using high quality ingredients.
Eating soba noodles on New Year’s Eve is an ancient tradition in Japan dating back to the thirteenth century. Why noodles? The long length of the noodle symbolizes a wish for long life and health in the new year ahead with the joyful act of slurping hot noodles welcoming in the new year peacefully.
Soba noodles, made from 100% buckwheat, are preferred for a number of reasons at this time of year. They are a symbol of strength and resilience like the hardy buckwheat crop, buckwheat is also a symbol of fortune and prosperity because the flour was once used by goldsmiths to gather up leftover gold dust.
As you can see, there’s a lot of ritual and history tied up with this simple dish!
Japanese New Year’s Eve
Celebrating the new year is a little different in Japan, people tend not to party on New Year’s Eve and instead enjoy time with family. Though that doesn’t mean there aren’t some fun trends leading up until midnight.
It’s also very common to enjoy the NHK (the Japanese equivalent of the BBC) Kōhaku Uta Gassen singers of the year competition leading up until midnight. The program divides the most popular music artists of the year into competing teams of red and white, male and female voices. Because only the most successful singers in Japan can perform, by invitation only, the standard is very high and people get to see their favourite artists compete. It’s the perfect family feel-good tv — similar to the Eurovision Song Contest — which has aired since 1953.
My family always had dinner around six or seven when I was a child but noodles are often eaten just before midnight to celebrate the new year. Many people then head to a local shrine at midnight to pray.
New Year’s Eve always has a very magical, Christmas family-time feeling in Japan so why not recreate some of that in your home with some delicious soba!
Key ingredient: buckwheat noodles
While it’s simple and fun to make your own udon noodles, which you can learn in my handmade udon and nibidashi class,100% buckwheat noodles are difficult to make from scratch so I highly recommend Clearspring to buy great quality pure buckwheat soba noodles in The UK.
Apart from their smooth and earthy taste a wonderful thing about buckwheat noodles is that they are naturally gluten-free and have a number of health benefits! Be careful, as many commercial buckwheat noodles will have around 20-30% wheat flour included to make the kneading process easier. So make sure to find 100% buckwheat noodles.
As someone who follows a gluten-free diet, this is an ideal way to enjoy noodles that are flavourful and are both high in fibre and protein. They are also associated with lowering cholesterol and high blood pressure — I have a strong memory of my father who loved to eat soba noodles every day for his lunch to promote good health.
Learning to make noodles with a master
I’m very lucky that my mum lives in Kiyosato, an area on the southeastern foot of Yatsugatake mountains that borders scenic Shinshu and Yamanashi. The area is a famous noodle-making region and people come from all over to try noodles there. I love going home and just enjoying all of the fantastic soba restaurants.
Whenever I went home, I would always spend time working with the owner of a renowned local restaurant Sekizawa-san in his workshop. Mr Sekizawa, who has sadly passed away now, was a soba noodle master chef and I enjoyed the privilege of training with him. To this day, he is the person and chef I respect the most.
He would only make thirty portions of noodles for his restaurant a day due to the lengthy process of hand-making the 100% gluten-free noodles and they would often be sold by noon! He believed that his customers should eat only fresh ingredients of the finest quality and I have been very inspired by his philosophies towards people, food, and life over the years.
Though he kept his illness secret until the end, Mr Sekizawa spent his last years converting his noodle shop to a hospice for others to recuperate and enjoy healthy food. Since the pandemic, like many of us, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I can do to help so I have been trying to do more charity events and am now on the Pink Ribbon Ball committee with Breast Cancer Now.
I believe that Japanese Cooking is one of the healthiest cuisines and want to encourage people to eat healthy food — something I learnt from Mr Sekizawa.
As you can, soba is a very personal and important noodle to me offering me a lot of fond memories over the years.
The key to great soba is broth!
So you have your soba noodles but any noodle is only as good as its broth! Soba is often served with the healthy milky water that they’re boiled in, traditionally called Sobayu.
But for toshi koshi, we will be using the tasty awase (meaning combination) broth which is infused with kelp and either bonito flakes or shiitake mushrooms if you are vegetarian or vegan.
You can buy the ingredients you need for a good broth from many places including The Japan Centre or online, including on Amazon:
If you can’t get hold of any specific ingredients for dashi then you can use chicken or vegetable stock instead.
Soba toppings and dips
A quick and easy dipping sauce that I learned from my mentor is kaeshi sauce (soup sauce), it’s super handy to have at home and can be quickly heated up. It’s simply a mix of heated good quality soy sauce, mirin, and sugar which can be kept until you need it.
I like to keep my toppings simple but it’s really up to you! For example, you can just add some spring onion or also include tempura and egg.
Another favourite soba topping for me is aubergine nibidashi. This healthy and distinctive aubergine dish is juicy and full of flavour. You can enjoy the Aubergine served cold, on cold noodles in the summer, very refreshing!
Apart from being a topping for soba, if you are in a rush you can eat it completely separately and it also works very well with rice.
How to make toshi koshi soba
Good sauce, good noodles, and good broth is the key to toshi koshi soba! Now onto the recipe and discover how to put these things together to make this heartwarming New Year’s Eve dish.
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