It’s Totoro Week and I’m coming in hot with Totoro soba! Every year, around halloween, I like to take a week to indulge in my crazy self and make food that looks like Totoro. I’ve made Totoro sushi, Totoro cookies, Totoro bagels, and now I’m here with Totoro soba.

Totoro soba is definitely a thing on the internet. I’ve seen lots of them so I thought I’d try my hand too. If you’re a fan of soba and Totoro, I hope you give this a try because it is one of the easiest Totoro themed foods I’ve ever made.

Essentially this dish is a take on zaru soba, a cold Japanese noodle dish that consists of soba (of course) and a soy sauce based dipping sauce called tsuyu. When you get zaru soba in Japan, they usually serve it to you on a little bamboo strainer, with a bowl of tsuyu for dipping, as well as some extra condiments for flavor, like green onions, wasabi, and seaweed.

I used to not be a huge fan of soba, but after our most recent trip to Japan, I realized that I had just been eating not-great soba. Good soba is nutty and firm and so, so delicious. It’s the kind of simple meal that is so incredibly satisfying.

And it’s even more satisfying when the soba comes in a cute little Totoro. To make him, I start out by cutting out his facial and tummy features out of cheese and nori. From there, it’s just a question of cooking the soba (I used a typical darker soba as well as white soba) then shaping the noodles into a Totoro shape and adding on his face and chest furries.

One more tip for you: if you want to eat soba like the do in Japan, don’t throwaway the water that the soba cooked in! It’s called sobayu and after you’re finished eating the soba, you pour some into your dipping bowl of sauce to make a soup to finish your meal. Sobayu is super nutritious and I’d go as far to say that if you don’t have it, you’re not really having zaru soba. To save it, just use a noodle scoop to scoop the soba out into a large sieve or mesh strainer. Leave the hot soba water in the pot and take the soba in the strainer over to the sink and rinse the noodles off with very cold tap water. You’ll want to rinse the noodles very throughly under running water so that the starches wash off and the soba is easy to pick up with chopsticks.

Happy Totoro soba-ing!
totoro foods forever,
xoxo steph

PS – Stay tuned for my other two Totoro posts this week: a fluffy Japanese Totoro cheesecake and Totoro marshmallows using store bought marshmallows!

Cara Membuat Mie Soba

Bahan:

1. Biji tumbuhan soba
2. Tepung gandum
3. Air

Cara Membuat:

1. Biji soba dihaluskan hingga benar-benar halus.
2. Campurkan biji soba dengan tepung gandum. Masukkan bahan ke dalam mesin pengaduk bahan mie, mesin akan otomatis mengaduk bahan hingga merata.
3. Masukkan air sedikit demi sedikit hingga mulai terbentuk adonan.
4. Setelah warnanya berubah agak pucat, adonan harus ditekan-tekan hingga permukaannya tampak halus.
5. Masukkan mie kedalam mesin mie, untuk kemudian adonan dipipihkan sesuai ketebalan dengan mesin tersebut. Mie soba umumnya agak tebal, tapi tidak setebal udon.
6. Setelah adonan sudah halus semua, lipat adonan menjadi empat bagian, lalu masukkan kedalam mesin perajang mie atau mesin pencetak mie khusus. Agar proses pencetakan adonan mie sempurna dengan bentuk dan tekstur yang diinginkan
7. Rebus mie soba setengah matang.
8. Kemudian tiriskan mie. Mie soba siap diolah.

Notes

We used instant dashi for this – it’s super simple, just mix the package into 1 cup hot water.