KISHIMEN

(kishimen)

"Kishimen" is one of the most famous local dishes in Nagoya.
It is also called Hirauchi-udon or Himokawa.
.
It is a flat noodle that is about 0.8cm in width, 0.3cm in thickness,
and has a very smooth surface
and the cross section of it is depressed.

The soup is made by tamari-shoyu
(this is a kind of strong soy sauce, mainly produced in Aichi Pref. and Gifu Pref.)
Ordinaly, soy sauce is made from about as much wheat as
it is made from soy beans,
but tamari-shoyu is made from masses of soy beans and less salty water.
It's stronger than shoyu or regular soy sauce.

Put pieces of shaved dried bonito, boild spinach,
and cooked sweet deep-fried bean cured on the noodles with soup

sweet deep-fried bean cured steamed fish paste

Although the exact origins of kishimen is not known,
many people believe the following story.
.........During the time the Nagoya castle was being built,
upon the order of Tokugawa Ieyasu,
Okada Shogen served his master flat noodles
with kiji meats (pheasant meats ).
It was very delicious, so they called it 'kiji-men '.
'Men' means noodles in Japanese. Kiji-men changed into kishi-men.
Time passed, and kiji meat had been changed to another kind of meat,
then to aburaage (deep-fried bean cured).
However, now it is impossible to get pheasant meat.