Japanese Pasta? Himokawa Udon and Light Sauce Katsudon
2015年02月23日
Himokawa udon is a Kiryu City specialty, and it’s a flat, thin, and wide noodle made out of wheat. It’s almost like the pasta in lasagna, but not quite as thick. In fact, depending on the store, they can sometimes be so thin that you can practically see through them!
You can eat himokawa udon hot in a soup or cold with some sort of dipping sauce. I personally prefer it cold, since I like the texture better that way. Himokawa udon has a nice, chewy texture to it that you can really sink your teeth into. I especially like to eat it with a curry udon sauce or soup – which is another food Kiryu is also famous for!
Sauce katsudon is a popular regional specialty in Gunma, and it is a breaded, deep-fried pork cutlet dipped in a special sauce served over white rice. I only knew of the egg katsudon until I came to Japan, which is a dish where the pork cutlet is cooked and simmered with egg and onion in a soy-based sauce and served over rice. But in Gunma, sauce katsudon is much more popular and found in restaurants all throughout the prefecture.
Because the sauce katsudon pork cutlet is not simmered in sauce, it retains some of its crispiness, which provides a nice contrast of texture to the juicy pork filet meat. That’s another difference between the egg katsudon and sauce katsudon – while egg katsudon commonly uses pork loin, sauce katsudon usually uses pork fillet meat.
The sauce used in sauce katsudon is savory but not too heavy, usually somewhat like a slightly sweeter Worchester sauce, and it goes really well with plain white rice. Sometimes, there will be a bed of cabbage along with the rice, which complements the sauce and cutlet nicely as well.
You can find sauce katsudon all over Gunma, but himokawa udon is mainly found in Kiryu City, Gunma. I definitely recommend that you go and try these tasty Gunma specialty foods if you have the chance!