udon

Japan; wheat noodles of flour, salt and water, most associated with Sanuki in Kagawa on Shikoku, where udon itself is said to have begun

Named from konton, a Chinese confection of the Nara period, though Heibonsha's entry holds that only the name came from it and that the noodle descends from the flat hakutaku; written as udon in the diary of Ninagawa Chikamoto in 1465, the earliest example the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten gives; spread widely in the Edo period and loved above all in Kansai, the wheat noodles of Osaka and the south; in Sanuki tradition the monk Kukai brought noodle-making back from Chang'an; Kagawa now makes and eats more udon per head than any other prefecture, and its udon became known across Japan from the early 1960s on the word of visitors

Udon is chewy on purpose: Sanuki dough is mixed with salt water by a rule of the seasons, dosan kanroku, one part salt to three of water in summer and to six in winter, kneaded by hand, then covered and trodden underfoot again and again until it is sticky and springy, and only then rolled and cut, so the noodle comes out glossy with strong koshi. Davidson records udon first as a home-made dish, eaten as a supplement to or substitute for rice, and Kagawa explains why its farmers ate it: in the Edo period most of their rice went to the domain as tax, so they grew wheat as a second crop and made it, when rice was rarely theirs to eat, into dumplings and udon. The rest of the bowl came from the same coast: a dry climate and long shallow shores made the salt fields around Sakaide, the anchovies of Hiuchi-nada became iriko, and Shodoshima brewed the soy sauce. Kagawa still eats more udon than anywhere else in Japan, its shops dense, cheap and often self-service, the taste of ordinary people. The rice was the lord's and the wheat was the farmers' own, and the noodle they made of it is now the pride of a province that calls itself the udon kingdom.