One hand holds a block of dough while the other shaves willow-leaf pieces with a knife into a boiling pot, a wooden paddle stirs them in the water, and a bowl of shaved noodles in broth comes with greens, shiitake and scallion.
Shaved into the pot
Introduction
Noodles and dough pieces shaved or taken straight off a dough, without rolling or pulling.
Cut and shaved noodles are made without rolling out or pulling the dough, by taking strips or pieces straight off a firm dough into boiling water; knife-shaved noodles are the representative form. Knife-shaved strips are triangular in section and shaped like willow leaves. The craft of making knife-shaved noodles is one sub-item of the national intangible cultural heritage item Traditional Noodle-Making Craft. There is also a way of flicking pieces of dough into the boiling water with a flexible bamboo stick or a chopstick, called flicked fish. In this scheme other foods taken straight off a dough without rolling or pulling belong here too. They differ from rolled-and-cut noodles because the dough is not first rolled into a sheet, and from pulled noodles because the dough is not stretched.