Noodles Continued

So I realize I am posting this on the same day, but I felt that this needed to be two separate posts. I cam down with a cold this weekend and decided to make some chicken soup. About 2 hours in, I realized I was out of any soup noodles.

You guessed it! I decided to make some on my own. I found a nice recipe for some egg noodles.

Mixing together flour, salt, eggs, and milk (lactose free). The mix worked out beautifully, although the noodles grew much more than expected and became quite large. As soup noodles, they failed since they would have to be cut extremely thin in order to work. However, I finally found what seems to work as a great Udon noodle recipe. I have tried cutting them a little thicker and will let you know tonight how it works.

UPDATE:

So while waiting for my boyfriend to come home, I got to work preparing the noodles for dinner. I took one batch and cut them very thin. I used the knife to bunch up a small amount of dough and then pressed down. After letting the noodles dry a little, I made myself a bowl of soup. The thin noodles worked out perfectly.

I also prepared the Udon noodles for the evening. Before we got down to dinner, Alex and I had to run a few errands. We packed up the drying noodles in a ziplock bag to keep from the dog and left. When we got back, we found that the cat had chewed through the bag and devoured the entire batch! I whole roll of raw dough devoured!

I guess it will have to wait till I next make noodles, before I can figure out if these work as Udon. *sigh* Silly Kitty! 

Wish me luck!

All About Udon Noodles!

One of the results of looking for work, is that when I am not sending resumes, I have too much time onn my hands. So what do I do? I bake, and cook, and roast, and what not.

The problem with that is: if money is tight, this is not the best moment to be going out grocery shopping for exotic ingredients. To kill two birds with one stone, I decided to try and make some of the staples we use around the house by hand.

One of these, believe it or not, is Udon noodles.

Since I love making udon soup and since I was out of Udon Noodles, I decided to embark on a quest to make my own. Inspired in part by this video,

I didn't expect to be able to do this, but I thought maybe at least I could make something to go with my spicy beef udon.

I found a pretty basic recipe involving:

3 cups of flour
1 Tbsp salt
1 cup of water

One of the important parts of noodles is making sure to release the gluten. To that effect, a friend of mine who does martial arts did me the honour of beating my dough (with all the associated jokes of course)

We worked it until we got a soft dough, then cut it into roughly the right shape.

The soup was delicious, but the noodles (although good) were somewhat heavy and a bit more tough than what we are used to.
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I decided to try a new recipe involving tapioca flour. They advertised as being chewy and I was hoping not as tough.

Much to my disappointment, the dough itself was so tough, I could barely work it. After an hour of stepping on it and having my friend punch and kick it for a while, it was still much too tough. Finally in a desperate effort to make it lighter, I added some melted butter.

It worked to soften the dough and make it easier to work but the noodles when thick were even heavier and tough than the ones before. When sliced much thinner and over cooked slightly, it was better but not really udon.

So the search continues. What does it take to make noodles thick, but still light?

Introduction

Hello Everyone!

This is Ania from Scribbles and Rants. Whenever I have a little extra time on my hands, I tend to become obsessed with cooking. This seems to especially be the case when I am looking for work.

Finally, I decided that it is time for me to start a food blog and catalogue my food adventures.