Delicious homemade noodles and quick sauce

Homemade noodles are soooooo much better than any sort of dried varieties. They are pretty easy to make, but do take a bit of time. This noodle method is my moms, who until recently didn't have a pasta machine. It makes thick, rustic, and delicious noodles. Rustic is a fancy way to say uneven.

Wisk 2 eggs, add 1/2C water. Add 1C flour and mix until smooth, add more flour until the dough comes together. Add more flour and knead with your hands until the dough becomes stiff. I used about 2 1/2C all purpose flour. Let rest for 10 minutes.

After ten minutes, roll out the dough as thin as you can/dare on a floured surface. Let it rest another ten minutes. Lift the dough, lightly flour surface again, flour top of dough, and roll out again. Cut into 1/2cm x 2in strips with a pizza cutter (specific mom instructions here). If you have never heard of centimeters, just cut them 1/4in wide or however wide you want (see rustic note above). They can now be cooked in boiling, salted water for 3 minutes. They can be eaten with simple olive oil and black pepper.

I prefer another pasta sauce. This one was improvised so that I didn't have to go grocery shopping. I started by sauteing 3 sliced shallots and a garlic clove in olive oil. I added a chopped portabella mushroom and a splash of white wine to get them started. Once they had absorbed most of the liquid, I added a splash of tamari sauce, more white wine, half a zucchini, some homemade habanero hot sauce, and a handful of spinach. When everything is cooked, add the cooked pasta with a little bit of pasta water. Coat the pasta in the sauce and serve with parmesan and black pepper.

*Update* After writing this post, I made myself really hungry and had to have these again. Without most of the ingredients in the above sauce, I improvised again. This time I sauteed 4 quartered shallots in olive oil, added the other half of zucchini and 4 anchovies. I added a splash of white wine to help it along, and some pasta water when that dried up. To finish it off, I added 2 Tbsp cilantro basil pesto. After tossing the cooked pasta in the sauce, serve with fresh grated Parmesan cheese and black pepper.

Salmon Sushi

Going out for sushi is a lot of fun and really tasty, but it is fun to make at home too. And surprisingly, not that hard. I started by making 2 cups of sushi rice. When it is cooked, add a tablespoon or so of rice vinegar and mix softly with a spatula in a bowl to avoid breaking the grains while the rice cools to room temperature. Get someone else to do this part while you prepare the other stuff.

I picked up some fish at a nearby fish market earlier that day. I like to tell the person working there that I'm making sushi and ask what is freshest. I skinned the fish and cut it into strips. Saute mushrooms in beer and soy sauce with a little bit of garlic until all the liquid is gone. Slice red pepper, avocado and cucumber into strips. After the mushrooms were cooked, I fried the skin to make it super crispy and cut that into strips too.

When the rice is cooled, take your seaweed and cover it with rice, leaving about one inch at the end clean for sealing. It is a good idea to have a small bowl of water to dip your fingers in. The rice is quite sticky otherwise. That was a huge understatement, it is EXTREMELY STICKY. Put all the sushi ingredients at one end of the sheet and roll it up. This sounds easier than it is too, but with practice, you'll get it. Just try to make the roll as tight as possibly or it will fall apart when you cut it later. Really squeeze it to get the rice to stick tightly around the other stuff without breaking the nori (sushi seaweed) or squeezing out your filling ingredients.

Blurry and poorly framed areal view of daintily arranged sushi. Sexy, ain't it?

When you get to the end of the roll, dampen the exposed nori and seal it up, making sure the roll stays tight. That's it. You have sushi. You can eat it as is like a hot dog, or souvlaki, or you can slice it up and make it look pretty. Eat as much as you can, then groan a lot, continuously saying how good it was and how no matter how small the pieces, not one more can possibly fit inside you. This will please the cook and seems to be some weird sushi tradition.

I serve mine with wasabi and a little bowl of tamari sauce, which is pretty much soy sauce, but is not meant to be cooked with and has a much more delicate flavour. Mixing them together to create an unholy union of spicy and salty umami is delightful, but some say it is uncouth. To those people I say, eat your sushi until one more tiny piece can't possibly fit inside you!

Stacked Brunch

I'm not quite sure what to call this. Maybe you can help me out in the comments. It is my take on eggs florentine but without the poached egg, spinach, hollandaise sauce, or english muffin. Instead, I used portabella mushrooms, tomatoes, parmesan cheese, and a broiled egg.

2 portabella mushroom caps
2 eggs
1 small vine tomato, thickly sliced
1/4C parmesan, grated
2 pieces rye toast

Preheat oven to 400F. In an oiled pan, roast the mushroom caps for a few minutes while you prepare the other ingredients. When slightly softened, remove from the oven. Crack the eggs into the mushroom caps, top with salt, pepper, and cheese. Add sliced tomatoes to the pan.

Broil until cheese browns. Remove tomatoes to cover toast. Top with mushroom caps, serve immediately, eat and enjoy.

This was pretty delicious. The mushrooms had that perfect fleshy feel to them without being mushy or rubbery and the tomatoes were juicy. The parmesan was, well, you can always use a little more parmesan. The yolk was still a bit runny, though I would have liked it a bit more so. This would work better on an english muffin, but I enjoyed the earthy caraway rye bread. Tell me you don't want to tear into this for breakfast tomorrow: