Showing posts with label noodles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label noodles. Show all posts

Tuesday, 3 April 2012

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.


Thursday, 23 February 2012

Udon vegetable stir fry

Ingredients are to the left as well as a lime and sesame oil. You can barely see the ginger, and the bottles are soy and oyster sauce.

Saute in this order:
sesame oil with ginger
onions
carrot
thyme (stripped from the stem) & cauliflour
red pepper, garlic, lime & bok choi
add sauces
udon noodles, with more oyster sauce on them.


This turned out ok, but was missing something. I put a bit of hot sauce on it but it was still only ok. Maybe a sweet element would work, but I'm loathe to add sugar to anything. It's why my jams always fail to gel. I ate some leftovers for lunch but it still didn't really do it for me. The bok choi was chewy and hard to eat. I'd separate the leaves or cut them in halves or quarters next time. Maybe mustard would have pulled it all together? The vegetables were at a well cooked for my taste but the flavour wasn't there. Suggestions in the comments please.

*Update* I added a bit of orange zest and Arbol peppers to the leftovers. It was tastier than before and quite enjoyable. My beard liked it too, catching a rather large slice of carrot to save for later.

Thursday, 9 February 2012

Spinach fettuccine vegetale

Spinach fettuccine with sauteed mushrooms, zucchini, red pepper, rapini, garlic and more spinach looks like this:

 And when covered in parmesan cheese, this:
Yummers!