Noodles

Well, I can finally blog about the secret, which is a secret no more. I spent two sessions noodlemaking before Christmas, and sent noodles off to family for the holiday. I love the idea of homemade gifts, and everyone eats, so this seemed like it might be a good idea. It blended my fairly newfound love of cooking with an inexpensive and personal gift. I hope that next time I make noodles, I’ll be able to add spinach from my garden! If only we lived near Matt and Erin, we could buy the eggs from them. And I bet Dave and Matt could rig up a mill if we seeded some of their acreage with wheat…

A pipe dream, I imagine, since I know nothing about wheat and it’s probably harder than it sounds to grow enough for a bag of flour. But I do hope to grow some spinach this year!

I got my noodle recipe from Grandma Hoot (Dave’s maternal grandma) and made plain noodles about a year ago, just to try it out. I rolled out flat sheets and used a pizza cutter to make the noodles, which we ate right away. Delicious! Then, this past summer, our church hosted a fundraiser garage sale for Habitat for Humanity. I bought a noodle press and drying rack for about $8! An amazing deal. I decided to make noodles as Christmas gifts, but I couldn’t find any information about drying them online and I wanted to use Grandma’s recipe, so I struck out blindly on my own.

The first batch took six hours on a Sunday. I tried spinach and parsley; pepper; pepper and garlic; and spinach, parsley, pepper, and garlic. I read the directions on the noodle press, so I knew to pass the dough through each setting a couple of times to smooth it out. I didn’t know that the dough would feel heavy and warm coming out of the press—almost like touching warm skin. That first day took especially long because I had to try the different recipes before making a big batch. A couple of eggs go a long way, and I eventually figured out how much flour to start with. I chopped up the spinach by hand the first time, but it didn’t seem like it was incorporating into the dough well enough, so I switched to chopping it up with the blender (I don’t have a food processor). I was disturbed to find the noodles dropping off the rack both wet and dry, but later experimentation showed that I hadn’t kneaded the dough enough or added enough flour to properly stiffen it.

By the second time I made noodles, it took me only two and a half hours to make the number I’d previously made in six hours. I also learned to make only two colors at once, since the ones that dropped off the rack could be easily sorted. (Not too easy when there are two different flavors that are the same color).

The third time, I tried wilting the spinach first (as per instructions in a noodle book at Barnes & Noble). I also tried using sundried tomatoes so that I could make red and green noodles for holiday gifts. Unfortunately, I accidentally bought smoked sundried tomatoes. I didn’t have enough energy to go back to the grocery store, so I used them anyway. They smelled kind of strange, but our friend Elijah dressed them with balsalmic vinegar and oil, which sounded like the right idea.

By the fourth time I was whipping out a batch of noodles I was both good at it and sick of it. It felt good to get visibly better at something and to know that I could make changes to a recipe, and I liked giving food as gifts. But I don’t think Dave and I will switch completely to homemade noodles. Maybe we’ll eat them for special occasions.