The Daring Cooks: Homemade Noodles

ceci (chickpea flour) sagnarelli with zucchini blossoms, 

baby zucchini, and shaved Parmesan

Steph from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks' July hostess. Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine. She provided us with recipes for Späzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with!

Click here for the noodle and sauce recipes.

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Making noodles from scratch has always been an enjoyable activity for me. Thanks Steph for choosing homemade noodle for this month's challenge.

The one I made from the recipes given was the basic egg noodles. I made everything by hand because I don't have a pasta roller, and rolled as thin as possible which is surprisingly easy. Then I cut the noodles into thin strands using a pizza cutter. I sprinkled some flour on them, made the strands into nests while rolling the rest of the dough.

 

The noodles were boiled right away for a few minutes and mixed with stir-fried vegetables, grated ginger, rice wine, green onions, prawns, soy sauce, and sesame seed oil for a Chinese-style stir fried noodles. Delicious!

One of the noodle recipes I have wanted to make is the high protein ceci made with chickpea and all-purpose flour, eggs, and olive oil. These noodles are tender, nutritious, and yummy. I like them cut into 2 x ¾- inch strips called sagnarelli and simply served with vegetables sauteed in butter and sea salt then topped with Parmesan cheese; These are also good made into ravioli.

Chickpea Noodles

1¼ cups all-purpose flour

¾ cup fine chickpea flour

3 eggs

¼ cup olive oil

• In a bowl, combine flours. Make a well in the center and add eggs and oil. Slowly mix in the flour until combined. Transfer on the counter and knead a few times until smooth. Wrap in plastic film and let rest on the kitchen counter for 1 hour before rolling into desired shapes.

fine chickpea flour, green chickpeas for ravioli filling

I also love rice noodles specially the rice sticks from the Philippines but it may be impossible to find a recipe on how to make them from scratch. However, there are recipes for Chinese and Thai flat rice noodles which have rice flour, tapioca starch, and corn starch. I used a combination of 50% rice flour and 25% each for the remaining flour for a chewy but soft consistency. The noodles are very good with sauteed Chinese broccoli seasoned with oyster sauce, soy sauce, chopped chive, a little hot chili oil, and sesame seed oil. Most of the recipes I found online cook the noodles by steaming but I find it is a lot quicker to cook the crepes on an oiled non-stick skillet. After the crepe has cooled I sprayed some water to make it less sticky, then rolled and sliced them less than ½ inch thick for the pad Thai. They should be sliced into 1-inch thick pieces for other Chinese recipes.

Flat Rice Noodles

1 cup rice flour

½ cup tapioca starch

½ cup cornstarch

¼ teaspoon sea salt

2½ cups water

2 tablespoons vegetable oil plus more for oiling the skillet

• Mix all ingredients in a bowl and let rest for 20 minutes. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat; brush with vegetable oil. Stir batter and pour about ¾ cup batter, swirling to completely cover the bottom of the skillet. Let cook until transparent. Loosen sides, invert onto a large plate and leave to cool.  Spray top with a little water, roll, and slice into desired thickness. Unroll and use immediately.

 

What can I say about the buckwheat noodles...they're just okay and not worth the effort to make at home, in my opinion. But check out the pillow-soft Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Chestnuts and Sage and easy as pie Quark Spätzle I made a few years back.