Hand Rolled Thick Noodles

Hey! How are you all? Hope everything is well and good at your place. Its been a little while since my last post, and my apologies for that. Will be adding a few new ones in quick succession now to make up for the lost time. The one that I’ll be sharing today is that of Noodles. Now I know that almost all of us have been craving for our favourite foods, be it Burgers or Pastas or Noodles. Being in Indore, it has been a little difficult to get my hands on a lot of basic grocery items, Noodles being one of them. But a craving doesn’t understand the concept of availability does it? You guys know what happened in the case of Peanut Butter, don’t you? 

This time we had decided to treat ourselves with some Vegetable tossed Noodles and the quintessential part of almost every “Indianized Chinese” meal, Chilly Chicken. Now I was very sure that I had packets of Noodles lying about in the pantry somewhere and had done almost all the prep before taking the packs out. (Now when I say prep, I don’t mean any cut vegetables, I mean the Craving had taken over the capacity to make any other decision than Noodles.)

After a lot of brainstorming (actually searching for available options like Spaghetti and Maggi), I decided to do the Noodles by hand and make Lunch. There were a few questions that were thrown at me like, is it that important? can’t we have something else? how long will it take? But the Craving Monster was already atop my shoulder, banging my head with hungry fists and slapping his tail on my growling stomach. So it was decided (well more like dictated) that I was making Noodles from scratch. And I did. The monster calmed down, got off my back and went back into the dark cave it had emerged from. All was well, at last. 

And then I thought, all of you might also be under the influence of your own Craving Demons, and if I can help you out of this, maybe for just the duration of one meal, it would not be a bad thing now, would it? So, here I am with the instructions you need to follow to throw that Chinese Monkey off your back. 

Ingredients:

Refined Flour – 2 cups

Eggs – 4

Salt – 1 tsp

Water as required

Method:

1. Add the flour, eggs and salt in a large bowl and mix well. 

2. Add the water and make a dough, it needs to be a little dense and not very soft. 

3. Put aside for around 30 minutes to rest the dough.

4. Now divide the dough into 6 pieces, and start rolling. 

5. Roll thin sheets, around 1-2 mm thickness, or as thick as you want to keep your noodles. Note that the thicker they are, chewer the noodles you will get. 

6. Taking one sheet at a time, roll into a log and with a knife, cut into ribbons. You can dictate the thickness of the ribbons as your liking. 

7. Lightly flour the cut noodles and open the rolls carefully. Coat the Noodles with the flour and keep aside in a platter. Put them in neat heaps.  

8. Now boil water in a pot and salt it lightly. Add a couple of heaps at a time and boil. 

9. Once the Noodles rise to the top of the pot, let it boil for another minute and strain. Cool under running water and keep aside. 

10. Once the whole batch is boiled and cooled, coat with a drizzle of oil and use as required. You can directly toss it or put it in the refrigerator for later use.

P.S. – You can use the same recipe for Pastas as well, cutting into Tagliatelle or Fettuccine or stuff them as Ravioli or Cannelloni, even layer the sheets as Lasagne. For people who don’t eat eggs, just add 1/2 cup of milk, 1 tsp of baking powder and and follow the rest of the recipe as it is. To make a simple tossed Noodles, heat oil in a wok, add chopped ginger, garlic and green chillies, along with some chilly flakes and toss the noodles in with some vinegar and soy sauce and very little sugar as a flavour enhancer.