Saturday, November 07, 2009

How not to make noodles

Kevin and I have been trying (3 times total) to make noodles by pulling them, like they do in China. I've read recipes, watched videos, and after our first two semi-successful attempts, even watched a Chinese cooking show that explains it step by step. Armed with this new information, we headed to the kitchen.
We had trouble getting the dough to be stretchy enough to hold together and form noodles. Basically, we'd wap it against the table a few times, and we'd just end up with a piece of dough slightly longer but almost as thick as we'd started with. Don't get me wrong, they still tasted pretty good. But they weren't the noodles we wanted.
My logical reasoning at this point was to get better flour. Obviously, if you want your noodles to stick together better, you'll need flour with more gluten, right? That's what we tried, but it was a large leap in the wrong direction. Turns out, what you need is more like pastry flour, with very little gluten in it. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either, but I trust the guy on the video. I found that video incredibly helpful. Also, this recipe for laghman (Uyghur noodles) is on a fascinating blog that I want to spend more time reading.
So tonight's noodle experiment ended with boiling some spaghetti noodles and having our tomatoes, peppers, and lamb on top. Now that we know what doesn't work, we may have better luck in the future with our noodles.

3 comments:

Sarah McK said...

Let me know if you have success! I miss that laguman! (Or however it's spelled.) I am always so adamant to Logan that I don't like lamb...and now I discover that is what was in the one authentic dish that I loved in China. Whoops. :)

Smart Helm said...

Its so fun to try new things. I think its the scientist is us :-) Maybe u'll be going to China and then you can show off ur mad noodle making skills!

Derek and Andrea said...

I crave that dish every day of my life. Seriously. And I remember how hard it was to share it 'cuz the noodles were so hard to cut, but too long not to. Let me know if you ever get it figured out!

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