Oh and you are probably wondering about the "Extremely Fun" part in this post's title... Well we are getting to the fun part!
Just for your information, it doesn't have to be spinach. It can be basically any vegetable that can be pureed (Carrot sounds nice and it won't seem too gross...) actually, so I guess it will be fun experimenting, huh? Oh! And it's "Health freak" and kid (My three brothers helped me and my Mom out today, should I count myself in the "kid" part?) friendly! Smiley face*
First tried them out in a restaurant at Jaya One quite some time back and found them REALLY nice so we decided to go hunting for a recipe and trying it out, it's our first time making this at home and... I just bought a new PASTA MACHINE (It's actually for rolling out gum paste but well... i guess I am just testing my new toy/machine out today!)!
Okay! Let's get started with our super simple spinach noodles!
You will need:
2 1/2 Cups of Spinach leaves without the main stem but the tiny ones attached to the leaves are fine, compact the leaves into the cup, please.
4 Tablespoons of water
1 Teaspoon of Salt
2 1/2 Cups of All purpose flour
Pasta machine or rolling pin.
Oh right, and before you start on the noodle making.. You might need to make the really simple but yummy Mommy's soup.
Ingredients:
A pot filled with water
A few chunks of whatever fish
A few chucks of ginger
Some salt
Freshly ground pepper
Mommy's method:
Chuck everything into the pot and boil.
Okay! There you go! Your soup!
This recipe fed:
1 Obaachan
1 Okasan
1 Otosan
1 Musume
3 Pesky little brothers, I have no idea how to say that in Japanese, yet.
Step 1:
Rip your leaves up a bit, make sure you use your baby brother to do this (Don't have one? Feel free to borrow mine.), it will make things much easier and you won't have to get your hands leafy, unless you enjoy it that is, then go ahead.
Combine the leaves and that four tablespoons of water you have into a sauce pan.
Put it on a medium-slow fire, cook till tender. It would be good if you could put the lid on so it would speed this process up.
Turn off the fire and cool once it is done.
Step 2:
Place your eggs (Oops! One of the yolks got cut by the sliiiccceerrrr! Say with weird evil voice*), salt and spinach into a blender or food processor.
Blend on low speed till it looks as disgusting as this.
Step 3:
In a mixing bowl, poof your flour into it, make sure you drop it from the ceiling to make an AWESOME cloud of flour. Which will choke you and make you die but.. it was fun right?
Step 4:
Pour the spinach mush into your pristine white floury mixing bowl and... Stick your hand (Putcha right hand in, putcha right hand out! Putcha right hand in and please don't shake it all about! Do the hokey pokey and please do turn your self around.. THAT'S what it's all about!) in and KNEAD!
Till it looks like this (Add more flour if it's too mushy but I don't think it would be.) then plonk it out onto a lightly dusted table and knead it for about 10 minutes or so..
Step 5:
Get a quarter or so of the dough blob and try flattening it as much as possible and flouring it heavily (You don't want it to end up sticking onto the pasta machine when you roll, do you?) on both sides before rolling it out in the pasta machine.
Flour the table quite a bit too, to prevent it from sticking or you will have a hard time!
Let the rolled out dough rest for 20 minutes before "Shredding" (Make sure you dust them with yet another layer of flour, it somehow cuts better so you don't get sticky together noodles, I am pretty sure you won't want to eat those..) them into noodles.
Step 6:
Once you have "Noodle-y-fied" the dough it's time...
For the "Extremely fun" part! Yippeeee!
(I was supposed to drape them on a rack but it was rather sticky so I did this instead and it worked, WOO HOO!)
Now, to prevent it from clumping together, dust your table yet again then call all your little brothers over then start tossing them into the air! Do this to your heart's content, don't worry the noodles won't protest.
You should end up with noodles all over your table and flour and tiny strands of noodles on the floor. Another smiley*
I assume this process makes the noodles springy?
Let noodles rest for another TWO hours before cooking.
Step 7:
Re-heat your soup if it is cold, put some water into a wok and wait for it to boil before putting your noodles in for half a minute, take it out and rinse under cold water, then plop it into your bowl.
Pour the soup in and garnish with anchovies (Make sure you deep fry them first, ya?) and some weird edible leaves (Boil them a bit first.).
YUMMY! Had one of the best lunches EVER! Huge grin*
~K
No comments:
Post a Comment