Simple Hand Made Noodles

Don't be intimidated by the thought of making egg noodles. It's not commonly done, but it isn't really very hard, and you don't have to have a pasta maker to do it.

I should qualify that a little. Most of the recipes that I have seen originated on a farm, or maybe in the army and they make huge batches of noodles. This used to be a way of using/storing eggs. If you lived on a farm, your chickens would lay grundles of eggs in the spring and summer, and then production would fall off to almost nothing in the fall and winter. So, smart farm wives would make a lot of noodles when there were a lot of eggs, and once they were dried, they would keep for months. However, none of us lives on a farm, and eggs are available all through the year. So why make noodles - well because they taste great, and sometimes you might run short on pasta.

Ingredients:

Flour
Eggs
Salt

The ratio that I like to use is 1/2 cup flour to 1 egg, and a pinch of salt (1/16 tsp or so ).

Put the flour in a bowl and break the eggs into it. Add the salt. Mix with a spoon until you can knead it.

Remove the noodle dough from the bowl and put on a floured surface. Sprinkle a little flour on top and roll it to ~1/8" thick. Re-dust with flour, fold it back onto it self and add a little more flour and roll it out again. Keep repeating this folding, flouring and rolling until the dough is pretty dry and not sticky at all.

Then, one final time, roll it very thin- as thin as you can and cut it into strips with a pizza cutter.

There are your noodles. Drop them into boiling soup or boiling water. If you have extras, drape them over a large kettle or bowl and let them air dry. You might want to warm the oven just a little when you put them in - maybe 120-150 deg F.

Tonight I used 1-1/2 cups of flour and used 3 eggs, and I made enough soup for Annie and I to eat a couple of meal from, and still had almost half the noodles drying in the oven.

quiche lorraine

the reason why this makes such a good dinner is because of the bacon. bacon is easy to cook, easy to thaw (easy to freeze, but really, what isn't?) and a pie crust is easy to buy or easy to make. ryan and ava love quiche!

1 partially baked pie crust
8 ounces (8 slices) bacon, cut in to 1/2 inch pieces
2 large eggs, plus 2 large egg yolks
1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
pinch nutmeg
4 ounces gruyere cheese, grated (about 1 cup)

to cook the bacon:
preheat oven to 400 degrees. line baking pan (with sides) with bacon. cook for 6 minutes. rotate pan and put back in for another 6 minutes.

whisk all ingredients save the cheese and the bacon in a bowl. spread bacon and cheese evenly over the bottom of the shell and pour quiche mix in until it reaches about 1/2 inch below crust rim. cover the edges of the crust with foil, or they'll burn. bake until lightly golden brown, a knife blade inserted about one inch comes out clean, 32 to 35 minutes. transfer quiche to rack to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.


i'm not quite sure how this will work out with a store bought pie crust, since i've never used one of those before.
happy eating!