From Scratch

I have been having fun this week making some new stuff from scratch.  The first favorite dish (without pictures though) was brown rice/lentil with saucy chicken and Indian flatbread (chapati). I have already made a second version of this using the rice/lentil mixture, chapati, and leftover ham, tomatoes, onions in terriyaki...good stuff!  When I make the chapati, the kids like a fresh one with melted butter and cinnamon/sugar, in fact we all liked that! so I guess I will have to make double batches!

After watching an Asian cooking show on PBS CREATE I got inspired to look up Ramen noodles.  I love the things but refuse to buy them. The kids love them as well, but I still refuse.  There is pretty much nothing redeemable in the things plus there are unhealthy things, like MSG that we just don't need to consider a "treat".  So, I google searched and found this site for homemade Japanese Ramen noodles.  I used what I had in my pantry and must say that they turned out pretty well!

3/4 cup flour ( I used about a 1/4 of semolina flour)
1 tsp salt
1 egg
1 T. water

Basically Ramen is an egg noodle.  My grandmother had taught me egg noodles for the family tradition of noodle gravy.

I would mostly just need to know how to get them to be longer and a little more ramen like!
After combining, kneading, and resting for 30 minutes, the dough is ready to roll out, if it still "springs back" let it rest a bit longer.

Then fold over twice with generous flour between layers, otherwise you will get noodle blobs, not long noodles!

Next, cut very very thin, they do "poof" a little in the water, so they will be wider than what you cut.

After they are all cut, THERAPY! there isn't anything quite like letting fresh flour-y noodles run through the fingers!

Next up is to put them into boiling water, not worrying about excess flour, it just falls off the noodles, no worries.  They only take a couple of minutes, so don't leave!

I had in bowls a little bouillon base and parsley, and added a little water from the pot. Next, I added noodles to each with more water and stirred and served it up to the kiddos. They LOVED it! they cleaned it up and said that they would love to eat it again....just not right now!

Now that the kids had approved and I had served the "boring" version, I was up for the next challenge of a more adult variety.
I had only rolled and cut 1/2 the dough (I had wisely made a double) so I started the process again for myself and hubby.
This time while the noodles were cooking, I cooked up spinach and onions and mixed up a sauce of terriyaki, rice vinegar, bouillon, water, and sesame oil...yumm!

Once the noodles were done, I put them into ice cold water to stop the cooking. Then added them into the pan with the spinach and onions, added the sauce until it was all heated through, then poured into bowls.

I had thought about adding some shrimp, but couldn't seem to dig deep enough in my freezer, plus hubby doesn't care for the stuff and I really wanted him to try it, I would be lucky to get him to eat the spinach version!
It was delish and mouth watering! I would definitely do this again.  I will have to keep watching cooking shows because they really do encourage me to be creative, which is a whole lot more fun than sweeping floors!