Noodles

There are many reasons to come to this blog, but the most important one is probably the recipes. Here is where I share with you important information, such as the ratio of chocolate to cream when making truffles and how many arbitrary things I've thrown into alcohol to make drinks. Crucially, this is a place where I can come and find things that I might otherwise forget. Since it is an Internet Law that one must share a story before a recipe, I will give you an example.

I have fond memories of homemade chicken soup. When I was sick, my Polish grandmother would make chicken soup with big, soft noodles. I asked her how to make these noodles, and her answer was basically that they are just noodles—you just add flour and eggs and water until it's right. That is undoubtedly the proper way to make them, but it led to many years of my unsuccessful attempts to recreate something like her noodles. For some time, I was making something more like pasta, which I'd roll out and cut. These were made using a cup of flour, and egg, a pinch of parsley, and just enough water to hold it together. This was based on a combination of my grandmother's advice and online recipes for kluski.

A recent issue of Milk Street magazine featured a recipe for Hungarian dumpling noodles called "nokedli." After reviewing the issue, I had remembered the name incorrectly, which explains why my arbitrary combination of letters was returning no results. The article claims they are like German spaetzle, which puts it certainly in the same category as a comforting Polish noodle. I put these into my next soup, and I'm sure these are much more like what my grandmother meant with her advice. What I mix up now is batter rather than dough, and I roughly flick it into the boiling water off the back of a cutting board rather than carefully cut and separate them before dropping them in.

Look at that, only three paragraphs so far and not a single ad. You're welcome. Here's the ratio that makes it all happen:

• 2 cups of flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of water

Mix it up, cover it, let stand for half an hour or so, and that's really all there is to it. The magazine's recipe also calls for 1 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. pepper, and 1/2 tsp nutmeg. These are fine things to add, though last night I tried making noodles without these, and I do not think anyone noticed. Since I'm throwing them into soup, they pick up the flavor of the broth. If they were being served as a standalone carb, they would probably want something like spices or butter.