Friday, December 26, 2014

Neriage Noodle

I have been dreaming about this technique for a long time. With clay it's fairly simple. You roll out sheets of different colors, make a few layers of each color, one on top of the other. Roll up everything, then cut them into rounds and put all the pieces together side by side and roll out again. The same thing ought to work with pasta dough. And it did. The two doughs are made with juiced beets and juiced broccoli rabe. QUITE the mess. First time I've actually used the beast of a juicer in my house that looks like a rocket engine. The noodles didn't come out so much Father Christmas as King Crimson, but it does look cool. I then cut these strips into noodles and as you can see the color faded a lot. But they are multicolor psychedelic. And I'm hoping they really taste like beet and rabe. So the key to keeping these for a while, since they're just white flour and vegetable juice: precook and then dehydrate in nests. If you just dry them, they are really brittle. Which is of course why semolina replaces regular wheat in commercial dried noodles. At least in Italy. The real question is what kind of soup can I put these in? Crab maybe?

2 comments:

Jeremy said...

A nice clear pho broth?

Ken Albala said...

I used them in a serious crab shell stock laden with star anise, black cardamom, cinnamon, vanilla bean. So yes, I was thinking exactly pho but not with beef. I wanted the beet and shellfish to compliment each other.