Every time a turkey is sacrificed cooked in our house, it requires a long and complicated ritual involving many other ingredients, tools and procedures. Several of these involve large amounts of wine but the biggest of them all is the making of soup and specifically: the noodles. I guess it is my own fault but I have created a culture in my home of the homemade noodle and no amount of pouting on my part will convince my family that they can tolerate the store bought noodle in a pinch. Of course, it is my lifelong ritual to start the bones simmering for soup before the bird is cooled enough to tear it apart and the L tryptophan has kicked in, so I just have to suck it up and make the damn noodles. Actually, I say it like its a chore, but I love this process. This is one of those little things that (with practice) can take less than about a half hour all together but provides such a sense of accomplishment and pride. I love giving friends big bowls of steaming soup and soaking up the praise for the "real-ness" of it. No Campbells here! (not that there's anything wrong with that...)
Anyhow, onto the soup! As you can see, I start with a clean butcher block table. A counter top or table would do just fine, I'm just spoiled and have this beautiful table designed for kneading and chopping!
(As quick and sweet aside: this table was built for my by my beloved son when he was in high school and I absolutely love it to pieces! Isn't he talented??)
Anyhow, table clean and well oiled and dried.
Next step is to take a couple handfuls of all purpose flour and dump it smack in the middle of that beautiful table top. This might be about three cups of flour or so?
make a well in the center and...
crack three eggs into the well in the middle. Don't let them escape... they will want to.
Sprinkle liberally with salt...
pour in a few tablespoons of good canola oil.
This means using a fork to lightly beat the eggs, pulling a bit of flour at a time into the egg mixture.
I usually end up with this sort of crumbly egg/flour mixture which I assume is what I want because it works just fine! I then pour in a few tables spoons of cold water, just enough that it starts to hold together.
It will still be quite dry and crumbly but with a bit of kneading it will start to smooth out and hold together.
This is the workout... knead knead knead! end to end, roll the far end back into the center, push hard into the center with the flat of your palm away from you and then roll the far end into the center and repeat. You can YouTube this step if you haven't kneaded before. Or stop by my house and I'll show you. Or better yet, just give you a bowl of my soup :)
eventually it will form a nice smooth ball. take a break and drink some wine. It has to rest. for real... just the dough has to rest.... not me... I'm fine!
Now... I have this super pasta roller that my mom got me several years ago for perogy making, but lots of people use Kitchen Aid attachments to do this step. If you have neither of the above, you are welcome to use a rolling pin, but you may need to rest halfway through.. this is tough work!
Take your ball of dough and slice off a piece about a half inch thick or so.
Using your hands, just flatten it slightly, especially around the edges where the roller has to 'grab' the dough and move it between the bars.
then take one of the flattened edges and ease it into the space where the rollers meet. I start with setting one for this step.
this part is fun. just crank the handle and watch as the dough flattens out. I imagine this is how laundry was once done. It was likely less fun then.
when it comes out the other side, you have this uneven funny looking sheet of dough. I run it through usually at least once more on a tighter setting (3 or even 5) to get it thinner.
Now I just take a nice long knife and hack the strip of dough into noodle shaped pieces. They do NOT need to be perfect. They actually prefer to not be, otherwise the boys think I'm trying to trick them into eating store bought noodles!
Keep them lightly dusted with flour so that they don't stick together and just throw them all in a pile on the butcher block while you repeat this whole process with the rest of the dough.
Here, you can see that Mack and his thumb heartily approves of the pile of the noodles.
Now on the stove I usually have the broth back on the stove simmering (it has been strained, set to cool overnight and skimmed of fat and impurities). I'll dump in a few handfuls of cut up onion, carrot and celery, a couple of bay leaves and quite a bit of seasoned salt.
Dump the noodles in the pot while the broth is simmering and stir well to keep them from sticking to one another.
It usually takes a good 20 minutes to cook the noodles through. you'll be able to tell by tasting one if it is cooked. It will be soft without being mushy but it won't be tough.
Now if you like, add a few handfuls of chopped cooked turkey and even some frozen peas and voila...
Crap... I forgot to take a picture of the finished soup. And now its all gone
*sigh*
Guess I'll have to make some more!
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