Noodle Redemption

Pensive Amy contemplates West Coast reality

Baby daughter Amy flew in from New York's Manhattan to help me magically combine the necessary elements into egg noodles like my mother used to make.

The entire staff of the Q-CC Institute hummed with excitement.  Actually, I was more, Da da da da da daaa Julie Schellenbaum than hum, but only because I had recently seen a good episode of Hawaii Five-O.

It took Amy two days to acclimate herself to sunny West Coast reality, including a visit to San Diego where my sister demonstrated the proper way to cook a feast after my brother-in-law and nephew took us sailing on Mission Bay so Amy could remember there is a life without subways.

Amy in NYC "sun"

Bright and early on Memorial Day, I arose and made coffee, but Amy was apparently still adjusting to the east to west coast time change, which put her 21 hours behind plus one day ahead.

As the first order of the day, I demonstrated how to prepare Q-CC bacon and eggs with toast and sliced tomatoes, a tried-and-true recipe that has led to international acclaim and not a few Michelin Stars for your humble correspondent.

Amy almost looked up from her Mac Pro screen once or twice as I cooked, and after Amy, Julie and I enjoyed that delicious breakfast, we immediately continued submersion into Southern California culture by surfing..............................the internet and watching Project Runway.

Just as Steven Spielberg watches Lawrence of Arabia before starting a new movie project, Amy apparently finds inspiration in "Project Runway," so we watched a second episode.

We then walked along the waterfront to Hermosa Beach, where a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young cover band was playing in Pier Plaza for the annual Plaza Hermosa celebration, as we tried to find cheap polarized sunglasses for Amy. Unbelievably, none of the two for $10 sunglasses were polarized, but we walked away more than satisfied, with a new hat for Julie.

On the way home, we stopped at Smart & Final to pick up three pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts before returning to the hallowed halls of the impressive Q-CC Institute where we would begin Project Noodle Redemption.

As you may recall, my solo attempt to recreate Mom's German noodles was not a roaring success, but this time we had a plan: make the noodles good, not bad. And to make some chicken tacos at the same time, as long as we were already boiling chicken.

Julie contemplates revealing large mixing bowl.

With our objectives clear, we put all four chicken breasts into the Teflon-coated pot and added enough water to cover them, putting the covered pot on the stove with the burner set on medium and our timer set for 60 minutes.

We immediately began trying to decipher what went wrong the last time. Julie revealed a large white and pink mixing bowl, lost for eons in the Q-CC's dramatic exodus from Manhattan Beach, and we knew we would not be deterred on our quest for good, not bad, noodles.  Could this be the missing piece of the puzzle?

Amy kept saying the noodles were a total fail last time so we should start from scratch, and after several minutes reading through my careful record of the prior disaster, I realized my recipe was almost entirely incomprehensible anyway, so she found one online that had similar pictures, and we appropriated its essence, tweaking it for our purposes (and to avoid any litigation and complications similar to General Hospital's relish controversy).



First, Amy poured 2 1/2 cups of flour into the mixing bowl and thoroughly blended it with a pinch of salt. When we eventually ate the noodles, we decided that we probably could have used a bigger pinch or possibly two pinches of salt, but as we don't really know exactly what a pinch is, you may not find this revelation particularly enlightening.

We mixed in two eggs.

To make a tablespoon of butter mix easier, I put it in the measuring cup and nuked it for 24 seconds, then poured it into the bowl. Putting a half cup of low fat milk in the measuring cup added most remnants of flour and butter when we poured it into the bowl.

Amy mixed the dough until it had a consistency similar to Play Doh, and then kneaded it by hand for about five minutes.

I lightly coated a sheet of parchment paper with flour and proceeded to flatten the dough ball until it was about 1/4 to 3/8 inch thick, and then Amy rolled it with a Guinness glass until it was 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick, flipping it over periodically as she rolled it out.

Amy cut the flattened dough into strips and separated them to dry.

On a cutting board, we cut carrots and celery into bite-sized pieces, and the timer had still not reached zero. Actually, I knew an hour was probably overkill, even for twice the usual amount of chicken as usual, and we started shredding chicken in a bowl with about 55 minutes after we started cooking it. Shredding chicken involves cutting the chicken breast in half and then separating the natural stringiness with a knife and fork.

New York Lamb says, "Eat more chicken."

While it probably didn't need to cook that long, the chicken did shred very nicely, and after shredding two, we put them in a separate pan with about 3/4 of a cup of the hot water from the pot. Then, in the small pan we stirred a package of McCormick's Taco Seasoning Mix plus, because it was about 1 1/2 pounds of chicken rather than 1 pound of beef as would be required by the mix recipe, a little extra seasoned salt, garlic salt, onion flakes, black pepper and ground cumin to amp it to the proper level of seasoning.

While that cooked, we proceeded to shred the other chicken breasts in the bowl (actually, it was more separated into bite-sized chunks than shredded for the soup) and then put the chicken back in the pot with the hot water, into which we put Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soup and a can of milk.

We also added some onion flakes, pepper and salt, but the salt wasn't really necessary. We stirred in the vegetables and set it to simmer, covered. We started to boil water in a separate spaghetti pot into which we should have added salt, but hunger (it was now about 2:30 PM) motivated us to alter our original plan to save the chicken tacos for the next day and instead eat them immediately, so we turned off the kettle of water and soup to be completed later for dinner.

Chef Amy and Acclaimed Food Critic Stephanie Klugman

Everyone who has been to Taco Bell knows how to assemble a soft taco, but I'll tell you how in case you are asking with a humorous regional accent, "Taco?  What's a taco?" 

 

We heated a flour tortilla on a glass plate, added the seasoned shredded chicken, shredded cheese and some diced tomatoes (lettuce is for suckers!), plus a little Tapatillo or salsa for some. We repeated that process until we all had plenty to eat, including Amy's friend Stephanie who as an unbiased observer, declared them to be the true food of the Mayan gods (or at least she thought that, I'm sure).

But I didn't come to tell you about our delicious chicken tacos. No, this is about completing the quest for the perfect noodle. And to do this, we decided the next order of business was to take a hot tub at the Institute's Spa, after which Amy washed her hair while Julie and I enjoyed sitting in lounge chairs under the California sun before returning to the Institute to check e-mails and conduct other important business.

Gina, Emma and Laszlo in NYC

About two hours later, we started heating the soup pot and brought the water kettle (be sure to add salt) to a boil. We couldn't be sure if we had let the noodles dry too long, but they still appeared pliable, so we decided to push forward. Right at that exact moment, the familiar chimes of an incoming Skype call took me to the kitchen table, where the green computer sat open, and I began chatting with other daughter and Associate Professor Gina, on loan to Columbia University in New York, who was soon joined by granddaughter Emma and son-in-law Laszlo, so I didn't actually see Amy put the noodles into the water, but I will accept on faith (and the fact that we ate noodles a few minutes later) that she did so, after the water was at a full boil.  After the noodles cooked for three minutes, Amy, Julie and I shared a sample noodle, unanily mousdeclaring unanimously declaring them to be done and delicious.

We put both pots side by side on hot pads on the counter to avoid splashing soup all over the hot stove where it would be hard to clean, and Julie expertly transferred the noodles from the kettle to the soup pan.

After cooking for another few minutes, allowing the noodles to soak up the flavors of the soup, we down to try our improved recipe. 

And the noodles were good! 


Mom, Darlene and Brooks in February, 2008

Were the noodles as good as my mother's?  Not quite, but this time they were definitely more than just edible.  By comparison to any mortal noodle, they were quite tasty, but the next time, we will try to tweak the recipe with a pinch of salt in the boiling noodle water and this insight from Julie: "Didn't your mom say the recipe was exactly proportional, with two eggs to two cups of flour?"

Yes, we will try that next time.

By the way, as you can tell from the mixing bowl, measuring cup, cutting board, pot, pan, kettle and utensils, this was not the typical Quick-Clean Cuisine easy clean up, but we did not leave a big mess.

Having multiple hands enabled me to clean the dishes as we went along rather than piling them in the sink where they would dry crusty and require scrubbing. 

Because we enjoyed the tacos so much, we didn't eat as many noodles as normal, so we will be having another noodle feast today, in lieu of the chicken tacos we had planned (although we do have enough leftover seasoned shredded chicken for a couple of tacos).