Dark Days Week 14 (Rooster Noodle Soup)

Last week’s Dark Days Dinner was roast chicken from our own small flock.  Not one to waste, and always up for an easy dinner, I decided on soup out of the leftover bird. 

Over the last two days, I made stock and separated the meat from the bones.  Nothing special, just your basic stock.  I didn’t even add any vegetables to it aside from the garlic, onion and herbs that I cooked the chicken in originally. This afternoon I made noodles for the first time in years.  I realized today why it has been so long since I made homemade pasta: rolling it is not fun.  Okay, so it is fun, but it is not easy and my noodles were not very thin.

I used to have a roller.  A nice, Italian roller that I purchased at Goodwill.  It was new or just like new and came in the original box.  I paid ten or fifteen dollars for it.  Somewhere along the line I must have decided that I didn’t need a pasta roller any more because lately, I’ve been contemplating making pasta and searching, in vain, for that roller. 

So, today I made pasta anyway.  And hand-rolled it.  And hand cut it.  I am not an expert.  My noodles were thick.  And wide.   “Those are not noodles.”  The Boy proclaimed.

“Yes they are.”  Says me.

“No.  They aren’t.”  He persists. 

Ugly as they were, I was victorious in this particular battle.  They were noodles and they were delicious.  I should have baked bread.  Or made a salad.  But, I didn’t.  The soup was so good that it stood alone:

Delicious soup with ugly noodles.

Big Ugly Noodles:
4 cups flour 3 1/4 cups plus more for kneading (See note below)
4 eggs
generous splash of olive oil

Dump 4 cups of flour onto the kitchen counter.
Poke a well into the center of the pile of flour so that it looks like what I’d imagine a volcano looks like from above.
Crack the eggs and dump them into the crater of the flour volcano.
Pour some olive oil into the volcano.
At this point, it should look something like this:

Flour eggs and oil ready to become delicious noodles.

Use a fork to “scramble” the eggs and slowly incoporate the eggs into the flour.  Once the eggs and flour are blended, knead for 3-5 minutes.  (At this point I decided that my pasta was too dry and added another egg; this was messy, but I’m glad I did it.  Next time I will decrease the starting flour because it is easier to add flour than eggs to a stiff dough.)

Let the dough rest for 30 minutes.
Cut the dough into quarters; roll each ball into a thin sheet.

Homemade pasta sheet

Cut the sheets into strips to create noodles.  Mine were thick and chunky, but you can cut them however you like.

Finished noodles

Let the noodles dry for ten minutes or so before cooking.  I boiled mine right in the soup, but you could cook them in boiling salted water and then add them to your finished soup if you are concerned about boiling your soup down too much.