Mad Kitchen Scientist has changed jobs.
Chef Spouse and I spent two weeks in Hawaii celebrating a milestone anniversary.
I've been on several business trips (including two outside the US - fancy!).
We shared a peaceful Friendsgiving together at which we had the same number of desserts as we had guests, and a unique desert tipple to pair with each. (Apparently, Mad Kitchen Scientist and I are trouble together at the liquor store AND the fish market.)
We prepared our usual themed New Year's Eve feast with Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee for their annual party (this year: nouvelle Russian, to prepare us for our new overlords, comrade).
We put on the annual Super Bowl party, and this year, winning their FIRST Super Bowl ever and ending a 57 year conference championship drought, celebrated the victorious Philadelphia Eagles! But we did not have as good a day as Jason Kelce, who truly was living his best life.
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| The man is wearing an authentic Avalon String Band Mummers costume WHILE RIDING A BIKE |
But after all that cooking and eating and drinking and serving and celebrating and traveling fun, we decided it was time to get back to labbing this past weekend.
Several years ago, a tiny ramen joint opened in our neighborhood. Turns out, it's outstanding - some say, better than Momofuku (I would be one of those). Chef Spouse has been obsessed by ramen ever since.
Here's the thing: it's always a long wait for a table there (it is TINY, no joke), but they do carry out, and you can easily order kaedama (extra noddles) for your leftovers for lunch the next day.
But he wants to make his own anyway, because that's how we do. (Hey, if you're a regular reader, you already know that.)
Ramen has four basic components:
- Broth
- Tare
- Noodles
- Guts/goodies
Chef Spouse has made some progress on a rich pork stock to form the basis of the broth. And he's messed around with pork belly (and Mad Kitchen Scientist's homemade kimchi and nori and soft-boiled eggs and kale and homemade pickles) for the guts/goodies on top. But he hasn't really worked on the tare or the noodles yet.
Here's the thing, though: I can't remember the last time I had pasta from a box. Chef Spouse makes fresh pasta ALL THE TIME. In fact, he's so fast at making it now that he puts the water on before he starts and he has the noodles ready to go before the water boils.
But you start reading recipes that call for kan sui (lye water), sodium carbonate, or potassium carbonate, and you get scared off. LYE IS DANGEROUS STUFF, YO.
We resolved to overcome our fears and give it a go.
In theory, you can get kan sui at an Asian market, but we have several VERY well stocked examples nearby and struck out at all. Potassium carbonate is something you have to order online.
But sodium carbonate is another story. All that is is baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) that's been baked in a 200 degree oven for about an hour, which bakes off water and carbon dioxide. Voila! Sodium carbonate!
Interestingly, Chef Spouse had baked up a batch probably two years ago, and it's been sitting in the pantry patiently waiting ever since. We also had about two quarts of pork stock hanging in the freezer.
For our Lab test, we tried the following:
Test 1 - old sodium carbonate
2 3/4 c. all purpose flour
3/4 c. water
1 tsp. sodium carbonate
1 tsp. salt
Test 2- new sodium carbonate (baked fresh that day)
2 3/4 c. all purpose flour
3/4 c. water
1 tsp. sodium carbonate
1 tsp. salt
Test 3 - MORE sodium carbonate (new stuff)
2 3/4 c. all purpose flour
3/4 c. water
1 1/2 tsp. sodium carbonate
1 tsp. salt
Test 4 - commercial ramen
Yep, this stuff:
Noodles only! Not the "flavor" packet. Anyone else flashing back to college?
All the sites we checked warned that the dough is dry and hard going in the kneading, and they were right. Start it in your Kitchen Aid with the dough hook and let horsepower do the job as long as you can. We took dough out when the dough hook stopped making any progress on forming it into a whole, and then had to knead each by hand for another ~5 minutes, which doesn't sound long, but this is TOUGH dough. As one site we read noted, "If you're not sweating, it's not ready yet."
We then rested them for ~20 minutes each, wrapped in plastic wrap.
When the dough came out of the plastic wrap, it was significantly more supple.
We also tested making two thicknesses of noodles. In the first test, we rolled the dough to the "five" setting on the Kitchen Aid before cutting. For the second test, we rolled it only to the "three" setting.
In handling the dough, there wasn't much difference between the old and new sodium carbonate batches. The MORE sodium carbonate batch was different, though - much less smooth.
Then we cooked them all - including the Top Ramen - in batches in the pork stock. We didn't mess around with tare or guts because we were trying to assess the noodles qua noodles.
We all agreed that the fresh sodium carbonate noodles had the best texture. The MORE sodium carbonate noodles had a slight off flavor. The Top Ramen had the customary curly texture (how DO you do that with fresh noodles? we couldn't figure it out), and were lighter but less flavorful than fresh, and oddly sweet. Opinions differed on preferring thin to thick (I thought the thick seemed a little gelatinous, but not everyone agreed). All stood up well to the broth over time - they didn't get mushy at all.
To go with? Mad Kitchen Scientist had gone pig-crazy (in fairness, we started it by tasking him with picking up and smoking a pork shoulder for a fundraiser we're hosting this coming weekend), so we had Chinese red pork and roasted pork belly to nosh on the side.
We experimented with making seaweed salad from scratch, too. Since the packages were mostly not labeled in English, we just picked up a variety. First step is to reconstitute the seaweed with hot water - and man, did the dining room smell like the ocean when we did - and then drain it and squeeze out as much water as possible.
Then you just create a basic dressing of Asian flavors - sesame oil, soy sauce, etc. (we also used rice vinegar, ponzu, honey, and some grated ginger), dress it, add sliced green onions and sesame seeds, done. We had picked up some prepared seaweed salad to compare it against. We hadn't lucked on grabbing the same type of seaweed you usually find in ready-made seaweed salad, and I do love the texture of that type, so that was a bummer. But the flavor of the homemade, by comparison, was much better. Once we had it to compare, we realized that the stuff you normally get at sushi joints is REALLY REALLY sweet.
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| Commercial on the left - homemade on the right |
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| All the delicious nibblies (including some tiny pickled octopus we picked up and a quick spicy Napa slaw with sriracha pickled radishes) |
What we learned is that it takes a little longer to make fresh alkaline noodles than fresh pasta - but not much. They taste a lot better than Top Ramen. And you can do it with ingredients you already have in your kitchen, so don't be afraid of the mad chemist-sounding names.
(But Chef Spouse ordered some potassium carbonate and kan sui from Amazon anyway.)
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