Food Lab 42: Alkaline Noodles

It's been quiet on the blog, but that's because your intrepid Food Labbers have been quite busy.

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.

The man is wearing an authentic Avalon String Band
Mummers costume WHILE RIDING A BIKE

We also had the opportunity to use our cooking skills to benefit some members of our local community here in DC, and Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee visited and re-created Chinese banquet for International Dilettante and Dr. Fruit Bat.

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:

1. Broth
2. Tare
3. Noodles
4. 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.

Commercial on the left - homemade on the right

All the delicious nibblies (including some tiny pickled octopus
we picked up and a quick spicy Napa slaw with sriracha pickled radishes)

What did we drink? Chef Spouse started us out with a rum-based cocktail with ponzu and pimento bitters, garnished with lychee. Mad Kitchen Scientist had taken some of the absurdity of dried hibiscus flowers we were left with from making homemade bitters (which I never wrote about, because there really isn't much to say - you buy a bunch of odd ingredients from places like Mountain Rose Herbs, put really small quantities of them in Everclear, and wait) and turned them into a hibiscus liquor (rum based, with some "warm" spices and a little honey), and Chef Spouse was messing around with rum and rye and bitters and citrus, and what we eventually realized is: just put the hibiscus liquor in a glass with some silver tequila. Simplicity on the other side of complexity, my friends.

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.)

Food Lab 18: Pasta

Planning for pasta Food Lab began two weeks ago when we feared that the election would never ever never end. A comfort food to calm us should swing states get into a litigious brawl and ballot recounts become inevitable. Instead, we rolled out our linguine and ravioli in super PAC-free peace. Is this a great country or what?

We compared linguine made with flour to one with flour and semolina. We then added spinach to the dough, again making a linguine with flour only and one with flour and semolina. The show stopper was the comparison of spinach/flour ravioli stuffed with squash puree to spinach/flour/semolina ravioli stuffed with squash puree. Chef Spouse took the lead. Mad Kitchen Scientist kept ingredients moving and pots of water boiling (MKS notes: kitchen clogs on feet would be ideal for performing latter task, birks and socks not so much). Elizabeth harvested spinach, parsley, and sage from garden to kitchen. The Empress deftly made bowtie pasta with her tiny little fingers using plain linguine dough. Indoctrination has begun. The rest of us pretty much ate and drank.

Linguine – Plain 

¾ cup King Arthur All Purpose flour
1 egg beaten
Pinch of salt dissolved in beaten egg
1 Tbsp olive oil

Blend all ingredients together with a fork until consistency looks like couscous. This ratio was too wet, so we added 1 tbsp of flour. Use hands to meld dough.

Rolling technique [used on all pasta variations we made]: First, use wooden roller to press dough into an oblong disk shape of about a ¼ inch thick. Next, run disk of dough through Kitchen Aid pasta roller twice on level 1. Take dough and trifold it, then turn 90 degrees. Flatten with wooden roller to about ¼ inch thick. Roll dough through Kitchen Aid roller on level 1. Repeat this last step until edges smooth. To make linguine, run dough through one time on each level of Kitchen Aid pasta roller all the way up to level 6. You will have a pretty piece of dough. Cut this into 10 inch segments. Change pasta roller attachment to linguine cutter attachment. Pass each dough segment through cutter to make pasta noodles.

Resting technique: We initially rested the noodles clumped on plate that had been sprinkled with semolina, but realized that layering noodles on plate with semolina between layers is preferable. Another option is to hang noodles to dry on kitchen cabinet doors or other ingenious spot. We were putting ours into boiling water pretty quickly, so we weren’t too concerned about drying time.

Boiled linguine for 3 minutes, drained, and tossed with warm blended concoction of 4 tbsp butter, 2 minced garlic cloves, and 1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley. Salt to taste.

Texture and taste: Before and after boiling, noodles were smooth. When compared with the linguine that had semolina (see next recipe), this pasta was more al dente. Definitely calling for red tomato sauces, with our without meat.

Linguine - Semolina


½ cup King Arthur All Purpose flour
¼ cup Semolina flour
1 egg beaten
Pinch of salt dissolved in beaten egg
1 Tbsp olive oil

Blend all ingredients together with a fork until consistency looks like couscous. This ratio was also too wet, so we added 1 tbsp of flour. Use hands to meld dough.

Rolling Technique: Follow technique as directed above.

Resting Technique: Sprinkle plate with semolina, layer noodles on plate with semolina sprinkled between layers.

Boiled linguine for 3 minutes, drained, and tossed with warm blended concoction of 4 tbsp butter, 2 minced garlic cloves, and 1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley. Salt to taste.

Texture and taste: Before boiling, pasta was grainer and a little drier than flour only linguine. After boiling, the noodles were softer than the flour only linguine, but still had a little graininess. Perhaps best with light creamy sauces or al fresco veggie interpretation.

Spinach Linguine 

1+ cup King Arthur All Purpose flour
1 egg beaten
3/8 tsp salt dissolved in beaten egg
4.5 oz of fresh spinach wilted in pan, water squeezed out, pulse down in food processor and add 1 egg

There is no oil in this version.

Blend all ingredients together with a fork until consistency looks like couscous. Use hands to meld dough.

Rolling Technique: Follow technique as directed above. Need to dust flour on dough between feeds through Kitchen Aid pasta roller due to wetness. After we cut into segments, but BEFORE cutting into linguine, dry dough segments by stacking them on a cooling rack, with semolina between each layer.

Boiled linguine for 3 minutes, drained, and tossed with warm meaty tomato sauce. Salt to taste.

Spinach Linguine – with Semolina 

1 cup King Arthur All Purpose flour
1/3 cup Semolina flour
1 egg beaten
3/8 tsp salt dissolved in beaten egg
4.5 oz of fresh spinach wilted in pan, water squeezed out, pulse down in food processor and add 1 egg

Again, no oil in this version.

Blend all ingredients together with a fork until consistency looks like couscous. Use hands to meld dough.

Rolling Technique: Follow technique as directed above. Need to dust flour on dough between feeds through Kitchen Aid pasta roller due to wetness. After we cut into segments, but BEFORE cutting into linguine, dry dough segments by stacking them on a cooling rack, with semolina between each layer.

Boiled linguine for 3 minutes, drained, and tossed with warm meaty tomato sauce. Salt to taste.

Spinach Ravioli (with and without semolina), filled with Squash puree 

For the ravioli dough, we made the recipes above for the spinach linguine with and without semolina. Instead of making final cut into linguine, however, Chef Spouse cut dough lengthwise in 55/45 ratio so that one length is slightly wider than the other. He then spooned teaspoons of puree onto narrower strip about every 3 inches, leaving at least an inch at top and bottom of strip. The wider strip was placed over the pureed strip and he used a ravioli roller to crimp edges all around and evenly between dollops. He cut the ravioli into equal squares.

Boiled for 3 minutes, then tossed with brown butter and sage sauce (20 sage leaves chopped, 1 stick of butter sautéed until lightly browned).

Nirvana.

Written by The Executive Committee