Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 5: Hand-stretched Kazakh Noodles

The Kazakh noodles, from a recipe in Beyond the Great Wall, were a departure. While the preceding four types were shaped in different ways, they were all quickly cut or torn into small rounds or squares or spheres. These long noodles had each to be stretched by hand into skinny strips, which made them a bit more time-consuming. In the end though, they were still easy and fun - and delicious.

The dough was similar to the other Asian noodles I've made so far - eggs, flour, salt and water mixed into a stiff dough and briefly kneaded. Rather than letting the dough rest in a ball before shaping, though, you divide it in four and pat each quarter out into a rectangle, and then cut it crosswise into strips (the dough scraper is very efficient for this) before covering it and letting it rest. Here's where I made my slight mistake - I rolled the quarters out instead of patting them, since the dough was quite stiff and resistant to being flattened. Although I'd read the directions through already, if I'd really pictured the process I wouldn't have done this, since it's not important how big the strips are, and I think it contributed to the problem I had of the dough drying up and thus not stretching as evenly. If you're going to let the dough sit a bit longer or you are doing all the shaping yourself, as I was, I recommend really covering it up well, with a couple of cloths (at least one of them dampened), as the dough's not as fun to work with when it starts drying out.

After the rest period, the fun begins. You just pick up each strip, and using one hand stable and pulling against it with the other, kind of like drafting for spinning, you stretch and flatten your little strip into a veritable noodle, long, thin, glorious-looking. This step was very exciting for me. As long as the dough wasn't dried out, its egg-rich strength made for a beautiful even stretch, and elegant noodles up to 40cm long. Unable to come up with an equally elegant drying rack arrangment, I just draped them over cooling racks and a couple of floured cookie sheets for their resting time. This worked fine, but someday when I'm making a big batch I think I'll clean the clothes-drying rack and use that - I love the image of long rows of noodles swaying gently in the breeze!

In a rash of enthusiasm, I turned last Saturday into a cooking frenzy, and along with these noodles I made rice and beans and vegetables, and fresh tortillas, for supper; dairy-free chocolate banana cake for our lactose intolerant friend; and some bread and pita just because. So I only ended up cooking up a small portion of the noodles for myself while they were fresh, before we dispersed to our various yoga classes and then came back to eat the Mexican food, drink wine, and watch Buffy.

Having the fondest memories of the exquisite hand-stretched northern Chinese noodles you can get at the Richmond Public Market foodcourt (pictured on the blog sometime in 2008), with their tomato-egg sauce, I made a quick but loving tribute to the more elaborate dish. Just stirfried some cherry tomatoes with lots of ginger and green onion, scrambled an egg into it, cracked some pepper over top, all in the time it took to boil my nice long noodles. Mmmm...the noodles were delicate and soft but not soggy, long enough to be comfortably slurpable, both easy to swallow yet still with that nice fresh-noodle bite to them. And tomato-ginger-green onion must be one of the great all-time flavour combinations...

The recipe also allowed for drying the noodles for a few days before cooking them, so that's what I did with the rest of them. If you see a pinkish tinge to the noodles in the photo, it's because I used swiss chard cooking water in the dough. It disappeared when they were cooked again but showed up well in the dried format - if it affected the flavour at all, it was too subtle for my palate to notice. After leaving them in an artistically random pile on the counter for a few days, I boiled them up and tossed them with another quick stirfry, this time with shallots and garlic and yu choy alongside the tomatoes and ginger and spring onion, but no egg (I don't know why I didn't put tofu in - next time). The texture wasn't quite as stellar for the dried version, but that was probably just me getting the cooking time wrong. Still delicious - especially because I had them for breakfast.

These noodles were awesome. I can't wait to make them again.