Oodles of noodles (24/11)

  Had you heard the story about the thirteenth century, Italian explorer who brought some noodles home from China and gave spaghetti to Italy? Did you know spaghetti was Chinese? I'd heard this one too and apparently so have loads of other people on google. So it must be true. Right?

  Well apparently not. Maguelonne toussaint-samat, in her book, 'A history of food - Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), says this story came about because of a liberty that was taken by Ramusio, the guy who edited Marco Polo's book of his travels. How, when and why the Italians started making pasta isn't clear. Even the origin of noodles is debated but as you might remember from earlier posts, it would have been a natural progression from anyone who was working out different ways to eat wheat. Remember I was talking about gluten yesterday? That was no accident.

  The word pasta translates as paste or dough, (like the French word, pate). Make a thick paste of flour and water and knead it. Remember from yesterday how this will bring the gluten to life? Keep kneading it. A lot. Eventually, the gluten will be super strong so now roll it out. In fact, roll it through a mangle, fold it, roll it again and keep doing this. It will become really tough as the gluten is practically bionic by now.

  If you were to bake this you would get a wafer thin biscuit so crunchy it would probably break your teeth. Cut the thin sheet into strips and boil them however, and you might be amazed to find something like tagliatelle appearing in your pan. (While we're on the subject, if you add egg yolk instead of water to the flour, you get egg pasta. It's as simple as that.)

  Because pasta and noodles are so easy to make, it's no surprise that versions turned up all over the place. Hold on, I've a question for you. Have you ever made fresh pasta? I'm not asking if you've bought a packet of fresh egg pasta and boiled it, I want to know if you've gone through the process I've described above. If not, I suggest you do. It really is as easy as I've described and it's very satisfying. You don't need a pasta roller like the one in the picture but you will benefit from pasta flour, (easily available). Send pictures please if you do take up the challenge. 

Come back tomorrow for more pastry news.

Kirk out

RevoltingFood.com