Home Made Ramen Noodles from Scratch

I have always wanted to make my own noodles from  scratch. I finally had the time and mood to make it today. I got this recipe "Not Quite Nigella" and I thought that I would give this a try. I bought a bottle of lye water or Kansui when I went back to Malaysia for the summer holidays and this could not be a better time to use my kansui. The noodles turned out better than I had expected. The yellow color of the noodles is from the lye water. The noodles were springy and chewy. I will make stir fried ramen noodles for dinner today.

Ingredients

2 cups bread flour
1 tsp kosher salt

1/2 cup of lukewarm water
1 tsp of lye water

Directions

1. Add the bread flour and kosher salt into the mixer fitted with a dough hook. Mix it on low speed for about 1 minute.
2. Mix the lukewarm water with the lye water and add it slowly to the flour.Keep kneading on the lowest speed to combine. Add more water is necessary to form a dough and knead until you get a smooth and elastic dough. It took me around 4-5 minutes
3. Wrap the dough in a cling wrap and leave it to rest for about 2-3 hours.
4. The dough should look soft and elastic after resting for about 3 hours.
5. Using a pasta machine, lightly flour the top of the machine and pass the dough through the widest setting 1 and gradually move it to setting no. 3.
6. Now the dough is thin enough to be made into ramen noodles. Prepare a tray dusted with flour and pass through the dough  the spaghetti setting.
7. Put a pot of water to boil and prepare a large bowl with cold iced water.
8. Put a small handful of noodles into the boiling water and cook it for 1 minute.
9. Remove and place it in the cold water and drain.
10. Rub a little oil on the noodles to prevent the noodles from sticking together.

The noodles are now ready for stir frying or you can even put into hot soup. Add some fish cake or eomuk and it will taste amazing.

Korean Fish Cake Eomuk

My daughter is off to college and I am missing her so much. I just wished that she was somewhere close enough for me to visit her over the weekend.  Feeling a bit empty inside and after cross mad with the boys for messing up the house, as usual, i started visiting some of my favorite cooking Youttube channels. I came across this fish cake recipe in Maangchi's youtube channel.  I had some of the main ingredients in my freezer and all I had to do was modify the recipe a bit based on what I had at home and fix this before the dad comes home from work. It took something like 15 minutes to make the fish paste and another 15 minutes to fry it. Pretty quick right. It tasted really good.

Ingredients

1/2 lb cod fish fillet or hake or any white fleshed fish fillet
1/2 lb shelled prawns and deveined
1/4 cup white onion
1 large egg white
2 garlic pips
1 tsp white pepper powder
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp sesame oil

Directions

1. Put all the ingredients into the blender and blitz it for about 2 mins or until all the ingredients come to a smooth paste.
2. Heat up some cooking oil on medium heat. Take about 1/3 a cup of fish paste and flatten it over the back of an oiled spatula.
3. Start rolling the fish paste from the wider edge a bit by bit until it form a long roll and drop it gently into the oil.
4. Fry until the fish cake is cooked and evenly browned. Drain any excess oil on a paper towel. The fish cake will float when it is cooked.
5. The fish cake tastes good on its own without any condiments.