The Wrinkled Page: Dinner at Home: Day One

Friday, January 3, 2014

Dinner at Home: Day One

Today has been a chilly day, and when I'm cold, I crave soup. Chicken noodle sounded just about right. I used two whole chicken breasts (bone in, skins removed), a handful of chopped potatoes and carrots (about 5-7 of each of them), 3 or so cloves of chopped garlic, and a chopped onion. I sauteed the veggies in a little olive oil and then added the chicken breasts. Then I covered all of the ingredients with water, allowing about 3 inches of extra water on top. Jonah seasoned the soup for me. I know he added salt and pepper, and I think I saw him add oregano, basil, rosemary, and garlic salt too. I set it on the wood burner to boil for an hour.

Then I mixed up the noodles. If you've never made noodles from scratch, you should try it! They're easy and much more satisfying than pre-made noodles.

Here's the recipe:

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper (optional)

2 eggs

1/4 cup water

Stir together the dry ingredients, stir in eggs, and then incorporate the water. All of this can be done by hand in a mixing bowl, although the dough will be dry. Usually, I take it out of the bowl and knead it a bit on a floured counter top. Then, roll out the dough so it's about 1/8-1/4" thick.

After I have rolled out my dough, I use this handy board scraper to cut my noodles into long strips. You could also use a butter knife. After I've cut the strips, I cut each strip into 4-5 pieces so we all get plenty of noodles in our soup--and cutting them into shorter pieces makes them easier to slurp up.

This is the pile of noodles once I got them all cut up. I let them rest on the counter top with a little extra flour mixed in so they wouldn't clump together. Once the chicken was cooked through and the whole house smelled like soup, I pulled out the chicken so I could cut it up and then put the noodles in to cook.