Category: Side dishes

Jerri’s Egg Noodles

Want a really easy way to impress guests with your skill in the kitchen?  Serve them homemade noodles in beef, chicken or turkey soup.  Jerri has been wowing me with her noodle-making ability for nearly five decades.   Once she taught me how to make them, I was less awed by her skill but still impressed by how good they taste.

That’s because noodles are simple to make.   They have only five ingredients, which may explain why people have been making noodles for over 4,000 years.  As she was teaching me how to make them, she kept saying, “You can’t screw them up.  If they’re too sticky, just sprinkle on more flour.”  And she was right.

My mother made her noodles with just four ingredients– eggs, water, salt and all-purpose flour that we used to buy in 25-pound bags.  My sister Patsy told me that when Mom taught one of her granddaughters to make noodles, she showed her how to measure the water with an eggshell.   I don’t remember ever watching Mom make noodles, but she probably did it early in the day when I was at school.  I sure ate a lot of them, however.

Jerri makes her noodles with semolina flour and uses milk rather than water for the liquid.   Semolina is the high-gluten durum flour used by commercial pasta makers in Italy, and it makes delicious noodles.  You can find it in the specialty foods section of many supermarkets today or at food co-ops.  It has a slightly sandy texture that feels odd when you start to knead the dough, but it soon becomes smooth and elastic.

Jerri’s recipe makes about six cups of cooked noodles.   Since you dry them before cooking, you can cook just the amount you need and store the rest.  If you dry them completely you can put them in a plastic bag and keep them in a cabinet.  We usually store them in the freezer.  They seem a little tougher when we cook them after freezing, but we think that they are still good.

Here’s how to make a batch of noodles in no time at all:

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups semolina flour
1 tsp. salt
2 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
All-purpose flour for kneading

PROCEDURE:

Stir the salt into the flour in a mixing bowl.  Beat the eggs until lemon colored, mix in the milk and stir the liquid into the flour and salt.  Add a tiny bit more milk if necessary.  Turn the dough out onto a bread board generously sprinkled with all-purpose flour and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, three or four minutes.  The semolina will feel grainy as you start to knead the dough, but it will soon become smooth.  Sprinkle more flour on the board if the dough is sticky.

Shape the dough into a ball and let it rest for five minutes or so.  Cut the ball in half.  Pat a half into a flat round, turning it on the floured board so both sides are well floured.  Roll the dough very thin.  We aim for noodles that are between 1/16 and 1/8 inch thick.

Using a pizza roller cutter, slice the dough into strips between 1/4 and 1/2 inch wide.  Lay the strips on dish towels to dry for at least a couple of hours before cooking.  Repeat for the second half.  To make three cups of cooked noodles, bring three to four quarts of water to a boil, add two teaspoons of salt and half the dried noodles.  Boil for 9 to 12 minutes.

If the noodles are very thin, test one for doneness after eight minutes, longer for thicker ones.  Like all pasta, noodles should be cooked al dente, which means there should be a slight firmness when you bite through the noodle.

NOTES:  If you are making the noodles for soup, just add the dried noodles to the soup and cook them until they have reached the al dente stage before serving.  Taste and add a bit more salt if necessary.  Homemade noodles are wonderful with goulash or pörkelt too.

Joann’s Turkey Gravy

It was the best turkey gravy I can remember, even better than Mom’s.

For many years we have been going to the annual Harvest Festival at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church near Clayton, Wisconsin. The church is a jewel set among woodlots and farm fields where it was established in 1902 by Carpatho-Russian immigrants from eastern Europe.

It is a small but vibrant church. With a congregation of fewer than one hundred adults, nearly everyone has to pitch in to make the Harvest Festival a success. This year more than six hundred people enjoyed a dinner of cabbage rolls, baked ham, mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables, cranberry sauce, marinated vegetable salad, dinner rolls and homemade pie.

At dawn on the Saturday before the dinner the men are boiling water and steaming cabbages. Women are putting meat on the leaves and making the rolls. By noon, over two thousand fresh cabbage rolls are cooking in the roasters. On Sunday morning entire families are working together.

This year a young man who was probably five or six years old did a great job of keeping full bowls of cranberry sauce on the tables, middle schoolers bussed dishes, teenagers set new places and delivered pies. The pies are served family style, so you can have two pieces if you want. Both the apple and pumpkin were delicious.

Moms and dads, grandmothers and grandfathers–everyone is part of an elaborate ballet that is a joy to watch while visiting with strangers and friends who share your table. Joann Schramski is one of those grandmothers.

Her job for many years has been to make the turkey gravy served with the mashed potatoes. This year she made about nine gallons. She learned how to make it from her mother, does not have a recipe and goes by taste, just like Julia Child. Her taster might have been working extra well this year, but as I think back over previous Harvest Fest dinners we have attended, the gravy was always excellent.

Since you probably do not want to make nine gallons of gravy, I did my best to adjust the quantities of ingredients Joann shared with me to make about one and a half quarts. This may seem like a lot, but this gravy goes well with turkey, chicken, beef and lamb. Plus you can freeze the leftover gravy and use it later.

The one major difference is that I used two turkey legs instead of one, but the package had two legs, and I figured that two would make a richer broth. Jerri and I felt that it was a success, and I think that you’ll like it too. Here is what I did.

INGREDIENTS:

2 turkey legs
1/2 cup celery
1/2 cup onion
2 cups chicken broth
4 cups water
2 chicken bouillon cubes
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
Juice from a can of green beans
1/4 cup cornstarch
Kitchen Bouquet

PROCEDURE:

Put the turkey legs, broth and a scant three cups of water into a large saucepan or Dutch oven. The pan should be wide enough so the turkey legs will lie flat and be covered with the liquid.

Clean and coarsely chop the celery and onion. Purée them in a blender with a cup of water. Pour the vegetables into the pot with the turkey legs. Add the two bouillon cubes, salt and pepper, bring to a boil and simmer for at least two hours.

While you are making the gravy, open a can of green beans that you can serve on the side and drain the juice into the broth. Stir occasionally and skim any foam that appears.

Turn off the heat and remove the legs from the pot and cool them on a plate. Working with a knife and your fingers, carefully separate the meat from the legs. Discard the skin, bones and tendons and cut the meat into small pieces.

Return the meat to the broth and bring to a boil over moderate heat. Mix the cornstarch with a quarter cup of cold water. Stir the cornstarch into the broth and cook until thickened, two or three minutes. Add a small amount of Kitchen Bouquet browning and seasoning sauce to deepen the color.

Taste and adjust the seasoning.

NOTES: Joann goes through the meat twice by hand to make sure that all the bones and small pieces of tendon have been removed. It’s easy to miss those little pieces of tendon, in particular, so I do the same.

Joann’s use of the bean juice is typical of good cooks who hate to discard anything that is edible and that can contribute to a dish. My mother did the same and so does Jerri. I really think that the bean juice adds to the complex flavor of Joann’s turkey gravy.

If the gravy is thicker than you like, add a little more water. If it’s not thick enough, mix a tablespoon of corn starch with a tablespoon of water and stir it into the gravy.

And on a personal note, Joann told me that when she and her husband Roger drove into the yard after the dinner this year, they found the yard filled with cars, children and grandchildren. It was nearly suppertime.

She told her husband, “I’m really too tired to cook this evening.”

Roger had the answer. “We’ve got hot dogs in the freezer and stuff in the fridge. I’ll build a fire and we’ll have a wiener roast.”

And so they did.