Japanese Ramen Noodles

Last weekend my brother came over for a "Tampopo Party". He and I both really enjoyed the movie and have talked about getting together and making some noodles while watching the movie for a while.

Well, we finally did just that.

I got some of the ingredients around and Brett brought over some Sake and of course..you gotta have some pineapple!

The dough recipe we used consisted of:

155 grams cake flour

25 grams ap flour

110 grams club soda

6 grams vegetable oil

We mixed all ingredients together and started working the dough. You have to knead the dough for quite some time. You actually work it until it is feeling more like clay than bread dough.

We had thought about doing "hand pulled" noodles, but opted for using the pasta roller instead.

The noodles weren't perfect, some of them stuck together. But, I just think that is what makes it "home made":)

For the broth, I used sesame oil, garlic, ginger, chicken base, and soy sauce. I had used a recipe I found, but it ended up being super salty from all the soy, so I added more chicken base to level it out some. The garlic, ginger and sesame still came through quite well.

I garnished the soup with green onions, a little nori mix, and some chicken that I had cooked with chinese bbq seasoning.

The noodles turned out great. I must say, I think we did a great job for our first time. They were light with a bit of "give". And I was pleased with the broth as well.

We also made up some eggrolls. I had a cabbage/ground beef mixture that I rolled up. It wasn't anything traditional, but they turned out ok. It filled the "fried food" need. My big mistake was that I rolled them the night before. I completely didn't even think about the "moisture" factor. Silly me. And they were falling apart the next day. I had a few wrappers left and rerolled some of them, and the rest didn't completely fall apart.
So, ramen noodles, egg rolls, sake, and Tampopo. Very nice!