Well, I tried. the whole concept of flung noodles is to stretch one long piece of dough into an arm’s length noodle, then hold the two ends in one hand and the middle of the noodle length in the other and re-fling. When it gets to arm’s length again, double the ends and stretch from the middle. Repeat. Repeat. Etc. After doing this a bunch of times one noodle length becomes one very, very long folded-over noodle (1 fold = 2 noodle strands, 2 folds = 4 noodle strands, 3 folds = 8 noodles, 7 folds = 128 noodles). At the end you toss this whole elongated noodle into hot broth and cook it. Serve with scissors. Here’s what actually happened:
I stretched the dough out a little. So far so good. Then some tentative flings:
Intense concentration as it got longer:
The dough didn’t want to stretch evenly and after folding it over I tried to figure out a way to not fling from the end.
There’s a reason there are no more pictures…I started laughing when the noodle started breaking. It hit me in the face a few times…and broke a lot. Then I’d fling the broken pieces. I never really got past two folds with either piece of dough.
After about 15 minutes of flinging, dough flying everywhere but where I wanted it to be, stretching it, milking it like a cow without the pay-off, I decided it would be a better idea to roll the pieces out thin and slice them with a knife. They were beautiful. Not one long noodle, but it all worked out just fine.
Most importantly, I got to heat up the leftover deer broth, eat leftover jiaozi with chile sauce and soy sauce, then toss the fresh noodles into the thick, grease broth of the deer. After eating the noodles with the chile, soy and hoisin, my roommate and I slurped up the thick, opaque broth. Deer is a very fatty meat apparently, or at least ground deer is very fatty. When I explained the broth to my roommate the conversation went like this:
Me: “When I made the broth with deer, all the fat solidified on top when it cooled, and scraping it off was so easy! I couldn’t believe it.”
Roommate: “Wait, did you say deer or beer?”
Me: “Deer.”
He then explained that normally he would have assumed I said beer. Didn’t say anything about how ridiculous I am. Very polite.
The broth was absolutely amazing. So much flavour from the cardamom, the cloves and the deer. It almost tasted bitter from the meat, but it was the perfect contrast from the heat of the hot chile paste and sweet hoisin. Brilliant Chinese idea to cook everything in one pot – make the broth, steam or boil the dumplings, cook the noodles in the meat-infused broth, drink the broth that has soaked up all of these flavours to end the meal.
Noodles: the un-sung heroes of the kitchen – a simple combination of flour, egg, salt and water. No matter how bad a flinger I am, even I couldn’t destroy a beautifully simple meal.
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