My Nonna’s Noodles

If I had to pick one favorite food from my childhood, it would definitely be my Nonna’s noodles. It’s probably also my favorite food of adulthood, but I digress. I had been seeing a lot of people making homemade pasta in quarantine, so I recently spent some time with my Nonna and asked her to teach me how to make her noodles.

Nonna doesn’t have any fancy pasta makers or machines, she doesn’t take too much time to make sure each noodle is uniform, but they taste amazing all the same. For a fun rainy day activity or really any day activity, try making these and let me know what you think!

Ingredients:

2 cups white, all-purpose flour + more for generously dusting

1 tsp salt

1 egg

1 tbsp olive oil

Water (room temperature) as needed

On a cutting board or in a bowl, dump 2 cups of white, all-purpose flour and create a well. Crack 1 egg into the center and beat with a fork, add about 1 tbsp of good olive oil and 1 tsp of salt before using your hands to mix into the flour. Add room temperature water a little at a time, making sure to keep the dough firm, not too soft.

Begin to knead the dough, constantly flouring your workspace and working it until smooth. Shape into a log and cut in half, you’ll be rolling out half of the dough at a time. Always flour your cutting board/workspace! You don’t want the dough to be sticky.

Roll out into a circle with an extremely large rolling pin (or any rolling pin), until thin. You should be able to see light through the dough, but it should still be relatively opaque. When you’re done, fold the top of the dough down a third, and the bottom of the dough up a third.

When cutting the dough into noodles, work on an angle, cutting even strips. Lift them gently and shake in your hand to separate.

Repeat all of the above with the other half of your dough.

If not boiling right away, store your noodles on a towel, wax paper, or parchment paper in the freezer. *from my experience, using a towel causes the noodles to stick.

If boiling right away, do not forget to generously salt your water before adding the noodles to boiling water. 3-5 min will be plenty, but it will depend how firm your noodles end up being. Check your noodles frequently! Serve with your Nonna’s homemade sauce, or if you don’t have a Nonna or homemade sauce, any sauce will do!

Notes:

• Listen to your Nonna. If she says you need more flour, you need more flour! You pretty much want more flour than less flour.

• If freezing your noodles, you don’t need to defrost them before boiling. However, if they are sticking to whatever surface you used then you should wait until they thaw out a bit.

• Try to keep the noodles separate when storing them or they will clump together and they will not separate in the water.

• Always reserve some pasta water for your sauce :)

Enjoy and let me know what you think! Tag me on IG @milanocooky if you make this recipe!

xoxo,

Haley