I have a thing for chow fun. I truly enjoy the way the wide slippery noodles, crunchy vegetables, and tender meat come together with sweet salinity on my tongue. But those noodles, oh, those noodles, they haunt me. I have found videos of people making them. The steaming technique is all well and good. OK, not really. Sure it's a proven technique that's been done for years. It is not efficient. Especially with a pasta extruder at the ready. I have been tinkering with the noodles. I began with the idea behind our Masa Cavatelli, using pre-gelatinized starch as the hydrating mass for the noodles.
We blended 3 parts rice flour with 1 part tapioca flour. We mixed 200 grams of the flour blend with 800 grams of water and then put it in a bowl in a pressure cooker with 2 inches of water in the bottom. We cooked the mixture for 20 minutes at high pressure and then let it cool naturally. We pureed the gelatinized starch mixture in a food processor to smooth out any lumps. Then we chilled it down and to allow the starch to retrograde. We mixed 600 grams of this hydrated starch puree with 1000 grams of our blend of rice and tapioca flours in our extruder. When the dough resembled a coarse streusel, we extruded the wide, flat noodles. I opted to make them longer, pappardelle style, noodles.
The ho fun noodles cook up quickly. They have the elasticity and slippery texture that I was after. What I learned in this process is that now I need to perfect my technique for cooking Chow Fun.
Years Past
February 18, 2005
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