Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup semolina flour
• 1 pinch salt
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tablespoons olive oil
• Can be doubled of course for more, but this should easily feed a party of 6 – 8, depending on what it’s served with.

Directions

1. Toss it all in the kitchen aid mixer with the batter attachment.  Mix on low or medium until well a somewhat crumbly dough forms.  If it’s too crumbly spray on a tiny amount of water but not too much.  Too wet and add more flour.
2. Remove from mixer and knead for a few minutes by hand.  Professional recipes call for kneading by hand for about 8 to 10 minutes.  This is too hard and I never do it. But you do need gluten to form or it will tear and rip when you run it through the pasta machine.  I’ve used the kneading attachment for about 5 minutes or so to get the job started.  Then once it will mostly stick together continue kneading by hand for a minute or so.
3. End the kneading by forming a ball and then either wrap tightly in plastic or cover with a damp paper towel.  So far I’ve always done the towel but next time I’m doing the plastic.
4. Allow to rest for 15-30 minutes.  In the past I’ve been a bit lazy and impatient about both the kneading and the resting.  In the long run it wastes more time if the dough hasn’t had time to set and the moisture to distribute.  It will just shred when run through the machine and that is very frustrating.  This last time was super easy going through the machine.
5. Cut off a chunk and flatten it with the balls of your palms.  Then run it through the pasta machine several times starting at 7 and going down to 4 or 3.  Then cut as desired.
6. It only needs to cook for a few minutes in boiling water, until tender or until it floats.

I’ve tried using only all purpose flour and only semolina.  I like the half and half mixture the best.

The problem is that once you make it accessible to other people (everyone really), you can’t help but care about what the photos look like and whether or not your “spelling that word right.”  The truth is that I don’t care about those things.  I’m not a good writer and I know it.  Terrible speller.  But still I keep finding myself going “how do I make those home-made noodles again?”  And I know that I’ll never find that exact chocolate souffle recipe – which was why I created this site.

So my goal is to get back on track here and try to honestly NOT care about the (what I consider) superficial standards that have been holding me back.  I’m just going to get my recipes in here so that I can use them.  Because now that I’m home all the time I plan on cooking a lot more.  -michael

If you’ve read the name of this soup, and are still reading, then it’s obvious that you’re more concerned about your taste buds than you are about your weight. This being the case, read on.

This is a rich creamy soup that produces an aroma in your kitchen that will make you gain weight just by smelling it. Nonetheless, it’s an experience you owe yourself.

I got this recipe from a cookbook a friend gave me some years back. I tried it and although I liked the soup, I felt it could be better.
With a few alterations in the basic recipe, I had a dish that not only satisfied everyone I served it to, but probably helped kill off a few.

½ cup of butter 1 pound cheddar cheese, shredded
1 medium onion chopped Bread of your choice, pumpernickel is good.
¼ cup flour
3 cups chicken broth (I always put 3 bullion cubes in a cup of boiling water until melted and then add 2 more cups of water.)
2 1/2 cups milk
½ cup whipping cream

Sauté your onions in butter in a 3-quart sauce pan until tender.
Stir in flour until mixed well with onion. Add chicken broth; cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is slightly thickened. Add milk and stirring constantly, heat just to boiling.

The next part is kind of a pain because you have to run all of this through a blender. Since you can’t get all of this in a blender, you have to break it down to about a quarter of the mixture at a time.

After blending, return all of it back to the saucepan and return it back to a boil. Then whisk in the cheese. Stir it until the cheese is melted and serve it.

Bear in mind that this recipe prior to my alterations was about 600 calories per serving.

There’s something special about good pancakes and something not-so-special about not-so-good pancakes. I was raised on Bisquick and that can be good, I guess. But I was also raised on corn syrup instead of maple, and that’s, well, not-so-good. So when I saw Alton Brown’s Good Eat’s episode on flap jacks, I decided to give it a try, and I think the result is good, diner-style pancakes…

If you jump to the Food Network site (link above) you can watch his whole episode on flap jacks. But one thing you won’t find there is a quick recipe. That’s because AB first talks about measuring cups, then gives us a recipe for a quick bread mix, then discusses buttermilk, then uses the quick bread mixture as an ingredient in his pancake recipe. So to do it his way you have to first mix a batch of mix (he does 6 cups), and then use 2 cups of that in the actual recipe – and store the other 4 cups of mix for later use. Don’t get me wrong, I love Good Eats and live for new episodes. And I loved learning about what’s going on inside of buttermilk. But I have to say while the two-step process might work for grandma who makes a lot of quick bread, or for a diner where they’re plopping out big batches of these things all morning long, it doesn’t work for me. I just want to make a single batch at a time, and not that often. I don’t have the storage space to keep a container of quick bread mix around. So I experimented and made a single recipe for a single batch, although I still use Alton’s methods of mixing everything together. For his technique and why I recommend watching the episode the next time you have 20 minutes to kill at work. For convenance, here’s my slight modification of his recipe:

Recipe and Process

Alton Brown Flap Jacks – Made Easier

First steps:

• Pre-heat an electric griddle to 350. Don’t combine the wet with the dry until it is preheated.
• Melt 4 tbls butter in the microwave. About 20-30 seconds should do it. Don’t do more than 30 seconds at a time without a stirring break. Set aside to cool a bit.

The Dry… combine:

• 2 cups (minus one tablespoon) all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 2 to 3 tsp sugar

and whisk thoroughly

The Wet:

First separate 2 eggs into 2 containers:

• add 2 cups buttermilk and the egg whites – mix well
• add the 4 tbls melted butter and the egg yolks – mix well

Then combine the two wet parts together and whisk thoroughly.

Pour the wet mixture over the dry and whisk together for about 10 seconds.  Do not over mix.  Then scoop onto the hot griddle.

Cook one side until the edges bubble a little – about 2 to 3 minutes. Lift and edge to check for golden brown. Add optional fruit or chocolate chips to the top before flipping. Cook on the flip side about one more minute.

Modification Explanation

This isn’t rocket surgery, but the first time I made these I just followed his directions for the dry mix using 2 cups of flour. Mixed in the other dry ingredients and the only used 2 cups of final dry mixture. But then I had about 2 tablespoons of the extra dry stuff, which I had no use for and had to toss out.  I also noticed that by mixing up the dry ingredients they expanded a bit (by volume) similar to if they were sifted – by adding in air. Also, we know that 2 cups of packed flour is different than 2 cups of sifted flour- maybe by as much as 10%. Alton suggested ’shaking up’ his flour container before measuring out the cups. That would probably result in a ’split the difference’ amount by weight between taking some from a rested bag or sifting it.

Of course this minor detail is important because the thickness or consistency of the final batter could be somewhat different based on the ratio of dry to wet ingredients. AB’s recipe is already about 1 cup buttermilk short of Martha Stewart’s and tilting the ratio any more towards the dry, I think, makes the batter too thick. So my idea was to end up with closer to 2 cups of dry ingredients to go with the 2 cups of buttermilk. The solution?.. to remove a tablespoon or two of the flour. Sound food science or not?  Try them and and you be the judge.

I’m curious to know if anyone else tries this version how they come out. For me the batter is a bit thick and doesn’t seem to bubble much on the first side, but when you flip them they rise up and get thicker. Taste is good – except for the time I forgot the salt – yuk!