#how made

I love pasta and noodles. Ramen, udon, soba, spaghetti, penne, łazanki, no matter the shape or flour used, I absolutely love boiled dough with tasty soups and sauces. But what do you do when you want soba but have no buckwheat flour? What do you do if you want pasta al pomodoro but you have no tomatoes? Well, you’re usually screwed. But there are cases where you can figure out the bare minimum of ingredients and replacements to still be able to call a dish that dish.

It might be hard to agree on what the bare minimum is though. Does pizza need to be round? No, there are square pizzas. Does it have to have cheese on it? No, the pizza marinara from Napoli has no cheese on it. Does the bread need to be from wheat flour? I’ve had pizzas made with cauliflower crusts. You get my point, it’s tricky to define a dish unless you’re extremely traditional both when it comes to ingredients and presentation. That being said, I’m making udon noodles now without using any special ingredients. You’ll find it all in any western grocery store.

Udon noodles for 1 hungry person

100 grams of all purpose wheat flour

5 grams of salt

45 grams of water

Dissolve the salt in water

Mix flour with the salted water

When you have a ball of dough, put it in a thick plastic baggie, wrap the baggie in a cloth and stomp on it. Yup, your whole body weight should kneed that dough for at least 20 minutes. The gluten will develop, the whole thing will be elastic like plastic, just perfect!

Leave the dough to rest for 1 hour

Roll out the dough, then fold it into a square and roll out that square until it’s a large thick sheet of dough. Flour it and fold it and cut into long thick udon noodles.

When it’s time to boil the noodles, bring a lot of water to a boil (don’t salt it!) and boil noodles for about 10 minutes. But careful, don’t boil it for too long. Try it after 3 minutes. It should be just cooked, no “dry core”.

Wash them in cold water.

For the soup

1 garlic clove

1 vegetable cube stock

A fish or beef cube stock (fish is better if you want the feeling of udon broth), or just another vegetarian stock if you want it all vegetarian.

1/2 onion

1/2 teaspoon of sugar (instead of sweet Japanese wine)

3 mushroom (instead of shiitake, just button mushrooms)

1 shitty carrot

2 litres of water

1 tbsp vegetable oil

5 tbsp of light soy sauce

(Bonus: Kombu. You’ll find it in asian stores, it’s dried kelp and it really gives a deep umami sea flavour, and gives it a really genuine Japanese flavour. But if you have none of this, just ignore it)

Basically, chop everything up that can be chopped, and fry it in a little oil in a large saucepan, and then add water and stock cubes

Boil until half the liquid has evaporated

(If you have kombu, add one piece now and let it simmer 15 minutes and then remove it)

Sieve it all back into the large saucepan

Add sugar and soy sauce.

For the tempura

2 dl flour plus some more in a bowl on the side

4 dl water

10 ice cubes

A lot of frying oil

Any vegetables (e.g. carrot, bell pepper, aubergine)

Heat up a lot of oil in a saucepan until 170 degrees celsius

Mix the 2 dl of flour with the water into a light, watery battery.

Add the ice cubes to keep it cold.

Cut the vegetables into nice bite sized pieces

First cover the vegetables in flour…

… Then dip them into the batter. Fry in the hot oil until light golden coloured. Very light.

Serve

Pour hot soup over the cooled noodles

Make a dipping sauce of equal parts light soy sauce+sugar+vinegar

Gnocchi is Italian potato pasta cut into little thumb-sized pieces. Depending on who you ask, you’ll get different answers on how much flour you should add. Some claim the major part should be potatoes. Others claim you should add more flour. Some add regular wheat flour. Others use durum wheat flour. Some add eggs others don’t. No different than food debates in general, and just like always, it’s a matter of taste. I don’t like soft mushy pasta hence I make my gnocchi with a lot of durum wheat flour and an egg.

In this recipe, I won’t even be using potatoes in the classic sense. I’ll be using sweet potatoes (which are actually a type of berries but let’s not get into botanic discussions now). They don’t have the starch regular potatoes do, so you really need to add a lot of flour to even keep the gnocchi together.

The sweet potato gnocchi

for several people depending on the hunger level but you can keep the dough, it just gets better

A large sweet potato

durum wheat flour

1 egg

Peel the sweet potato, cut into pieces to speed things up, and boil them in water (unsalted, because you’ll boil the finished gnocchi in salted water later)

When the sweet potato is really soft, drain it and put it into a stand mixer. Add an egg and about 300 grams of flour to begin with. Start kneading the dough using the dough hook. If you don’t have a stand mixer, use your hands. The sweet potatoes should be so soft, that it will just mush without any problems.

Here comes the thing… As long as it’s really soft and sticky, like a potato mash, you need to add flour. Keep adding flour. There’s lots of water in the boiled sweet potatoes, so you don’t need to add liquid.

Once you have an actual dough that comes together, you’re done. Cover it and let it rest for about an hour.

After an hour, take a piece of dough, make a long snake out of it, and cut it into thumb-sized gnocchi.

For the sauce (2 people)

3 salvia leaves

15 San Marzano cherry tomatoes (you can use other tomatoes, but these are really good for this type of stuff)

200 grams of bacon (pancetta? guanciale? Listen, we’re using bacon here. The dish is already de-italianfied so we might as well keep going)

Maybe a pinch of salt at the very end (there are a lot of salty things being added along the way)

Pinch of black pepper

A drizzle of olive oil

1 garlic clove

chili flakes

Tomato paste

Cut the bacon into 3 cm pieces.

Fry the bacon into the fat has melted and the bacon is crispy. Put it on a piece of paper, but keep the fat in the pan. The bacon will crisp up when it cools a little, so don’t over-fry it. It should be dark, not black.

In the fat remaining in the pan, add chopped garlic, tomatoes cut in half, a pinch of chili flakes. Let it fry for a few minutes on medium-low heat until everything is soft.x

Now bring a large pot of water to a boil and add a lot of salt in it. Don’t be too careful with the salt, it’s a lot of water!

Boil the gnocchi for about 4 minutes, until soft but not too soft. Try one. Is it done all the way through? Then it’s done.

The frying pan with your tomatoes being all soft, is a little dry now. So add some of your gnocchi water. It’s salted and it has some starch in it. That’s good for flavor, and to make your sauce less dry while thickening it up at the same time. The Italians do it with most pasta sauces.

Now add gnocchi to your sauce and give it a good stir.

Onto a plate and drizzle a little olive oil on top. Now what? Where’s the bacon? It’s going on top of it!

Eat!

Did you know lasagne (the dish) is like the grammar police of Italian cuisine? Each plate of pasta is called "lasagna." Stack 'em up and bam, you've got lasagne. It’s like pancake vs. pancakes. But who says “I fancy a pancake”? Well, technically, you could say "a pancake," but… I digress. Let’s just dive in, shall we?

Prepare the Pasta Dough:

400 grams of durum flour

1 egg per 100 grams of flour (four for this maths challenge)

Combine using a stand mixer or your trusty hands. No need to knead (ha!) like you’re training for a dough-wrestling championship. Just ensure it's combined, pop it into a baggie, and leave at room temperature for 2 hours. It’s like magic—osmosis will do its thing, and voila, pliable dough!

Next Up, Filling:

2 medium onions

2 garlic stems (or 4 garlic cloves, but stems are like the fancy hats of the garlic world – plus, they taste great! Find them at your nearest Asian store)

1/2 dl of olive oil (maybe a smidgen more for luck)

1/2 dl of lard (trust me, your tastebuds will thank you)

2 star anise (no, not for wishing upon)

1 tblsp of garlic powder (because why not?)

1 tblsp of oregano

1 tblsp of basil

1000 g of canned crushed tomatoes (that’s a lot of crushing!)

250 ml carrot juice (squeeze a carrot or just buy it)

Pinch of salt

Heat up a large skillet, introduce the oil and lard, then let the onions, garlic stems, and star anise have a 20-minute sauna session on medium heat. In another saucepan, add some olive oil and fry the garlic powder, oregano, and basil like they owe you money. Toss in the tomato paste, give it a good stir, then drown it all in crushed tomatoes. Boil until you’ve got a sauce thick enough to write home about. Don't forget the pinch of salt!

Let’s circle back to the dough, shall we?

Lasagna Plate Time:

Divide your dough into 6 equal portions and roll them so thin that, well, you can see things you might or might not want to when held up to a light.

Fit them snugly into your oven pan like a cozy pasta blanket.

The meat:

A generous spoon of lard

1000 grams of minced beef (because why skimp?)

2 Polish kielbasas (dried and smoked sausages, add a dash of international flair)

Pinch of salt

Heat lard until it's screaming hot and sear the minced meat. Pro-tip: High heat and a roomy pan, or else you’ll end up boiling the beef—and no one wants that. Dice the sausages, mix them with the beef, and then combine with your onion medley from earlier. And a pinch of salt, you want to salt every part of the dish, not just parts of it. Some call it "layering your salt", but I don't know. Oh, and toss the star anise; its work here is done.

Now, the Bechamel Sauce:

100 grams of butter

1 dl of flour

750 grams of full-fat milk (because life's too short)

Two teaspoons of black pepper

A hefty pinch of salt

Melt butter, mix in the flour, add some of the milk and mix it into a paste to prevent lumps, then add the rest of the milk, stir while heating – and bam! Thick, creamy sauce. Salt and pepper then set aside.

Constructing your Masterpiece:

250 grams of grated Parmiggiano cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano if you're feeling extra fancy)

4 balls of Mozzarella (mine is made from buffalo milk but you do you)

Start with bechamel on the bottom, followed by a lasagna sheet, then some meat mix, a dollop of tomato sauce, a sprinkle of mozzarella, and repeat until you've got a tower of delight. Crown it with bechamel, tomato sauce, mozzarella, and the grated cheese. Drizzle some olive oil, because why not?

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees, bake for 15 minutes. Crank it up to 250 and give it another 10 minutes for that golden suntan.

Rest for 20 minutes, if you can resist. Dive in. Marvel. Enjoy. Maybe share? Or not. We won’t judge. Cheers to the best lasagne you'll ever make!