Home Cooking and The Great Ulu Project

When you have uku (Hawaiian for plenty) ulu (breadfruit) then you make flour!   That way the useful season gets extended further into the year.  Currently researching the best recipes for it.  No gluten, so you have to move on from there. I don't normally do gluten free cooking.  So, I've found one solution is to incorporate some Semolina flour!  My banana-chocolate brownies came out well.  With a mix of AP flour and ulu flour half-half.  The focaccia not so well.  It needed more water as I found the ulu flour absorbs more.

Which brings me to the book: Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin, various essays, which I've been reading in a sort of haphazard way.  There's her Cold Roast Chicken recipe with buckwheat noodles.  And that inspired the next step.  Make noodles.

Meanwhile, a short review on the subject of that book:

From the Publishers: "Weaving together memories, recipes, and wild tales of years spent in the kitchen, Home Cooking is Laurie Colwin's manifesto on the joys of sharing food and entertaining. From the humble hot-plate of her one-room apartment to the crowded kitchens of bustling parties, Colwin regales us with tales of meals gone both magnificently well and disastrously wrong."

And from Anna Quindlen, "I have in my kitchen a book called Home Cooking. And, in between following the recipes for Extremely Easy Old-Fashioned Beef Stew or Estelle Colwin Snellenberg's Potato Pancakes, I would frequently sit down on a little stool in my kitchen and read through one of the essays in that book. I never read through Joy of Cooking, and I can read The Silver Palate Cookbook standing up, but I always sat down to read these."

I would agree, it's like sitting down with a friend and chatting. Especially funny are the tales of meals gone hilariously wrong, both by the author and at the homes of friends.  Not high end gourmet food here, but good everyday suggestions for meals, along with all the entertainment of some witty writing.

Back to making those noodles.  The flour process is really pretty easy as you don't need to peel or remove the core.  All of it is edible.  Just wash well, cut the stem end off, and slice into chunks that will fit your mandolin, then slice away, at thin setting. Next, layer all the slices in a food dehydrator.  Six hours or so.

Now you can whir it all up in a food processor.  I tried my blender first, not happening.  Next the Kitchen Aid chopper.  Nope, not fine enough.  Finally hauled out the heavy duty Sumeet Asia Kitchen Machine - it's called.  Perfect flour!  Did the job in less than a minute.  If you don't want to make your own, or have access to breadfruit, a local company here, The Hawaii Ulu Cooperative, which is a farmer owned business that buys various vegetables locally - i.e. breadfruit, taro, sweet potato and pumpkin, then sells them peeled, cooked and frozen, or as flour (some as baking mixes) to the markets.  I watched their online video showing how they make the flour, which was exactly what I needed. You might enjoy watching the process here:  https://eatbreadfruit.com/blogs/products/ulu-flour-production-a-visual-flowchart The best to simplify!

So, as inspired by the book, here go the noodles.  I found a good recipe for them at the above mentioned Ulu Cooperative site, which only needed a bit of adjusting.  More water!  Perhaps because I had switched out the all purpose half to semolina flour?  I also need to knead more.  Did some extra in the resting period.  However, they came out well and the dough was easy to work with.  Next time I may roll it out a bit thinner.  

The recipe mentioned included a sort of stir fry sauce to go with the pasta, topped with some ricotta cheese.  It was sooo good.  And, giving you the directions below.

   

Mushroom and Chicken 'Ulu Pasta

1 cup smoked pork, or roast chicken,  chopped into bite size pieces (I used chicken)

3 cups arugula or spinach

5 good sized king oyster mushrooms, sliced lengthwise
optional: 1 cup ricotta
¼ cup oregano, parsley, and thyme, chopped coarsely - save some whole for garnish
1 whole onion, chopped into cubes 
5 cloves garlic, sliced into very thin rounds
Salt and Pepper to taste
½ cup white wine

1/2 lemon, juiced

Prep the ingredients as listed above.
Place a large saucepan on the stove at medium to high heat.
Saute the smoked meat until browned and a little crispy. (skipped this step)
Add onions and saute until translucent, then add the garlic and continue cooking until dark brown.
Immediately add the white wine, for deglazing, and continue to mix while scraping the bottom of the pan. Once the wine begins to simmer, add the arugula or spinach, and the oyster mushrooms.
Add the herbs, salt, pepper, and lemon to the sauce and test for flavor. Add as needed.
Add a ½ cup of pasta water to the sauce and simmer for 2-3 minutes.
Taste for flavor, and add the noodles to the sauce.

Mix gently and plate.

 

Garnish with homemade ricotta and fresh black pepper, if desired. It wasn't just that I was stoked with my ulu noodles, they came out well and the meal was really good!

I'm linking this post to Weekend Cooking, hosted by Marge, The Intrepid Reader and Baker, and with Heather at the Foodies Read Challenge.  Please stop by and check out some tasty recipes and book suggestions.