Homemade hand-made noodles, simple enough for an international student to survive on

In a small country town, a dreary life as an international student offers little entertainment after class. The supermarket closes at eight in the evening, there is no night market, and most shops are closed on Sundays. On weekdays, if you want to go out and find something to eat, there is not much worth splurging on when you are alone. The choice is either the student cafeteria or a Turkish Doner kebab…

One day, you grow tired of the student cafeteria's meals built around potatoes as the staple, tired of pasta-style noodles, tired of rice that has the form but lacks the soul of rice aroma (Taiwan rice is number one), with little appetite for bread and salad, no time to study the methods for lavish feasts, no spacious kitchen in which to cook up a grand production (in reality, the chopping space is at most 50cm wide), and even less possibility of going out to a restaurant for an extravagant treat. Besides, so-called big meals that start at 15 euros may not necessarily soothe the heart…

You cannot just let a gloomy life of studying be filled with gloom at every moment……

What is more, one day when I mentioned to a friend that I wanted to buy Taiwanese wheat noodles to satisfy a craving, my friend shot back that I should buy flour and make them myself…

Then… what is so hard about that?

Just go buy a 500g bag of flour for less than one euro, and in thirty minutes make a bowl of purely handmade whatever-you-call-it noodles, good either dry or in soup.

The sense of transcendence when planning and imagining, the sense of existence in handmaking, the sense of exploration in ingredients and steps, and the sense of play in cooking however you like are all a kind of salvation.

Let's start getting ready!

Besides a basic kitchen knife, cutting board and pot, the only extra tools needed are a plate (to replace the mixing bowl I did not buy because I rarely use one) and a bread board (for pressing and kneading the dough; you cannot very well work on a soaking wet cutting board).

It is best to have a rolling pin, which can roll the dough extremely flat, but it does not matter if you do not, because if it is not rolled flat enough or cut thin enough, you can imagine you are eating rustic knife-shaved noodles.

Ingredients:

Noodles: an appropriate amount of flour, an appropriate amount of cold water, some salt.

Toppings: an appropriate amount of sesame oil, two Sichuan peppercorns, some shredded meat, an appropriate amount of whatever ingredients you want to eat, and an appropriate amount of the "Wei O Fried Sauce" that every international student has a jar of (it does not matter if there is no sauce; just make it as soup noodles).

Steps:

1. Pour the flour and salt into the plate (a mixing bowl is more convenient if you have one), add an appropriate amount of cold water, and slowly mix into a dough.

And so, even with scarce supplies and clumsy technique, all it takes is a bag of flour and some ingredients, and within thirty minutes of cooking however you like, you can simply help yourself escape the gloomy predicament of food that has no taste.

Can a small bowl of noodles dissolve the gloom? I believe it anyway.