I Went To Italy....?(Homemade hand noodles)

Anyone who has hopped on a plane and gone to another part of the world knows the thrill of travelling , seeing new sights, different types of people and trying new foods, but not everybody has the luxury to do so. Me on the other hand, I neither have the pocket nor patience to travel all over the world (Ok, never mind the fact that I traveled more that 9000 miles/14 400 kilometers from my original home, that's not important anymore since i'm now half-American)

So without breaking the bank I found a cheap way to travel; FOOD. I'm not talking about Food tourism where one goes to another country to eat local foods and immerse themselves in a particular culture. There are well-known bloggers like Mark Wiens who travels the world with his wife and little son solely to eat different kinds of food while getting paid for it. I'm talking about Cooking food from different parts of the world and learning more about the place it originated from. 
This is not an original idea, I stole it from my good friend Katy- we once went to the mall with her kids to eat food from a Japanese restaurant. As part of their homeschooling lesson the older kids were answering various questions that Katy was posing from their lesson about Japan. I loved that idea and thought this is something I would love to do with my family one day.

Now that I have my own kitchen I enjoy making food from all over the world- with a South African twist!. Today I made Italian egg noodles from scratch with my hands (Just like my nonna would...just kidding, I don't have an Italian grandmother). For anyone who has knead any type of dough by hand know what a workout it can be for your hands ,but the final product makes all the work that went into it worth it. Even though most of the time I'm making bread or cake I use my kitchen aid, today I had to use my palms and fingers. The dough is quite stiff and requires fat patience. 

To make the noodles I didn't use a specific recipe. I made research on what goes into the egg noodles from watching different YouTube videos then mixing my dough as I go (am I the only one who feels like following a recipe step by step doesn't workout as good as free styled cooking? )
All I used was All purpose flour (about 3 cups), 2 large eggs and few tablespoons of water(maybe 6?). I knead the dough for 20 minutes with few short breaks. After 20 minutes of kneading I covered my dough with plastic then let it rest for 1 hour. After an hour it was softer and easier to work with.

I rolled it with my rolling pin (handles removed) until it was almost paper thin, this took a couple of minutes then I ended up cutting the dough using my bench scraper(Who knew it had multiple purpose). I then dusted the cut noodles with cornstarch to prevent them from sticking to one another then transferred everything into a bowl and refrigerated them until dinner time (3 hours). 

I cooked the noodles in salted boiling water for only 4 minutes and they were done. I drained them using a colander that has seen better days and transferred them back to the pot and coated them with my homemade Marinara sauce and served them alongside my chicken parmigiana

This meal was delicious guys, so delicious it prompted me to write a post about it. I have always made pasta or pizza sauce from scratch but was too lazy to devote time to noodles but after today, I don't know if I will be buying boxed pasta anymore. Nothing beats homemade. Thank you God for the beautiful& highly skilled people of Italy and for taste buds!