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- So how do you like it?
- Mm, it's delicious and totally authentic.
I didn't realize how much I missed Water Tribe grub.
- That's great 'cause this is my favorite joint.
See, you love Water Tribe food.
I love Water Tribe food.
Just another reason we are so great together.
- They are good noodles.
- [Alvin] Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of Anime with Alvin.
Today, we'll be making the Water Tribe noodles
from The Legend of Korra,
a dish that features green noodles in a clear broth.
This is spinach.
Due to the fact that this is the Water Tribe,
we're gonna be taking a seafood
and vegetable heavy approach today for this dish
and I'd wager that the people of that tribe
are a resourceful bunch not letting anything go to waste.
So we have here the bones and carcass of a codfish.
This get seasoned and marinated rather quickly
with a pinch of salt
and about two tablespoons of Chinese cooking wine.
This is a pretty common technique in Chinese cuisine
to eliminate the raw or fishiness of the fish.
Set it aside for about just five to 10 minutes or so.
For aromatics, I'm slicing up
about two one inch knobs of ginger
and cutting three green onions
into roughly three inch pieces.
Pretty large chunks here.
Into a large pan goes in about a tablespoon of oil.
The ginger and scallions are fried
just until they're slightly aromatic, not overcooked
then the fish goes in.
Water floods the pot until just enough to cover
then brought to a boil and then reduced to a gentle simmer.
This goes for about 30 to 45 minutes
so that the fish's flavor can infuse the broth
and any scum to the surface can be removed.
After a simple sieve through a mesh strainer,
we have nicely clean, fresh, aromatic fish stock.
For the spinach noodles,
we're gonna start on the stove with a cup of hot water
and three cups of spinach.
After the spinach cooks down
and shrinks down to a pile of almost nothing,
this gets strained and thrown into a blender.
A tablespoon of the spinach cooking water
helps this blend into somewhat of a spinach puree
which does take some aggressive blending
to make sure the fibers are all pulverized.
For the dough, we're starting with two cups
of all-purpose flour dumped onto a workable surface.
Oh, I forgot one step.
Go back.
This goes back into the bowl
so we can go ahead and add our dry ingredients
which is a teaspoon of salt
and one teaspoon of spirulina or kelp powder.
I'm guessing since the Water Tribe has access
to a lot of seaweed,
they'd be able to turn this into many different forms,
one of which is a dried powder that we can use.
After slamming the blender to get out every little bit
of pureed spinach from inside it,
that gets dumped in as well.
This gets kneaded by hand
until the dough is smooth and green,
about five to 10 minutes.
And because this dough is rather fun
and spongy to work with,
I asked Rachel to also help me knead a little bit
so she could feel the joy of this dough.
Rachel is an incredibly culinary talented person
that helps us with pretty much everything
we do here on the show
and once she's worked her magic on this dough,
we have a nice beautiful green
slightly speckled ball of dough
that is soft and springy to the touch.
This is actually a Chinese spinach noodle method
that my grandpa used to do and at this stage,
this green ball of dough gets rested
for about 15 minutes wrapped up of course.
Once the gluten has some time to chill out,
this gets divided into a couple of dough sections flattened
and with our pasta machine
rolled out until it's about an eighth of an inch thick.
After going through the settings,
I like to fold it over each other
and do the whole process again
just so that the gluten is laminating itself.
This creates a firmer, bouncier noodle
that I personally prefer in my noodle dishes.
We're using the fettuccine attachment today
as the noodles from the show do look quite thick
and I enjoy a nice thick noodle for mouthfeel.
Once all of the dough has been turned into little strands
of green goodness,
they get dusted with a little bit of flour
so they don't stick to each other too much
and then we return back to the stove.
Since these are fresh noodles,
they only need to cook in a pot of salted boiling water
for approximately two minutes before they're tender.
All right, I'm gonna go ahead
and fish out these noodle with this scooper.
Oh, oh, yeah, there's, that was supposed to go in first.
Okay, once all of the noodles have been cooked thoroughly
and the color has changed ever so slightly,
it's time to serve.
A large ladle full of the clear stock
is the bath in which our noodles will go hang out in.
There's something about naturally colored food
that makes me wanna eat it just a bit more
and just wiggling around these green noodles
and watching them shine in the light got me a little hungry.
I'm not really quite sure how to explain it
but this just tastes right.
It just tastes like a nice fish stock with good noodles.
That's simply it, nothing crazy
and it definitely feels like something
that the Water Tribe would eat on a day-to-day basis.
It's cheap, easy to make, resourceful
but overall, very, very comforting.
It feels like something my grandparents would make
and if they were here today,
I'm sure they'd like the bowl I made as well.
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(calm music)