We bought a pasta machine from Aldi shop. It costs about $15AUD. Not a big money for someone who likes to have fun and DIY some noodles at home. Given that it has nothing to do with electronic and it is all about mechanical process to produce the thing, the price is just acceptable.

Anyway, we have no intention to use it to produce any Italian pasta. What we only wanted is to make some Chinese noodles at home, some really thin & nicely cut plain noodle, which will be actually freshly prepared straight away from the flour dough we make by hand.

In Beijing, we used to call it “Qie Mian” (切面) which you can only buy it from “Liang Dian” (粮店). Alternatively, you can make some wet noodles at home which is called “shou gan mian” (手擀面), but I’ve never seen any “shou gan mian” as thin as the one produced by “liang dian”‘s noodle machine. Anyway, I love “qiemian” more than “gua mian” (挂面). Mom often buy half kilo “qiemian” when she felt like to treat the family with some really good noodles My husband likes noodles very much, thinking that where he comes from (a place where offers great tasted Chongqing Xiao Mian重庆小面), I am not surprised.

It took us a while to figure out how to make some nice thing from this pasta machine. The trick is applying a great deal of dry flour powder on both sides of pastry, so when it goes through the pressing and cutting process, it can be easily cut and no sticky flour dough attached on the blades. Also, if making thinly cut noodles, you’d better to get it go through the first roller to make the pastry evenly pressed to a certain thickness, then take this finished pastry to the blades roller to cut to thin noodles.

So, today’s lunch is sort of like 重庆小面, with some flavors we added in. The noodles made by this pasta machine looked neat and tidy, and tasted great as well, almost close to what it looks like in 粮店, much better than what I did with a knife and a rolling pole. “Of course there are too many things that can be improved next time”, according to my husband.