A Tale of Two Noodle Rings

Ever heard of a Noodle Ring? Anna & Lia take on making one of the weirdest entries on the Food Holiday Calendar in this bonus episode: a baked ring of noodle casserole with a…distinct look. Although Anna gives cooking her best shot, a mishap with boiling water reinforces her as more of a thinker (aka Foodlosopher) with Lia maintaining her status as the resident Chef-Creator. Check out pictures of these masterpieces at @FoodDayPod on Instagram & Twitter,  join our Facebook Group,  and check out our webpage for more info.

Transcript

ANNA 00:02 
Hey everybody, it's Anna and Lia. We've got a little surprise for you. A little bonus episode. We hope you're having a wonderful holiday, we hope you're taking some time off, like we obviously are not. We're doing a bonus episode because we wanna tell you about what I think is probably one of the weirdest foods I've seen... Lia celebrates on Yum day. Weirdest looking... weirdest recipe. It's called a noodle ring. 

LIA 00:30 
Yes. The noodle ring.

ANNA 00:54  
It was so weird that I wanted to try it actually, but because we're in quarantine and also we live in different cities, it's not like she could make one and I could come over and try it so you guys... I cooked. /

LIA 01:03
Anna cooked!

ANNA 01:06 
/I cooked. I used measuring devices. I chopped something. There was an oven and a stove involved, so...

LIA 01:18 
Wow. Yeah, I'm so proud of you, Anna.

ANNA 01:19 
Thank you, it was very much out of my comfort zone and I messed up. I really messed up, which I'll tell you about. But I've got a noodle ring here and I can't wait to compare how Lia's looks to how mine looks. Lia, tell us about this food, the holiday, where it comes from, and how you found it.

LIA 01:37
This noodle Ring is definitely one of the weirdest foods that I think has a whole food holiday dedicated to it, so December 11th is National Noodle Ring Day, and when I was doing research, I couldn't find out the origin of this day. But the noodle ring itself was popular as a mid-century food, so there are recipes for a noodle ring that have been found in some old cookbooks from the 1930s - even in the 1950s and 1960s. So just to explain what the noodle ring is, it's exactly what you're thinking of in your head.

ANNA 02:14 
It's a ring of noodles.

LIA 02:16  
It's a ring of noodles, a bunch of noodles just baked into some kind of a ring mold or a bundt pan, and apparently these noodle rings got really popular as a mid-century food, I guess, a ring mold started to be a really cool thing and a neat way to serve dishes, and somehow people decided, “Hey, let's just like bake noodles and ring and make it into this cool, cool dish.”

ANNA 02:38 
What other ring foods were there? There's like jell-o. Jell-O molds.

LIA 02:42 
So jello mold, there were a lot of mousses that were made in these weird mold, so people did all kinds of cream foods and moussey.. 

ANNA 02:53  
Mousse like foods. 

LIA 02:55 
MMhmm. In one of these cookbooks from, I think it was 1948, the American Woman's Cookbook.  They have a recipe for Noodle Ring there, and they call it an exciting way to serve a dish to your guests.

ANNA 03:08 
So, because of the ring form.

LIA 03:09  
It was like a surprise, some funky new way to serve up food.

ANNA 03:15  
Man, things were boring in 1948. 

LIA 03:19 
Well, what I saw too, with these recipes, in addition to just baking the noodles in the ring, I really should have leveled it up the way some of these other people did, and what they would do was make some kind of creamed chicken or cream to seafood or cream vegetable thing, and then pour that into the middle of the ring... So now you have this like you know ring of noodles with creamy stuff in the middle. So, In 1965, there was a Catholic cookbook called cooks blessings, and it suggested serving a noodle ring during Lent and then filling the hole with creamed fish or vegetables, 'cause you can eat it.

ANNA 03:58 
I thought you're gonna sell it to Easter eggs... Just Chocolate Cadbury. Whatever the middle of the Cadbury creme egg is, put that in the middle of the noodle ring. 

LIA 04:08 
I like this. But yeah, so last year, I made the noodle ring for Noodle ring day, of course, part of YumDay. And it was the first time I ever made such a thing, and when it came out, it looked like way funkier than I thought it would, because I guess I had browned it a little bit on the outside and the inside, so the center hole looked a little burnt, my noodles got a little crispy in the middle.

ANNA 04:33 
It had sort of, let's say, an anatomical look to it.

LIA 04:39 
Yeah, I did take pictures and I ran a filter on it because I was afraid that posting the noodle ring photo on Instagram would immediately get me banned...

ANNA 04:50 
That is amazing. Your noodle ring could be flagged as pornographic. I love it.

LIA 04:55  
Right? I was like, Oh No, I gotta, gotta run this through photoshop, kind of like reduce shadows a little bit.

ANNA 05:04 
Increased highlights. Exposure Max.

LIA 05:08 
So I've got it posted.

ANNA 05:11 
You can see it on Instagram. @yumdayco.

LIA 05:14 
When I made the noodle ring this year, I was a little more conscious of how the hole was gonna look.

ANNA 05:20 
So were you going to make another noodle ring or was it because I kept bothering you about it?

LIA 05:26 
Well, I felt like I made one, so I was good. But you know, since we're doing this together, it's a lot more fun for me to make one and then you make one too.

ANNA 05:44 
I just love that I'm so obnoxious that I have thrown off the YumDay content Calendar. Because I kept bringing up the noodle ring.

LIA 05:53 
You know what though? 'cause I made this last year, I kinda learn. Lessons Learned, right? So it was good for me to make it again this year and to try to up my game a little bit. Figure out the things that I felt like I didn't do quite right the first time I made a noodle ring. So I think I did a better job this time around. This time around. 

ANNA 06:15 
Should we do a show and tell. Yeah. Okay, you wanna go first?

LIA 06:20  
Okay. So.. I actually baked this one last night, it's super heavy guys.

ANNA 06:26 
It's very heavy. 

LIA 06:28 
It’s like lifting weights. Actually baking noodle rings.

ANNA 06:31  
But lifting weights after nine months of quarantine.

LIA 06:35  
Alrighty, Anna. I'm showing you my glorious noodle ring.

ANNA 06:40 
Oh my god. Look at that beautiful... Oh man, It really does, is it just... It looks like a butt hole. It's beautiful though. Okay, listeners, we're gonna obviously post pictures, the video of this, but it is a bunt cake made of noodles and it's got chunks of broccoli, it... 

LIA 07:03 
Look at my hole, Anna!

ANNA 07:05 
The hole is beautiful. It does not look brown at all, it looks clean as a whistle, and there was no charring, no charring.

LIA 07:15
Yeah, I think last time I did not grease the ring enough

ANNA 07:21 
Lia, you gotta lube it up.

LIA 07:23 
I know. 

ANNA 07:24 
Okay, beautiful. 

LIA 07:25  
Okay, Anna. 

ANNA 07:26  
I'm scared.

LIA 07:27  
I cannot wait to see yours.

ANNA 07:30  
Okay, okay, so first of all, listeners, I didn't own a bundt cake Pan, I owned a spring form cake pan, which is not quite as tall, it doesn't have those lovely ridges or delicate hole, so I had to improvise the hole…

LIA 07:48  
Oh, I'm so excited. I can't wait.

ANNA 07:56  
This is it.

LIA 08:00  
Anna, that's great.

ANNA 08:03 
It looks nothing like yours. Mine is, let's say considerably flatter than Lia's. Okay, I don't know, Lia. Do you wanna describe...

LIA 08:15 
It looks like like when they caveman invented to wheel and always show that cartoon. It's very sturdy. 

ANNA 08:30 
It’s dense. It’s dense.

LIA 08:32  
It's actually fruitcake-ish actually. It kind of has that fruitcake.

ANNA 08:36 
Well, my... My ring has a lot of color.

LIA 08:39  
I like that yours is darker. 

ANNA 08:41  
I don't think it's burnt. I don't think it is well done. I did use Cheddar cheese, the orange cheddar cheese. 

LIA 08:46
I can see the broccoli bits.

ANNA 08:48 
Yeah, so let me tell you what happened with the pasta, I think this is part of why it's so low to the ground. Okay, set this over here. It's still warm, by the way, Listeners... Because I don't cook, I did not factor cooling time into it, I cooked it right before we were gonna tape this and it was so hot, so I had to leave it out on the balcony for an hour before we could start taping it.

LIA 09:15 
And nobody stole it...

ANNA 09:17 
Nobody stole it. I mean no birds went at it, and I'm a little insulted that there were no... No Birds were like “free food.” 

LIA 09:26  
they were like... Ugh. 

ANNA 09:30 
Okay, so here's what happened, here's why I think mine is a little flat. So on the noodle package, it said boil for four to six minutes. So I put water on the stove, and then I put the noodles in and I turned the heat on, 

LIA 09:45 
Oh No!

ANNA 09:46 
But then it wasn't boiling. So I just waited. And I may have been like 12 minutes, that the pasta was in the water while I was trying to get it to boil. 'cause I was like, Why isn't it boiling? 'cause I once it boils, then it's gotta be four to six minutes. It never boiled. And then I was stirring it and I was like, This is getting mushy, like this doesn't look good. This doesn't look like pasta I want to eat. And so I turned to Lou, who is a wonderful chef. I turned to him and I said “Was I supposed to put the Pasta in the water before or after it boiled?” 

LIA 10:24 
Oh my Gosh. Aww.

ANNA 10:26  
And he looked at me with pity, horror, love? So then I took it off the stove and I dumped it in the strainer, and then it kinda was a one piece, it was like one piece...

LIA 10:42 
It all just stuck together.

ANNA 10:44 
It just sort of dried as one thing, but then when I put it in with a mixture, I was able to break it up. But these noodles were not fluffy by the time I got them out of the water.

LIA 10:56 
Oh Anna, just put the noodles right in the water.

ANNA 11:02 
It said boil them.

LIA 11:05 
They need to really rephrase, rewrite that to be more clear.

ANNA 11:09 
“Boil water, add pasta.” How f****** hard is that

LIA11:14 
I was curious, because it is a little bit flatter.

ANNA 11:17 
That's why... It's gonna be more dense, I wanna compare what, On what they look like on the inside.

LIA 11:26 
Shall we bite into our noodle rings

ANNA 11:28 
Oh my God. We're doing it. No, I want to show you this. Because you can really see that the Noodle has just formed a mass. It almost looks like quiche.

LIA 11:41 
It is kind of... quichey.

ANNA 11:43 
Oh, yours has more air pockets. I could see pasta in pasta form.

LIA 11:49
How does it smell?

ANNA 11:50
Like a casserole my mom used to make in 1986.

LIA 11:56 
Yeah, it's basically like that in 1980s casserole thing.

ANNA 11:59 
Alright, Are we gonna do this or... Yeah. Oh man.

LIA 12:04 
Here we go. Anna, your face. Mine just tastes like a bland, like just a plain old baked pasta.

ANNA 12:23 
Mine tastes, it's not so much the taste, it's the consistency. 

LIA 12:28
It’s the consistency! 

ANNA 12:30 
Guys, you really gotta get the noodles right in the noodle ring. Pro tip.  The taste is so strong, it's incredibly strong 'cause it's a whole can of cream of mushroom soup. worcestershire sauce, the onion soup mix. Two cups of cheddar cheese, two cups of broccoli, this is a very strong flavor, I can see how if perhaps the noodles were fluffier, maybe there'd be a little bit more space, maybe the noodles would cut...

LIA 13:00  
Would cut through some of the, the really strong, strong flavors there, but instead...

ANNA 13:06 
But I just wanna tell all our listeners who can't cook, I see you, I see you, I feel you, I'm with you. And you don't have to be a great cook to love a cooking show or even make one up for yourself. A food show. 

LIA 13:18 
I love that you made a noodle ring though, I mean, obviously aren't very popular foods. 

ANNA 13:24 
Not anymore, no.

LIA 13:2 LIA: 
But they were at some point, I guess. But you know, maybe we could bring the noodle ring back again, like... Make it trendy.

ANNA 13:32  
I don't know. Lia, we need to use our powers for good, not evil.

LIA 13:37
Guys, don't you wanna make noodle rings now?

ANNA 13:40 
You too, could be eating this.  Okay, well, this experiment happened, we have reinforced our standings as Lia as creator and me as Foodlosipher. But you know what, I'm more than happy to take a stab at these things sometimes so... Everyone can laugh at my expense.

LIA 14:02
Well, good job, Anna.

ANNA 14:03 
Thanks Lia!

LIA 14:04 LIA: 
I'm so proud of you. I know if we weren't separated by so many miles and…

ANNA 14:11 
A plague.

LIA 14:12      
...Covid, I would totally have loved to have had you over for a noodle ring dish.

ANNA 14:17 
Some day.

LIA 14:18
Maybe next year.

ANNA 14:19 
Oh, this is making me miss you.

LIA 14:20
I know.

ANNA 14:22 
Which is weird 'cause I talk to you every single day.

LIA 14:26 
Well, we need to be together in the same room.

ANNA 14:31  
Alright, everybody. I took a bunch of videos, so I'm gonna share some of me trying to make this thing for your amusement. thanks for listening. Happy Holidays. We love you.

LIA 14:42 
We love you. Make a noodle ring.

ANNA 14:45
This has been a special bonus episode of Every Day is a Food Day. Connect with us on social media @fooddaypod or visit yumday.co/podcast. Every Day is a Food Day is a production of Van Valin Productions and Yumday. It was created by Lia Ballentine and Anna Van Valin. This episode was edited by Emma Massey. See ya next time!