Christopher Kimball’s ‘Milk Street Noodles’ Highlights Delicious Dishes

Familiar Italian noodles, including rigatoni and fettuccine, get some attention, but other recipes transport readers far beyond Italy. A spicy Korean-style noodle and seafood soup relies on gochujang (red chili paste) and Japanese dashi, a stock made with seaweed, to cook littleneck clams. It’s “fiery,” writes Kimball, and a dusky red hue.

Kimball’s Peruvian Stir-Fried Chicken and Noodles dish brings together Chinese and Peruvian flavors. Spaghetti is combined with chicken, peppers and onions in a tangy mix of oyster sauce, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and lime juice. Fresno chili adds some punchy spice. “Though traditionally made with wine vinegar, we loved the fruity yet mellow acidity added by the balsamic,” the recipe reads. A take on a traditional dish from Azerbaijan (on the border of Eastern Europe and Asia) appears as Pasta with Spiced Beef, Caramelized Onions and Herbed Yogurt. In an effort to simplify dishes for home chefs, Kimball swaps traditional diamond-cut homemade noodles for broken dried pappardelle, and he uses beef instead of lamb.

Kimball hopes to push home chefs out of their comfort zones with recipes for making their own fresh noodles (though dried pastas have a place in his pantry too). Making pasta from scratch is much more time consuming than dumping it out of a box, but the payoff is worth it. “Making the udon was really easy. It wasn’t hard. And that udon, it has that sort of springy chewiness to it, which I love,” says Kimball. In the cookbook, fresh herbs like dill and parsley add a bright boost to pasta dough. Or incorporate saffron strands, which give the pasta a “floral aroma” and “earthy flavor,” Kimball writes, not to mention a striking golden shade that it complements cream sauces and poached scallops, he adds.

Although boxed pasta is more convenient, fresh pasta is a treat. There are multiple ways to make your own pasta. A simple crank machine, which typically costs around $35, makes the pasta sheet thinner and cuts the noodles for you. If you have a stand mixer, many offer pasta attachments. If you’re looking for an all-in-one machine, there are high-end pasta makers that weigh the flour, mix the dough and extrude the pasta.

Certain staple ingredients are worth having on hand to make the most of your pasta meals. Kimball’s favorite is miso, either purchased in the store or homemade. “It’s a way of getting a lot of depth of flavor into a dish without doing much work,” he says. In addition to spices, Kimball also suggests having pomegranate molasses, harissa and gochujang in the pantry. “Obviously, having tin fish like anchovies is great. That’s perfect for pasta,” he says. Pasta lends itself well to pantry meals, with items like canned artichoke hearts and beans that can be tossed together.

Some of the recipes in Noodles are complex and require ample time, but plenty are weeknight-friendly. “If it were me, I would take six or eight dishes out of this book and just get to know them by heart,” says Kimball. Then you can tweak the recipes and riff as you like. For example, you can make a pesto with any herb hiding in the refrigerator crisper. “That’s when it gets really fun,” he says.