Good gravy! Noodles and potatoes make a delicious mound of starches

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

My great-grandparents, who had immigrated to the United States from southern Italy, were people who made Sunday “gravy” of meat and tomato sauce, poured over pasta. So I am no stranger to comfort food with plenty of carbohydrates. Or “starches,” as they were referred to in our house. 
But my Italian family did not mix their starches. If my mother made an “American meal,” it would likely include a meat, a vegetable, and maybe a starch. I personally would’ve preferred a plate of three starches, but that wasn’t in my cards.
There’s a scene in the 1996 movie “Big Night,” which is about two brothers from Italy who run a restaurant on the Jersey shore, that makes me laugh each time I recall it. 
The brothers become frustrated by the Americans’ expectations for Italian food — customers seem to always want a side of spaghetti and meatballs with their starch-filled dishes. Brother Primo, the chef, makes a beautiful risotto (a creamy Italian rice dish) for a woman who insists it should come with something else: spaghetti. 
Primo is told by his brother that the customer wants a side of spaghetti, and he is incensed.
“How can she want it?! They both are starch!”
Primo then says, sarcastically, “Maybe I can make mashed potatoes for the other side …”
His brother pleads with him to just do as the customer wishes.
“No! She’s a criminal!” Primo says.
I can certainly understand the criminal mindset when it comes to extra starch.

As a teenager, I started dating a boy whose family was from southwestern Ohio. His grandmother and his mother (who later became my mother-in-law) made beef and noodles, poured over mashed potatoes. A starch on top of a starch. Oh, delicious heresy. 
These were chewy, homemade noodles, cooked in broth, then poured over homemade mashed potatoes. These were not dumplings. I hadn’t known such a thing existed. And there were rolls with butter, every time.
I’ve eaten many plates of noodles over potatoes over the years — beef and noodles, chicken and noodles — but I’ve only eaten them in the Midwest. On the East Coast or the West Coast, noodles over potatoes is a system shock to the carb police, those healthful eaters who would neither eat mashed potatoes nor noodles, much less pile them on top of each other, add a dinner roll, and call it a meal. 
The only time I’ve seen noodles on top of mashed potatoes outside the Midwest is at the Ohio-based Bob Evans restaurants, which has 560 restaurants in 19 states. 
However, noodles over potatoes (most often simply called “noodles”) is a staple comfort food in middle America, with people from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania eating the dish, especially in rural areas. 
And it is present on the menus of Amish restaurants across the region, causing many folks to suggest the dish came from the Germans’ love of both potatoes and noodles, especially a thick egg noodle such as spatzle. 
My mother-in-law, Connie Spurlock, learned how to make noodles in the Washington Court House kitchen of her mother, Garnet Leisure Armstrong, who learned in the kitchen of her mother, Mae Clay Leisure, also from Fayette County. They served chicken and noodles as well as beef and noodles, but my mother-in-law prefers beef broth, so she sticks to beef and noodles. 
She has passed down her method for making noodles, which she, like most noodle makers, will tell you isn’t really a recipe; she just knows how many eggs to mix with how much flour. “The boys would call and ask, ‘How do you make this or that?’ and I’d say, ‘I don’t go by a recipe.’”
My daughter will receive her great-great-grandmother’s noodle tradition, though my first personal attempt was disastrous. I’m a noodle eater, not a noodle maker.
To make a generous portion of noodles for six, my mother-in-law starts with 4 eggs, mixing them up in a bowl and adding flour as she goes. Once the flour is well mixed and firm, she keeps working it with her hands. The dough is almost ready when it is “pretty stiff” and not sticking to her hands.
Then she generously flours the counter and rolls out the dough with a rolling pin, flopping it over and over until it’s as thin as she can make it. She slices up the noodles thinly, then leaves them out to dry. 
For broth, she boils a chuck roast or swiss steak in salted water until tender, often adding soup bones or short ribs for more flavor. She removes the bones and pulls out the roast to finish it in the oven, but leaves the broth for cooking the noodles. (My mother-in-law prefers her beef separate from her noodles, so she doesn’t serve them as one dish; instead, she keeps the beef on the side.)
And, of course, she serves them with homemade mashed potatoes, offering up the noodles as a gravy alternative.
Helen Eakins, who has lived in Clinton County for most of her 96 years, has been making noodles for more than 80 years, and her mother made them before that.
Along with making chicken and noodles at home, Helen and her friend Nellie Rich, who is 90, have made them for at least 25 Election Day dinners at the Harveysburg VFW, with the Community Helpers Club of Harveysburg, formed in 1939. 
For Election Day 2013, the women helped make a “great-big roaster full” of noodles, using about 36 eggs, served over mashed potatoes, along with green beans, and homemade dessert. The money raised from the dinner goes to a scholarship for a Massie Township student at Clinton-Massie High School in Clarksville. 
Helen Eakins recently came to my house to show me how she has made noodles for more than eight decades. She made it look so simple, mixing the eggs and the flour, then rolling out the dough on the counter, slicing through it to make long, thin noodles that she separated and left to dry completely. The noodles could be cooked in broth right away, too, and will freeze well for a later use. 
The batches she made for me did not last long in the cold, comfort-food-necessary Ohio winter.
Helen uses 3 eggs, 2 cups of flour, and a little salt, though she said you could use 2 eggs, 1 egg yolk, 3 tablespoons of water, 2 cups of flour, and a little salt. 
She pours the liquid on the flour and starts stirring, eventually kneading with her hands, creating a dough that becomes stiff enough to roll out. She cuts her dough in 3 sections, rolls it out (“Make ’em thin,” she says), then slices it.
After separating the sliced noodles, she leaves them out to dry or cooks them right away. Both she and my mother-in-law regularly freeze noodles to be cooked in broth later. 
Helen uses the broth from a boiled chicken or, sometimes, a prepared-broth shortcut. 
I told her that my research indicated that serving noodles over mashed potatoes is a regional culinary tradition that has not spread completely across the nation.
She was surprised. “I can’t imagine eating it any other way. Oh, dear,” she said.
The coasts don’t know what they’re missing.
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The following are some of the restaurants in the area that serve noodles over potatoes at least weekly: 
•Our Place restaurant, 827 E. Market St. in Washington Court House, serves chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes every Wednesday.
•Courtview restaurant, 149 N. Main St. in Washington Court House, serves chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes every other Wednesday  (March 19 should be a noodle day) and beef and noodles over mashed potatoes every other Sunday.
•The White Star restaurant in Adams County, at 38 N. Main St. in Peebles, serves noodles (usually chicken, sometimes beef) with optional mashed potatoes on Wednesdays and Sundays.
•The Old “Y” restaurant in Brown County, at 1940 U.S. 62 in Winchester, serves chicken and noodles (usually by itself, but mashed potatoes is an option) in its regular rotation of specials, but it’s not on the daily menu. 
•Bob Evans serves its Chicken-n-Noodles Deep Dish Dinner at its restaurants nationwide.