[Sca-cooks] handmade pasta

[ranvaig at columbus.rr.com]

Some years ago, I saw a demonstration of noodle making by Mark Pi. 
Not sure if they have them every where, but Mark Pi's is a large 
chain of Chinese restaurants.

He took a large amount of a fairly soft dough, stretched it, folded 
in half, stretched it again by holding both ends and flipping the 
dough up and down, until it was maybe 6 feet long.  He folded it in 
half and stretched again.. and again.. and again each time doubling 
the number of strands. Until there were thousands of noodles, using 
only his hands.

I'm sure it was much harder than it looked, but it only took him a 
few minutes, and didn't seem harder than tossing a pizza (another 
skill that's harder than it looks). In fact, now that I looked up his 
website, he holds a Guinness World record for making 4,096 noodles in 
41.34 seconds!
http://www.markpi.com/mp2.htm

This is apparently a traditional method of noodle making in China, 
but I don't know how far back, or if it was ever known in Europe.

Ranvaig