comfort, lazy noodle soup and other favourite comfort foods

A friend asked me for my top five favourite things to cook, and I listed them as follows:

Laska
Kari Kapitan (often with oyster mushrooms and firm tofu instead of the mock chicken)
Lentil Ragu + long pasta (sometimes also with tempeh)
yellow Dahl
Pasta Salad made with whatever is in the house (and, hopefully, five spice tempeh)

However then I realised I had missed one, because I have never previously blogged it; mostly, because I have never considered it worth blogging. Here, then, is one of the laziest things in my cooking repertoire: noodle soup.

Please note that when I say lazy, I mean it is lazy for me. Your laziness may vary. It is also a very flexible, forgiving recipe. You can add and subtract as you deem necessary (though I really mean it about the star anise).

makes: about two portions

ingredients:

2 star anise
1 carrot
2 or 3 bok choy (or a whole lot of chinese cabbage)
dark soy (you don't want it to go dark brown but you want it shaded - 3 tablespoons? less? something like that)
2 fresh chillis
5 cups water
1 tsp dry powdered stock, if you have it
1 inch fresh ginger, washed but not peeled

whatever noodles or tofu or frozen dumplings you have lying around the house, suitable for 2 people
any other vegies or whatever that you deem appropriate

method:
Bring water to a boil in a pot. In the meantime julienne the carrot, saving the ends; cut off the ends of the bok choy. Throw these ends, plus the star anise, soy, chilli, stock and ginger into the pot. Reduce heat and let simmer for twenty minutes, lid on but ajar. When it smells AMAZING, add your vegetables and noodles and dumplings as appropriate. I like to use a stick of rice noodles and two cakes of yellow mee, already soaked in hot water and rinsed to remove the starch. If I'm using firm tofu I'll add it at the same time as the carrots to give it the opportunity to soak in the flavour. Add the bok choy leaves and stems separate from each other, but near the end. But not so near the end that they're not soft. SOFT BOK CHOY/CHINESE CABBAGE IS LIFE.

Ahem.

Remove the star anise, carrot ends and ginger before serving, unless you really want to eat boiled star anise (I don't recommend it).

I often eat with extra soy+chilli sauce that I make at the beginning of the process, which gives the chilli and the soy time to infuse each other.

This stock, with the same things but bigger proportions, is good for all sorts of chinese vego cooking. Also add garlic cloves (peeled) and oyster mushrooms to the stock while it's going for a fuller flavour. Very authentic. TRUST ME. TRUST THIS AZN FACE.

cold weather soooop

It's cold and I'm usually tired and lazy, and I'm still very much unemployed (so I'm cheap), and also I'm suffering some injuries right now, and I'm not very good at soups that aren't laksa or dumplings with noodles. So I've been trying to branch out, do some other things that aren't noodles in broth (which, we'll talk about another day) but which are still easy and delicious and good for me. 

Anyway, this is a lentil soup I stole from a friend's partner. I don't know if mine turns out the same because I've changed it a bit but it's pretty delicious and it makes me happy on a cold winter's day. 

I know it looks gross but it's super great. Souper Soup! (haha) 

Lazy Lentil Soup

you will need:

2 cups of dried red lentils

1 brown onion

1 carrot

1 potato

1 stock cube

a chilli 

about 2cm of fresh ginger, sliced (or a tablespoon ish of minced ginger)

about a tablespoon of lemon juice (a bit less if fresh)

lots of chilli flakes

salt and pepper to taste

a litre ish of water

what you do: rinse and drain the lentils. dice the onion and fry it in a little bit of olive oil. dice the carrot and the potato (you can peel if you want, but i usually don't bother) and when the onion has softened add them in. stir them around a bit and add the lentils and the chilli, chopped thin, and the ginger. add the stock and the water and bring to the boil, after which drop it and leave to simmer. just let it go for about half an hour, until the carrot and potato are cooked through and the lentils are super soft. while it's still simmering, use a masher to roughly mash it all. you can blend it if you want but i prefer it this way, it leaves it a little rough and filled with bits. add in some of the chilli flakes and all of the lemon juice, turn off the heat and let it sit for five minutes. serve sprinkled with more chilli, and salt and pepper. so good, so easy. 

disanxian & tofu + cabbage soup

Two of my favourite discoveries while I was living in Beijing were 地三鲜 (disanxian) and 豆腐白菜汤 (doufubaicaitang). 地三鲜 is the greatest eggplant dish ever, featuring the 'three earth treasures', a complicated and oil heavy (but delicious!) combination of eggplant, potato and green capsicum in a soy saucey roux. 豆腐白菜汤 in contrast is a simple soup made up of tofu, chinese cabbage, and not a lot else, which is deceptive in its tastey-ness. It looks really boring and sounds really plain, but it's actually one of my favourite soups ever. Be warned if you order either of these in restaurants, though - sometimes they're made with chicken stock!

As I have mentioned before I learnt how to cook a lot of dishes during my year in China, and I hope to share a lot of them with you now that I'm back in my own kitchen and trying them out here at home, but these are by far my favourites and hence why they were almost the first thing I cooked upon my return. The delay in blogging them is mostly because I was too lazy to translate out of Chinese and into English for you. Sorry! I promise I do love you!

I'm posting these two recipes together because I only have the one picture - tofu and cabbage in a white bowl on a white background makes for the brightest photo ever! So it didn't really work out.
地三鲜 / Disanxian 
Three Earth Treasures
ingredients
2 garlic cloves, minced ish
two chinese soup spoon of dark soy, and the same of light soy
half a cup of stock
a little cornstarch

1 big eggplant (or 2 small eggplants), cut into chunks that are about twice as big as the potato.
2-3 medium potatoes, cut into funny, irregular but similarly sized chunks
1 green capsicum, cut into chunks

a whole lot of oil

method
Bring up the heat on your wok and load it up with some oil. Fry the potatoes until golden! Remove them, and (in the same oil, add more if necessary) fry the eggplant until golden! Fry the capsicum for a minute or two! Remove most of the oil (if you need to, I usually use just enough oil from the beginning that by the time I get to this stage there's not much left whoops), leaving just enough to do some stirfrying.

Fry the garlic, then add the stock and the soy sauce. Bring the soup to a boil, and thicken it, then add the vegetables and give it all a chance to reduce. You want this dish to be a little saucy but not too much!

Fried and delicious, it's so tasty. Serve with other dishes and something carby.


豆腐白菜汤 
Tofu + Cabbage Soup

I would just like to reiterate that there are no words to describe how much I love this soup. It can also be served with some rice noodles, but I like to have it as a final dish in a banquet.

ingredients
an appropriate amount of chinese cabbage, enough to fit into two hands when it's shredded thickly
five or six cups of veggie stock
a shake or two of salt
a shake of rice wine
thinly sliced ginger, about 2cm
400g firm tofu, diced into cubes of about 2cm
a teaspoon of sesame oil
optional: a star anise, a shake or three of light soy sauce, some rice noodles, dried shiitake mushrooms

method
Bring stock to a boil and add the ginger, salt, cabbage and rice wine, as well as the soy sauce and star anise if you're adding it. Allow to simmer, covered, for 15 minutes, then add tofu, and allow to cook through (about five minutes). Add (rehydrated) mushrooms, noodles, or sesame oil at this point if you're adding them.

Serve with your meal. It's delicious.

Haidilao / 海底捞 [beijing]

As I've previously blogged, living in Beijing has unexpectedly led to an amazing increase in my obsession with hotpot/steamboat. Frequently I go to Little Sheep, which is a franchise that has a location delightfully close to my house on Ghost Street; however Wendy had mentioned that if there was anywhere a Beijinger would go to hotpot, it would be Haidilao, so when GY suggested we go to hotpot before I left, I was eager to suggest Haidilao. I have in the last week been to Haidilao twice (once with GY and LN, and once with Wendy), and I recommended it very much. 

Haidilao is well-known for excellent service. At the Sanlitun location I experienced a sort of valet-bike parking, where someone helped me find a bay for my bike, and asked if I needed help carrying my bags inside, and when Wendy and I specified that we were strict vegetarians they went out of their way to double check what that meant stockwise, and what would be okay and not okay. It is more expensive than some of the other hotpot restaurants I've been to here in Beijing, though. And it's much, much harder to get a table. At the Wangfujing branch we booked ahead, and the waiting area was full when we went to depart; at Sanlitun we ended up waiting for about 40 minutes to get a table. They provide you with snacks, games to play, and a free manicure while you're waiting for a table, and LN says she often doesn't book if she needs a manicure, so she can wait and get one.

The mushroom broth was amazing, filled with mushrooms and some garlic it had such an excellent flavour. The spicy broth was also quite excellent.  

The thing I love about Haidilao is its excessive complementary condiment wall. Mixing sauces is an excellent part of the hotpot experience - you can choose from (among others) soy sauce ("home made"), sesame sauce, sesame oil, fried peanuts, a soybean paste, a mushroom sauce, a variety of chillis dried, fresh and oiled, green things, vinegar, other types of nuts, and even msg, and that's all without touching the condiments I can't eat. LN introduced me to the concept of creating a dry rub for myself, she used a mixture of salt, dried chillis, and peanuts, which I thought was pretty excellent (though very spicy). The condiments bar also includes a variety of fruits, a pumpkin soup, and some cold Beijing salads (such as tudousi and the smoked tofu strings thing). 

At Wangfujing ordering takes place via ipad, all in Chinese but with pictures. Ordering at Sanlitun is via a sheet of paper all in characters, but some places (such as Little Sheep) have menus with pictures if you ask for it, so that might still be available. 

Haidilao also has noodle dancers, lovely clean toilets, and an awesome array of tofu to put in the boat. 

海底捞 / Haidilao hotpot

Various locations around Beijing

Some locations (such as Wangfujing) have lifts, but others are old and not at all accessible. 

Website allegedly has an English version but I've never been able to access it. 

beijing and my hotpot/steamboat obsession

It seems weird to blog about hotpot in the middle of a Beijing summer (currently 27C though, so not too bad), but I just had one on Sunday so it’s fresh in my mind. And I love them so. 
I’ve spent years of my life obsessed with hotpot (or steamboat) as the weather cools, and trying to convince my mother that the weather is cool enough, no really, to have a steamboat or two running in the house. After going vego, steamboat at home is still possible, but no longer do I find myself able to steamboat out and about due to the preponderance for good chicken stock in the soup. Beijing, though, is filled with hotpot restaurants of different varieties, and the cheapest, the most tackiest of chains, are so cheap they don’t put animal products in their soups – the cheapest of all are just water and salt and a piece of ginger and an inch of leek.  There’s Little Sheep, and Xiabu Xiabu, both just down the road from my house, where you can choose your soups spicy or not spicy; and at Little Sheep they give you popcorn when you enter (not vegan, maybe not vego) and make you pay extra for the sesame dipping sauce.  Most places I frequent you share the pot, which is fine when I tell my friends in advance that the pot will be filled only with tofu, vegetables, noodles and mushrooms. Inevitably, we’ll get to the end of the order, and the waitperson will look at me. 不要肉, I’ll say, don’t want meat, before they have a chance to ask.  I love a good hotpot, and it can be pretty easy, even if you’re in China and don’t speak Mandarin, because the menus are almost always big and glossy with pictures for every plate you can order, and there’s usually only one type of item on a plate – meat OR bok choy OR tofu, which makes it easy to get nothing but vego things. 

However there are things to be aware of, as a veg*n. There’ll be sauces floating around, for dipping – I’m not a big user of the sauces, but they’ll sometimes not necessarily be vego, they’ll be cut with something fish-based. A lot of places, especially fancy places, fill their soup with animal products, so you have to specifically ask if it’s water or stock in the pot.  When I return to Melbourne I have plans to start investigating as many steamboat restaurants as I can, to see if I have any options. I know that Enlightened Cuisine and Vegie Mum are both doing a steamboat for winter, which I look forward to trying  And if I don’t, I’m just going to have to buy one and start having 火锅 parties at my house. 

pre-MICF noms, melbourne cbd

I went to see another MICF show (Fear of A Brown Planet) with Danni, and we decided to go on a hunt for dumplings. Nix had introduced me to Shanghai Village a few weeks earlier, and in our rush to catch a movie for MQFF I hadn't stopped to take photos.


photo by danni
Shanghai Village has the usual decor, and very fast service. Both times I've been now I have been able to get a table without too much fuss. The tea is over-steeped but free. We ordered a serve of steamed dumplings and a serve of fried. They're filled with the same things: mushrooms, spinach, carrot, tofu and spring onions (I think); but I like the steamed ones more.

This amazing dumpling feast cost $13.50, shared between two, and it was almost too much to finish.

**

Last night I saw my final MICF shows (Hannah Gadsby and Claudia O'Doherty), and I had been thinking about soup all day, so Emilly and I met up at The Soup Place for a quick meal. I'd never been here before, and I'm trying hard to find new dinner places to go to before shows that aren't just LotF (as evidenced by trying out the dumplings).


All of their soups are dairy free and gluten-free, so their vegetarian ones are also vegan (they don't put egg in them either), which gave me a big choice to choose from! I went the pumpkin, to which I added a little bit of chilli and salt, and it was perfect, exactly what I was after! Emilly went for the lentil and vegetable, which she said needed a bit of salt but otherwise was good. The bowls are big and at only $8.90, not bad for a quick meal before a show. Or before two shows.


Shanghai Village
112 Little Bourke St
Melbourne

The Soup Place
14 Centre Place
Melbourne

roast pumpkin soup and some stuffed vegetables

Sometimes, people other than Danni and I cook in our kitchen! Or cook for us! This is always pretty exciting, because my joy in cooking stems from my joy in EATING, and having someone else cook for me combines two of my favourite things, eating + sitting around, with the added advantage of when people cook in my house, it becomes eating + lounging around in my beanbag.

About two weeks ago (it has been too cold to upload photos, okay?!) Jo decided to cook us a two course dinner. It would have been three courses but by the time we got to the end of savouries we were too full for sweets, but that is okay!



We started with some roasted pumpkin soup. This was super delicious, and looked pretty easy, from my position on the couch.

This was followed up with some garlic bread (using up some leftover sour dough we had), and made using roasted garlic and olive oil. The garlic was roasted with the pumpkin, and then squirted out onto the bread. It made the house (and the bread) super garlicky!



We ate the garlic bread with stuffed capsicums and stuffed field mushrooms. The stuffing was a brown rice mixture, and I love stuffed vegies and never have them, so this was exciting! And delicious! The roasting pan was lined with a layer of a tomato mixture, kind of like a pasta sauce, with squished tomatoes and some herbs in it. This layer of tomato deliciousness was mixed in with the risotto later, for nomming.




roasted pumpkin soup
This is really easy and really delicious! Recipe by Jo, vaguely remembered by Danni, artistic license by me.

ingredients
butternut pumpkin
1 tablespoon of cumin
half a tablespoon of nutmeg
a little bit of water
some salt

method
Cut the pumpkin in half (or in pieces), and roast it until it's very soft. I like to go for about 200C for about 45minutes. Remove the skin, and allow to cool. In a blender, blend together the pumpkin, cumin, nutmeg and the salt, with a little bit of water to help in blend.

Reheat (on the stove or in the microwave, whatever is your preference), and serve. OH YEAH.

coconut and red lentil soup

This lentil soup recipe from 101 cookbooks is so delicious, we've made it three times in the last month! It's a really easy recipe, with not a lot of prep, though it does take a bit of time to cook.



Every time we make the recipe, we modify it a tiny bit more, so I'm going to post the recipe below with our mods, and come back to make more notes every time we make a change. They're only little changes, just tweaking to our tastes, but it's worth it.

I like to serve this with fresh roti, but toast or bread also works fine.

coconut and red lentil soup
recipe modified from 101 cookbooks

I'll be honest, by the time we're done with it, it's basically dahl as soup, but I'm okay with that. Because it's delicious!

ingredients
1 cup yellow lentils
1 cup red lentils
1 carrot, diced
1 small potato, diced
some ginger, minced
2 tablespoons curry powder (lol - I've got some that I use specifically for these sorts of recipes, but I don't know what its specifics are)
shake or three of ground cumin
shake or two ground coriander
4 cups vegie stock
4 cups water
2 tablespoons nuttelex
a third of a cup of tomato paste
1 small can coconut milk
half a dozen cherry tomatoes, halved
some spring onions, chopped

method
Soak the lentils in some cold water for a while, about twenty minutes. Rinse them, then in a big pot, bring them to a boil with the stock and the water, plus the carrot, potato, and half the ginger, then simmer with the lid on until the vegies are soft, about twenty-five minutes.

In a fry pan, saute the curry powder, cumin and coriander for thirty seconds, carefully not burning anything, then add the nuttelex, tomato paste, and half of the spring onions. Fry them all together for two or three minutes, stirring constantly, then remove from the heat. It should smell delicious!

Add this all, along with the coconut milk, to the lentils, after the twenty-five minutes of simmering. Continue to simmer, this time with the lid off, for another fifteen minutes. Then add the cherry tomatoes for about five or ten minutes. You can modify the thickness with a little more water if you require it.

Serve with the remaining spring onions, and roti or something delicious.

tom yum noodle soup

I have been a bit under the weather the last two weeks, and in grand SEAsian tradition, we've been eating a lot of curries to try and kick it (to the point that I went to hang out with some friends and volunteered to cook laksa for dinner at their house…).

I'd never tried making Tom Yum soup before, so when Danni suggested it as something to try, it was a challenge I was keen to accept. It's got a lot of really homey elements in it for me; because of the moderate Thai influence on Penang cooking, lemon grass, lime kaffir, and coconut feature heavily across Penang dishes.

The tart, lemongrassy flavour, with the spice of the chilli and the bite of the galangal, along with the soup and the noodles, makes this dish perfect for the cold weather, comfort food eating, and helping me shake off this cold.


Tom Yum Noodle Soup



I added some bok choy to this because I wanted the extra vegetables; they're totally optional.

ingredients
1 length lemongrass
small handful lime kaffir leaves
1 tablespoon dried chilli flakes
1 garlic clove, minced
1 small piece (approx 2 cm) galangal, sliced
3 cups veggie stock
100g golden boy mushrooms
handful cherry tomatoes
1 tablespoon veggie oyster sauce
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
quarter cup coconut cream
some rice noodles
optional: bok choy

method
Simmer lemon grass, lime kaffir leaves, some dried chilli flakes, garlic and a little bit of sliced galangal in some veggie stock for about half an hour, lid on. Then add some golden boy mushrooms (washed and halved), and do some more simmering. Also add a handful of cherry tomatoes. When this is merrily boiling away, add a tablespoon or so of veggie oyster sauce. Leave to simmer for about twenty minutes. Then reduce heat and add a tablespoon of light soy sauce, and quarter cup of coconut cream. At this point, throw in the bok choy, sliced, if you are adding it. Simmer five minutes longer, lid off, then serve, with noodles, or even without noodles if that's your preference.

(Noodles are the best)

wonton noodle soup

You know what I love? Noodles. What a surprise! I hear you exclaim. I can tackle a bowl of noodles from a metre away, and I'm not ashamed of it.

My ultimate comfort food is any sort of soupy noodles. It is unfortunate, then, that Danni is not a big fan of soupy noodles. Last week, after suffering a very large amount of the blahs, I really wanted noodle soup, and so we negotiated: lots of wontons for Danni, lots of noodles for me.

I've made jiaozi before, and I'll confess, my wonton making is remarkably similar to my jiaozi making, except I use different wrappers.



Wontons are pretty straight forward to make. I like to either steam them or boil them, and serve them in a bowl filled with vegetables, noodles and soup. I promise that picture above has soup in it. It is just covered by a lot of noodles.

wontons

ingredients
a palmful of chinese cabbage
a palmful of enoki/golden boy mushrooms
small amount of fresh chives (chopped)
one clove garlic (minced)
half a cupish of firm tofu (approx 100g)
three or so shakes of dark soy
Wonton wrappers

method
Evenly dice the cabbage and mushrooms. In a wok, fry the mushrooms and cabbage with the garlic, in a small amount of peanut oil. After the cabbage starts to soften, add the chives, tofu, and soy. Smush and stir until it is well mixed and evenly coloured, for about three or four minutes. You may want to season with pepper, but this is not my thing. Put this aside to cool.



The wrappers need to be defrosted, but preferably fresh from the fridge. This makes them easier to handle. Please also note that the wrappers do dry out quickly, so don't leave them out for too long. Some people recommend working with the waiting wrappers covered, but I can never be bothered dealing with that.

Separate from the top, one by one. Place a small amount of cooled filling in the centre (about half to three quarters of a teaspoon). Moisten finger with water, and run around the edge of the wrapper. Fold up at the middle. Pinch in at the sides (not pictured), so that instead of being a semi-circle the wonton looks more like a trapezium.

soupening
I like to bring a big pot of stock to boil. My preference is for a soup with a full body, so dried vege stock won't be quite enough. I've got some celery pieces in the freezer, so into a pot (with vege stock in it) I'll throw one of those, plus to top of a carrot or two. This pot simmers away whilst I'm folding the wontons, then I scoop out the celery and carrot so it's just liquid.



Into the pot, by this point boiling, I will gently drop my wontons. For this step (and many of the following), the above pictured cooking implement is key. I don't know what it's called, I just know that it's essential in this style of cooking, and also for steamboats (mmm, steamboats). Anyway, using this golden wire scoop, gently lower four or five wontons into the boiling stock. Let them boil away for six or seven minutes, or until they're floating on the top (mine always float from the very start, which is why I have to time them). Put these aside.

Back to the pot, I'll add my vegies (in this instance, one carrot that has been julienned, and two or three bunches of bok choy that hav been sliced in half lengthways). After a minute or two, I will pull those vegies out, and put them in bowls, and put in some noodles, giving the same treatment.

Serve them up in large bowls. If the wontons have cooled too much or are sticking together, I will sometimes drop them back in the pot for thirty seconds to heat them through. Then pour soup over the whole lot, and serve hot, perhaps with some chopped chilli in soy sauce.


NOM.

capsicum soup

Whilst Zanchey and Sheebaface were in town, aside from taking a week off work I tried not to let it completely mess up my schedule. So I still did my FOE shift, and one night I went to class as usual. Sheeba went to Camy's for dinner with an old school friend, and I left D and Zanchey with instructions to provide dinner.



Zanchey volunteered, and produced this delicious, full-bodied capsicum soup. The flavour of the capsicum was not over-powering, it was underpinned by the zucchini and very tasty.

Capsicum Soup, taken from 200 One Pot Meals, cooked by Zanchey

ingredients
2 onions (finely chopped)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
3 red capsicums, deseeded and roughly chopped
2 zucchinis, finely chopped
900mL of vegetable stock or water
salt and pepper
garnish: chopped chives

method
Brown the onions in the oil; add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the capsicum and half the zucchini and fry for 5-8 minutes (or until soft and brown).

Add the stock to the pan with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

When the vegetables are tender, blend the mixture in batches to a smooth soup, and then return to the pan.

Season to taste, reheat and serve topped with the remaining zucchini and garnish with chopped chives. Don't prepare the garnishes too early! Otherwise the zucchini dries out :o(

Good hot or cold. Serves 4.

other people's recipes

One of the greatest things about blogs is the sharing aspect - you make friends, you read other people's blogs, and sometimes they post really awesome things!



Carla posted this recipe for lentil stew. I bookmarked it, and then sj made it and said how delicious it was (very!), so it moved up on the 'to make' list.

It is super easy, and really tasty. It was fast, and it filled the house with delicious smells. I skipped the vinegar, and added dried chilli flakes, and used a mix of green and red lentils (mostly green). Delicious, and definitely on the repeat list.



Then SJ posted her lasagna recipe. It is very much not vegan, but she makes a tempeh bolognese sauce for it, and it looked super delicious for a pasta sauce, so I gave it a go, and it was also very delicious! The tempeh is crumbled and fried, and then simmers for quite some time in red wine and tomatoes and herbs and spices, and it has a fantastic flavour and it was an excellent and relatively easy pasta. Grating the carrots and zucchini was a bit of a pain, though. Also, I really didn't notice the carrots or zucchini when I was eating, so - a great way to hide vegetables? I omitted the celery from this recipe, and wilted some spinach at the end in the pasta.

Again, definitely going on repeat. Very tasty!

Hooray bloggers sharing things!

kuey teow noodle soup

Yesterday afternoon was pretty mediocre, and by the time I finally got home I was grumpy, exhausted, hungry and cold. At times like those, comfort food is the only real answer, and I knew exactly what sort of comfort food was required.

Kuey teow (or kueh teow) is a flat rice noodle that is ubiquitous in Malaysia. You might be familiar with it from Malaysian restaurants, where it is more commonly served as one of my very favourite foods, char kuey teow (which, incidentally, I cooked for lunch today and will blog about soon).

Although it is a rice noodle, kuey teow noodles are not suitable for people avoiding gluten, as they are softened by the addition of wheat. It's not a dry noodle, and it doesn't freeze at all well - the only solution is to buy it fresh, as needed. It will last a couple of weeks, though.

Kuey teow noodles really soak in the flavour of a dish. They need to be softened first, either with a minute or two on the stove in some water, or soaking in hot water for five or six minutes. Once they are prepared, though, they make a quick and easy food, so they are very popular noodles at hawker stalls. I prepared this noodle soup the hawker way (except the carrots), no more than blanching the ingredients, keeping them crisp and delicious.



kuey teow noodle soup

A full-flavoured homemade stock is best. If you don't have the time, bring the stock to a simmer, and add the base of the bok choy and the top of the carrot (ie, the bits you usually throw out) into the pot, and simmer for about half an hour. If you do this, you will need extra stock, but it is worth it for the flavour.

ingredients
1 pack fresh kuey teow noodles
1 clove ginger (minced)
1 short stalk lemon grass
1 cup bean shoots, detailed
2 hot red chillis, sliced
dark and light soy sauce
7 - 8 cups vegetable stock
1 bulb bok choy (leaves detached, stalks in fingers)
one quarter carrot (julienned)

method
Bring the stock to a boil, add the lemongrass and garlic, and reduce to a simmer, lid off. After ten minutes, add the carrot, and continue simmering for another ten minutes, then add the bok choy stalks.

In the meantime, soak the kuey teow noodles in hot water, and then drain and separate. In a small bowl, mix the chillis with a little bit of dark soy sauce, but a few shakes of light soy sauce. Set aside.

After two or three minutes, the bok choy will have just started to soften. Add the kuey teow, bok choy leaves, and bean shoots. Stir through, and remove from heat.

Serve, and mix through a spoon or two of the chilli-soy sauce mix.


I am probably going to submit this to the It's a Vegan World: Malaysian blogging event, but I have one thing planned that I definitely want to share for that (PISANG GORENG) so I might not. We shall see! I always feel a bit awkward when I submit too many things for blog events.

cream of mushroom soup from soup for all seasons

We're definitely giving soups a lot of consideration this winter, which is lots of fun. It involves lots of making toast soldiers, and carefully balancing my bag with my lunch leftovers on the bus in to work.



D gave the cream of mushroom soup from Soup for All Seasons a go this week, it involves a whole bag of mushrooms and a lot of stirring. The end result was not quite as creamy as we might have hoped, you'd do better to add a little less stock (certainly not the full six to eight as suggested in the recipe). Also the giant pieces of mushroom were not quite my thing, though the flavour of the soup was quite nice.

Will give this one another go sometime, perhaps with some slight modifications. I would want to cut the mushrooms a little smaller, perhaps pulse it a little just to mush it the tiniest bit. D rates this soup delicious.

leek and potato soup from soups for all seasons

I've been a lot under the weather, so on Monday we delved into Soups for All Seasons for some nourishing soups. We made the leek and potato soup. It was creamy and delicious, though D found it a little bland. I was okay with this, as I wasn't feeling fantastic by Monday night. The soup was also a little bit stringy. If we made it again we would cut the leek into rounds, rather than into lengths - the text was not specific, and I just chopped the leek the way I usually would, into lengths.

Overall, though, it was a very satisfactory experience. We served it up with some sourdough baguette, of which, it turns out, I am not actually fond.

pumpkin soup from soup for all seasons

On our recent trip to Melbourne I picked up Aduki's Soup for All Seasons, written by the mob from Las Vegan. I was fueled by the soup obsession ignited by the leek and potato soup at R+K's wedding.

D whipped this up whilst I was at my German class, and it was (soooup-er) easy and delicious. It is the second soup we have tried from this book, and so far we are definitely two-for-two delicious. Only notes for it are that we mashed in the pot instead of blending/processing, leaving it still a bit chunky.

curry mee (or curry laksa)

Laksa is a Malaysian staple, but there are several variations across the regions. In Penang we have the curry mee, and also a style of assam laksa called Penang laksa. I've spent years of my life sipping the soup of the curry mee, or sitting opposite my mum as she steals my vegies to add to her mee, and I was so delighted earlier this year to nom a whole lot of curry mee, which I rarely get to do if I don't first make it myself.

I am pretty easy going with my curry mee, but then, so are all the hawkers: I put potatoes in it this evening (nobody tell my mum, the addition of potato definitely wanders in to curry rather than laksa territory), and didn't have a chance to go see my Chinese grocer so didn't end up with any doufu (tofu) in it, though it usually does.

Curry Mee

This is a very simple curry mee. You can subsitute the galangal for ginger if you really can't find any.

paste
3 red chillis (with seeds) sliced
1 shallot, sliced
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 small piece of galangal, minced
1 tbl coriander seeds
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp cumin
4 cashews
some dried chillis

soup and so on
stalk or three of lemon grass
lime juice
1 can coconut milk
1 can coconut cream
1 cup and a half of stock
1 carrot, julienned
snake beans (halved or in thirds)
snow peas
bean shoots
tofu
choi sum (leaves shredded, stalks in lengths of five to ten cm)
capsicum
faux prawns and fishballs

yellow mee (like the noodles you get in maggi packets) and beehoon (rice noodles)

method
Pound together the paste ingredients.

Prepare noodles. I like to soak the beehoon in hot water until soft, and boil the mee on the stove.

Over medium-high heat, fry the paste until fragrant. Add lemongrass, carrot, capsicum and snake beans. Continue to fry for about five minutes, then add coconut milk, stock, coconut cream, and lime juice. Bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer for fifteen minutes, or until all the vegies are soft and tasty. Add the choi sum stalks. In the meantime steam the snow peas. Add snow peas, bean shoots, tofu, choi sum leaves and any faux seafoods to the pot. Heat through.

When you serve your laksa, remember to drown your noodles! The only reason my noodles aren't drowning in this picture is because it was the second serving, so I didn't have the proportions quite right.

steamboat

Mum and I came back from Penang determined to have a steamboat before the winter was out. Yet here we were, mid-October and still no steamboat in sight. So last night we headed up to my parents' house, where we partook in one of my favourite methods of food preparation, the steamboat.



Steamboat is a great way to have friends around for dinner, I like to refer to it as, what we have instead of barbeque. The steamboat sits in the middle of the table, either powered by electricity or more traditional means (in my parents' case, this means by heat beads), and has a chimney protruding from the centre of its bowl. Stock is poured into the bowl of the steamboat, and delicious things are dropped in to sort of steam but mostly boil in the middle of the table as the everyone surrounds the table, chatting. We serve with copper baskets and wooden chopsticks, with a ladle or two for the delicious broth which becomes more and more delicious as each course passes. The stock left by the end of the meal is delicious, having steeped in ten or twenty different flavours for the last two hours, it is my favourite.

Last night we had two boats going, one for meat and not meat with chicken stock, and one for not meat with vegie stock. This worked pretty well, though we almost had a few careless moments with appropriate (not contaminated) implements.

We had five courses in the vegie boat: tofu, chinese cabbage and choi sum (with rice noodles); fake fishballs with carrot and chinese cabbage (and maggi noodles); cauliflower, broccoli and carrot (with kuay teow noodles); giant button mushrooms with golden mushrooms; and snow peas, chinese cabbage and maggi noodles.

The emphasis is on simple ingredients, and the mix of those flavours - no marinating beforehand, no flavouring with spices before cooking. Some light soy sits on the table, and we pour it into the tiny sauce bowls in front of us. The chillis, fried shallots, and spring onion gets passed around the table for flavouring, but we rely on the flavour of the broth and the flavour of the ingredients to combine and make tasty course after tasty course.

It's sometimes frustrating that I still don't have a steamboat of my own, but I'll get one someday, and it will be awesome. For now, I promise my mum I'll help her prepare the vegies, and dance around her kitchen, like I have been for years. And it's great.

minestrone soup

I used to love this when I was a kid: I remember picking out the pasta and the smell of the soup as it simmered away on the stove. You can add all sorts of things to minestrone, various beans and whatever vegetables and my mother used to add cocktail sausages, sliced about two centimetres in length. We chatted on the phone as I watched the pot simmering; "don't forget the tomato paste!" she exclaimed, when I listed the ingredients I had put in the pot and failed to mention it.



minestrone soup

ingredients:
brown onion (diced)
stick of celery (diced)
1 medium carrot (diced)
1 medium potato (peeled + diced)
4 tomatoes (diced)
half a zucchini (diced)
1 cup spiral pasta (use gluten free pasta if you're cooking gluten free)
can of kidney beans
oregano
1 cup peas
handful of basil leaves (shredded)
1 can tomato soup
2 tsp tomato paste
1 garlic clove (minced)


method:

Fry the onion and the celery in a little vegetable oil until both start to soften. Add the garlic, carrot and the potato, continue frying for a couple of minutes. Add the tomatoes, zucchini, a shake of oregano, and fry for two or three minutes before adding the tomato soup and the tomato paste. Stir, then cover. Leave to simmer for about twenty five minutes.

In the meantime, cook the pasta in the usual manner.

When everything in the soup pot is smelling delicious and looks just about done, add the peas and the kidney beans (drained). Simmer for four or five more minutes, then stir through the basil and the pasta and remove from heat. Leave to sit for five minutes. Serve with delicious bread, or on its own.

the adventures of d and veganomicon

I get a strange level of excitement whenever D reaches for one of my cookbooks, and starts looking for things to cook. I’ve been completely overwhelmed with assignments this week, so D’s been doing the cooking to take up the slack, and although has some fantastic staples D’s been trying new things and it’s all very exciting.



On Tuesday D cooked the French lentil and tarragon soup from Veganomicon. We didn’t have any French lentils so we subbed in brown lentils, and also managed to spill lentils all over the stovetop, which has made for interesting patterns. This was served with fresh Turkish bread from Ararat Kebabs, which I hope to review before we move but which makes very tasty falafel kebabs and pides. D complained that some extra water should have been added a little earlier in the process, and was put off by the very strong flavour, but I really enjoyed it and was happy to eat the rest for lunch the next day.

Yesterday D cooked the pumpkin saag, also from Veganomicon. The pumpkin was soft and I really enjoyed the flavour of this, and that this was the recipe of choice demonstrates the way D's dedication to cooking outstrips mine – I would never have bothered roasting the pumpkin first, I probably would have just cheated and boiled it. The secret to my cooking is that I am very lazy, as much as I love it, and the associated mess.



So Veganomicon is going well! That’s two cookies, now, and a handful of dinners, and I’m quite pleased, though I am still having some concerns (which will come later, when I give a proper book review).