Veggie Noodle Soup

I love noodles and I love soup. Together they make the ultimate combination…kind of like chocolate and peanut butter. I love making quick and healthy noodle soups that are also really filling. I also love the Asian supermarket near my house. The produce section is amazing. You can actually smell the fresh fruits and veggies as you walk by them as opposed to Stop and Shop which just smells like the mini Starbucks they have in the corner of their produce section

Vegetable Noodle Soup

So like I said, this soup is really quick and easy to make. Just find whatever veggies you want and whatever noodles you prefer and throw them in with some broth. My measurements aren’t very accurate because I just eye-balled it, but here is how I made mine:

Asian Vegetable Noodle Soup (Recipe from my imagination)

Ingredients:
2 gloves of garlic chopped
1 cup of shitake mushrooms chopped
a handful of enoki mushrooms, reserve some for garnish
4 spring onions chopped, reserve some for garnish
a couple fistfuls of bean sprouts
a half package of pan-fried Hong Kong style egg noodles (rice noodles work well too)
4 cups of vegetable broth

Directions:

Put a tablespoon of canola oil into a sauce pan on medium high heat. Saute garlic and shitake mushrooms for a couple minutes until translucent. Pour in vegetable broth and add beansprouts. Bring to a boil, then add noodles, enoki mushrooms and some of the spring onions. Simmer on medium heat for 5 minutes or until noodles have softened. Pour into bowls and garnish with spring onions and enoki mushrooms.

This should serve about 3-4 depending on big your bowls are.

Apologies for no music with this blog post but I have not heard anything worth mentioning recently. Will post something soon!

What to do with Rice Noodles – Part 2

So I had to use up the last of my rice noodles and some chicken I had defrosted. So I decided to make Asian Chicken Noodle Soup. I wanted to make the sort of soup you get at Noodle Houses. I just love those sort of soups in the really big asian soup bowls that you slurp the noodles down with chopsticks.

I just sort of threw this one together as I did last time so the measurements are just estimates. Also, make sure to thinly slice up the chicken breast to ensure it cooks up quickly. Next time I will mess around with adding various other asian spices and veggies to this one when I have more time. I would have loved to use Enoki mushrooms if I could find them, but unfortunately my supermarket does not stock them. Feel free to add what veggies you like and mess around with the measurements to suit your tastes. Very healthy, filling and delicious!

Asian Chicken Noodle Soup

Ingredients:

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut up into thin slices
8 cups of chicken broth
1/2 cup (4 oz) of thin rice noodles
3/4 cup (6oz) of baby corn
6 green onions (green parts cut into 1 inch pieces, white parts cut into 1/4 inch pieces)
1 cup of bean sprouts
1 teaspoon of ground ginger

Directions:

Bring the 8 cups of chicken broth to a boil.

Throw in chicken, rice noodles, baby corn, green onions (reserving a couple tablespoons for garnish), bean sprouts and ground ginger.

Simmer for 5 minutes or until chicken is cooked through (no pink).

Ladle into bowls and put remaining green onions on top. Eat with a chopstick if preferred along with a spoon.

Serves 2-4 depending on how big your bowls are.

Now for some music…

I don’t have much to review today but I did buy a couple more albums off of iTunes this weekend. One of them was Kate Havnevik – Melankton. This album isn’t that new. It came out in 2005 but I’ve heard a lot of her stuff on Grey’s Anatomy and finally got around to buying it. She reminds me of Bjork a bit. Her voice and songs are so lush. Here is a video of one of my favorite songs. Its called “Unlike Me”

Soup and a Sandwich

So like I said before, soup is one of all time favorite things to eat and french onion soup is waaaay up there on my favorite kinds of soup. I found a recipe on Allrecipes for it and modified it a bit. I used gruyere and mozzarella but you can also use Swiss cheese or Provolone. This is actually the first time I made it so I think there is still room for improvement. But it still came out quite good!

French Onion Soup
Source: Allrecipes

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of butter
3 onions, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon of white sugar
1 tablespoon of all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups of beef broth
2 cups of chicken broth
1/4 cup of red wine
1 bay leaf
1 french baguette
4 ounces of gruyere cheese, shredded
4 ounces of mozzarella cheese, shredded
salt and pepper, to taste

Direction:

Melt butter or margarine in a 4 quart saucepan. Stir in sugar. Cook onions over medium heat for 10 minutes, or until golden brown.

Stir in flour until well blended with the onions and pan juices. Add water, wine, and beef broth; heat to boiling. Reduce heat to low. Cover soup, and simmer for 10 minutes.

Cut four 1 inch thick slices of bread from the loaf. Toast the bread slices at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) just until browned, about 10 minutes. Reserve the remaining bread to serve with the soup.

Ladle soup into four 12 ounce, oven-safe bowls. Place 1 slice toasted bread on top of the soup in each bowl. Fold Swiss cheese slices, and fit onto toasted bread slices. Place soup bowls on a cookie sheet for easier handling.

Bake at 425 degrees F (220 degrees C) for 10 minutes, or just until cheese is melted

And what could be better than having soup all on its own, than having soup with a sandwich! I decided to make paninis with the leftover gruyere, some gammon ham and tomatoes. But you can fill paninis with most combinations of meat, cheese or veggies. I used my George Foreman grill but you can use a regular grill or grill pan.

Ham, Cheese and Tomato Panini
Source: Myself

Ingredients:

2 ciabatta rolls
1 tomato, sliced
2 pieces of gammon ham
4 ounces of sliced or shredded gruyere cheese
tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

Preheat grill to medium heat. Slice ciabatta rolls in half. Arrange ham, 2 or 3 tomato slices and cheese onto the sandwich. Brush bottom and top of sandwich with olive oil. If using a grill pan, grill on both sides for a few minutes each until cheese has melted. If using a George Foreman, grill for about 4 minutes.

Chicken Soup with Matzo Balls

Soup is my absolute favorite food. I could eat soup all the time. I love many different varieties of soup. But I think my favorite of all time is the classic chicken soup with matzo balls. This is a staple in Jersey (that’s where I’m from originally) diners. I went through a phase when I was about 13 where I’d go to my local diner and order two bowls of matzo ball soup. Thats all I wanted to eat!

So being as I’m in England now and they don’t really have diners here nor do any places I know of serve matzo ball soup (moth ball soup as my husband so eloquently nicknamed it! haha), I’ve had to learn how to make it myself and its actually come out quite good!

Chicken Noodle Soup
Source: Williams Sonoma

Ingredients:

1 Tbs. canola oil
1 chicken, 3 1/2 to 4 lb., quartered (I use a corn-fed free range chicken as this makes a really flavorful broth and chicken but you can use whatever you have available)
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
2 large yellow onions, cut into 1/2-inch rounds
4 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch
  rounds
1 bunch celery, tops and bottoms trimmed, cut
  into 1-inch chunks
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 quarts water
1 bay leaf
2 fresh thyme sprigs
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 lb. dried fettuccine, broken into 2-inch pieces (I omitted any noodles as I was having matzo balls with mine)
1 Tbs. finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

In a large stockpot over medium-high heat, warm the canola oil. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. When the oil is hot, add the chicken pieces, skin side down, and cook until well browned, 4 to 5 minutes per side. Add the onions, carrots, celery, chicken broth, water, bay leaf, thyme sprigs and coriander. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer gently until the meat is nearly falling off the bones, about 1 1/2 hours. Discard the bay leaf and thyme sprigs, transfer the chicken to a colander and let cool to the touch.

Meanwhile, in a large pot two-thirds full of boiling salted water, add the pasta and cook according to the package instructions. Drain the noodles in a colander and cool under cold running water; set aside.

Remove the chicken meat from the bones, discarding the skin and bones, and cut the chicken into 1/2-inch pieces. Skim the fat from the broth and return the chicken to the pot along with the pasta, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, until the pasta is heated through, 3 to 4 minutes. Adjust seasonings as needed, stir in the parsley and serve immediately. Serves 6.

Matzo Balls
Source: Allrecipes

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons pareve margarine,melted
2 eggs
1 cup matzo meal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water, or as needed

In a medium bowl, whisk together the margarine and eggs until well blended. Combine the matzo meal and salt; lightly stir into the egg mixture until the liquid is absorbed, and the meal is damp. Gradually mix in the water so that the mixture holds together, but is not too wet. Cover and refrigerate while bringing the water to a boil.

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. When the water is at a full boil, remove the matzo mixture from the refrigerator. Using wet hands, shape spoonfuls of the dough into balls. Do not pack the balls together too tightly.

Drop balls into the boiling water, and boil for 15 minutes. Remove from water and serve in soup or cold milk. Do not let the matzo balls sit out too long, or they will harden.