Saturday, July 25, 2009

Egg Noodle Soup


My opinion on this soup should be taken with a grain of salt, as it's been years since I've eaten any meat, but I really think it resembled chicken noodle soup. I'm probably completely wrong about this, of course, but it has the same comforting salty flavor that chicken noodle soup brings to the table.
The best recommendation I can reliably give is that it has just a few ingredients and comes together really fast and is really delicious. Plus, you can toss pretty much any vegetable you have rolling around in your veggie drawer if you don't approve of my selections.

salt
1/2 lb dried egg noodles
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 T ketchup
freshly ground pepper
8oz firm tofu cut into small cubes
1/2 lb snap peas
1/2 cup sliced scallions
1 T chopped chili pepper (or some hot pepper flakes_

Boil some salted water and cook the egg noodles. Drain and cool off with some cold water and set aside. Bring six cups of water to a boil and add soy sauce and ketchup. Add salt if needed and lots of pepper. Keep the broth bubbling and toss in the tofu, snap peas and chili pepper and let simmer for a couple of minutes. Take your bowls and put some noodles in each and pour broth with veggies and tofu other them. Sprinkle scallions on top.






Monday, July 20, 2009

Miso Soup with Sweet Potato Dumplings


I truly love sweet potatoes. I don't think I've ever made a recipe with sweet potatoes that ended up being dumped down the garbage disposal (although many other recipes have, belieeeeeve me.)
This recipe is really fragrant and light and was exactly what my pregnant butt needed after a long day. Plus, it has lots of healthy crap in it.
My only caveat--I made this by baking a sweet potato and then peeling and mushing it up, and I don't know about you, but whenever I do this I find the sweet potato mush to be sort of stringy, which I do not enjoy. So instead I'll recommend making this with canned sweet potato or mush that has been put in a food processor, so to avoid stringiness.

1 lb sweet potato mush
1 T olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
1/8 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
3 cups snap peas
1 cup edamame, shelled
12 wonton wrappers
3 T white miso paste
2 scallions, thinly sliced

Heat oil in a small pan over medium heat. Add garlic and shallot and cook about 1-2 minutes. Add pepper flakes, salt and pepper and sweet potato. Set aside.
Dump snap peas, edamame into a pot with 2 cups water. Bring to a boil.
While water is coming to boil, plop 1T scoops of sweet potato stuff into each wonton and wet and seal to make little dumplings. (I just brought all four edges together, but feel free to get all fancy-pants and make pretty ones if you're so inclined) Once water is boiling, place wontons on top of veggies and cook until wontons are clear--about 3 minutes. Drain. Dump into four bowls.
Add four cups of water to pot and bring to a boil. Whisk in miso paste until dissolved.
Pour over veggies and wontons and top with scallions.

Salt and pepper to taste