When I get home from a long day, and it is cold I always think about making a soup. Soup in the olden days used to take the whole day and a little bit more to make, these days we have boxed Stock! what a great gift to the busy family.
After a long day you really just want to relax so this will take about 20 minutes of your time of course depending how fast you are at chopping. 45 minutes on the stove.
Flavour goals
If you taste stock on its own you will have a relatively sharp unbalanced flavour what we are trying to achieve is a whole of mouth flavour which is normally explained as the depth of flavour. The best way to balance the sharp taste is to add fresh vegetables, salt and soy sauce. The flavour balancing items are the salt and the soy sauce so do not add to much because you can always add this at the end. If the flavour is still too much like the stock add a little more soy sauce tablespoon by tablespoon until your taste buds feel satisfied.
Utensils
One big pot that has a cover
Another pot for noodles
A Chopping board
A knife
A ladle
A noodle drainer
Soup ingredients
1 Liter Soup stock
Water
1 bunch of Coriander
1 Carrot
1 small Onion
3 Cloves garlic
1 Stick of Celery (not bunch just 1 stick of a bunch)
half a Zucchini
1 Chilli
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
White Miso (or miso dashi) (if you can get them the effect is an increase in the depth of flavour)
150-200g Mince of some sort (Pork, chicken or beef)
Oyster sauce
Sesame oil
Soy sauce
Sugar
Noodles:
You can use pasta, egg noodles, udon noodles, dried packet noodles, rice vermicelli etc.. etc..
Preparation:
1) Wash coriander and wash and peel the carrots, celery and zucchini.
2) Cube the carrots, celery and zucchini into small cubes about 1 cm x 1 cm roughly the same size.
3) Chop the stalks off the coriander bunches and chop them to small pieces, leave the leaves for garnish later.
4) Dice onions, garlic and chilli into small pieces
5) Boil some water (in a kettle or the noodle pot)
6) Heat pot and put some olive oil in it (medium high fire for about 2-3 minutes)
7) Marinade your meat (200g of meat about 2-3 tablespoons of oyster sauce, soy sauce and sesame oil. 1 table spoon of sugar. A few cracks of pepper).
8) Mix thoroughly.
9) Start boiling some water in the other pot (this will be used for cooking the noodles so fill the pot to about half).
Cooking time:
1) Pour the diced onions, garlic, chilli into the pot with the hot olive oil, it should start sizzling immediately.
2) When the fragrance is released, meaning you can smell the lovely smell from the pot. Cook it off for another 2 minutes so they start to brown, if they are browning too quickly your fire is too hot.
3) Add in the marinated mince meat into the pot and cook it till they brown 6-7 minutes.
4) Add in your vegetables and cook for another 3-4 minutes.
5) Pour in the stock. Add the coriander stalks now.
6) Add 2 cups of boiling water (approximately 500 mLs)
7) 3 pinch of salt and a few cracks of pepper and 2 tablespoon of soy sauce.
8) If you have miso (3 teaspoon) or miso dashi (2 teaspoon) add now
8) Turn up the fire until the soup boils then lower to medium low to simmer cover the pot. This will now sit on the stove while you clean up the kids etc it will take about 20 - 30 minutes for the flavour to mature. Taste and adjust as required.
9) If you are using pasta (50g of dried pasta per person?) put them in the pot of boiling water now. Other noodles you can start about 10 minutes into the simmering.
Serving:
1) Get out 3 big bowls add about a handful of noodles to the bottom of the bowl, don't be tempted to add too much because noodles expand in your tummy and the saying goes "generous eyes but a small stomach".
2) Using the ladle make sure you stir the soup before you scoop, you do not want to miss out on all the goodies on the bottom of that pot. Garnish and serve.
3) Eat and slurp and stuff and be happy.
This will feed about 2.25 Roy so that means about 3.5 normal humans
Questions:
1) Can I eat this just as a soup? Yes
2) What happens if it is too salty? Add more stock or water, sometimes if you eat the soup with the noodles the saltiness disappears so try it with a mouthful of noodles and check the flavour before diluting.
3) What if I don't like coriander? Wash and then boil the whole bunch in the soup so the flavour is integrated with the soup. If you are going to make this soup you gotta have some coriander, if you don't like it .. tough! nah kidding but if you leave it out you are missing a big part of the flavour.
4) Can we add other stuff to the soup for instance mushrooms, yesterdays dinner, meat loaf, and or sweet and sour pork? If you only said mushrooms I would say yes go for your life the last 3 really depends on how adventurous your taste buds are. If you can make it with sweet and sour pork please let me know your recipe! :-D
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