Ginger Veggie Udon Soup

It's a warm fall in SF, but a little veggie soup never went amiss. This one is gingery/miso-y, with yummy soft udon noodles. It would be great for fending off a cold, with all the vitamin-filled veggies, lime juice, miso, and ginger. Knock on wood...

I bought a pack of udon noodles from the Japanese supermarket, and couldn't even read the numbers to tell how long to cook it for...Google Translate to the rescue! Their app allows you to take a picture of text and it will translate!

In a nutshell: You simmer the broth for about 15 minutes, and while that's happening boil the noodles. Chop up a whole lot of veggies in small strips, then cook some with the broth and leave some raw to be softened by the residual heat of the broth. It takes less than half an hour and is immensely satisfying.

Get your bowl, plop in a bunch of noodles, add raw carrots, then pour the broth over the whole thing. The result is a fresh, bright, light soup. Finish it all off with a squeeze of lime, green onions, and some sort of spicy situation if you want (I used a serrano chile, seeds removed and chopped fine).

To make it heartier, you could always add a soft boiled egg or some tofu. I'll probably do this with my leftovers!

Ginger Veggie Udon Soup
Yield: 3 servings

Ingredients:

• Broth:
• 3 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled (use a spoon to scrape off the skin) and chopped into 1/4 inch thick rounds
• 1/2 large carrot, chopped into 1/2 inch rounds
• 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 5 cups vegetable stock or water
• 10 sprigs cilantro
• Other ingredients:
• 7 ounces udon (find in a Japanese supermarket/specialty store or online)--rice noodles or soba would also be good!
• 1/2 head of broccoli (mind was leftover from roasting a head)
• 1 red pepper, cut into thin strips
• 1/2 large carrot (the other half), cut into matchsticks
• 1 rounded teaspoon red miso paste
• 5-6 green onions, white and light green parts thinly sliced
• *Note: use whatever veggies you have leftover! Thug Kitchen suggests thinly sliced snowpeas in place of the red pepper, but I bought red peppers at Costco so....
• For serving:
• lime
• serrano chile or sriracha
• sesame oil (I didn't do this but it sounds good!)

Method: 

1. In a medium/large pot, heat over medium heat and then add the carrot and ginger chunks. Cook without oil, stirring occasionally, for a few minutes, until the carrots start to brown. Add garlic and stir again for about a minute to take the edge off. Add the stock or water and cilantro and bring to a simmer for 15 minutes.
2. While you're waiting, cook the noodles according to the package. Mine went for 5 minutes into boiling water and were rinsed after cooking. Set the noodles aside (it's okay if they don't stay hot).
3. Chop up the rest of the veggies! Once the stock is done with its 15 minutes, remove the ginger, garlic, cilantro, and carrot as best you can. 
4. Add anything that you want to cook a bit to the stock now: broccoli if it's raw, red peppers, etc. I left the carrots raw, but you do you. Cook for just long enough for the veggies to lose their rawness--a couple of minutes. 
5. Stir the miso paste and a ladle or two of stock together in an extra bowl, then dump back in the soup. and stir to combine.
6. Put some noodles and carrots in a bowl, and ladle the soup over everything. Serve with garnishes or an egg as desired! (if you let this sit for a minute the carrots and noodles can warm up a bit).
7. Enjoy!

Recipe slightly adapted from Thug Kitchen.

Saag Paneer [mini-post]

So, this kind of blew my mind. Once you get the ingredients for Indian food, you can make Indian food!

Aarti's party on Food Network gave me the glory of this recipe, so I'm not going to wax on too much. Just know that the paneer is marinated and fried. As in, fried cheese!! Find the recipe here.

P.S. I didn't make my own paneer and it was still amazing. We got ours at Costco, and apparently you can freeze it so...looking forward to many more paneer filled meals.

P.P.S. Don't overeat on this. It's easy to because it is dense and delicious, but you will regret it.

P.P.P.S. I bought naan from safeway to eat with this. There are only so many new things one can try at once. Don't let anything limit you from trying new food!

The Best Lentil Salad

Happy New Year!

Of course, it's January 1st and everyone's all about resolutions. But that's not really why I'm writing about vegetarian salad.

See? I made cake too!

Well, the cake was for Christmas dinner. Joy the Baker wrote the recipe, so all due credit...her baking brain is on point! It's a soft cake lifted entirely by separated eggs (no flour), intensely chocolately with melted dark chocolate, and gussied up with orange zest and freshly grated nutmeg. I highly recommend it!

But this salad...this salad!! It's my favorite kind of salad. Legumey protein, all the flavor, and everything chopped up into the same size small pieces.

Does it ever bother you how hard it is to get a bite of salad with each component on it? Like, trying to get a toasted pecan, a sliver of dried apricot, greens, and a crouton on a fork is an unduly trying challenge.

You can eat this salad with a SPOON! Forks work too. I bet a spork would be splendid. I might stay away from eating off a knife if I were you, but hey...whatever pickles your caper.

Speaking of which! This salad also has capers, which you can't see because they look just like overgrown lentils. But their bright brininess, combined with earthy lentils, bitter and crunchy radish, sharp red onion, salty and tangy goat cheese, and herbaceous parsley make an awesome combo. It helps that the dressing has 10 different spices, almost as many as KFC chicken.

Got that? This salad is once spice away from being as delicious as fried chicken!

Not.

Anyway, the combination is the brainchild of Sarah at My New Roots. There's all the warm holiday spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and even cardamom!), plus cayenne, coriander, cumin, and turmeric. The combination is unexpected, leaning towards curry but not quite, a delicious and unexpected melange. It will seem like a lot of spices for the salad, but trust me when I say it makes a ton.

Cheers!

I had New Years dinner with 5 friends from high school, a tradition we've been doing since, well, high school! Everyone brought their A-game to the potluck, and we ate like queens, including making just a small dent in the bowl of lentils. It was lovely to see them all again and reconnect!

Chicken tacos, fruit salad, parmesan risotto, and of course, LENTILS!

Here's the recipe, with a few modifications! But use what you have, and what's in season, and what you like.

The Best Lentil Salad
Yield: 8 or 9 cups of salad. It's like a LOT. My friends and I hardly made a dent in the bowl.

To cook the lentils:

• 2 1/4 cups (1 lb.) Du Puy lentils, cooked (French green lentils from the bulk bins at whole foods did the trick...they need to keep their shape, so red or yellow lentils won't work as well)
• 32 oz box of vegetable or chicken stock

Rinse and sort the lentils to make sure there are no stones mixed in there. Put lentils and stock into a pot and add water to bring liquid level a few inches above the surface of the lentils. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer and cook for 15-20 minutes, checking for doneness frequently near the last 5 minutes. Strain and rinse, then put in a big mixing bowl with...

• 1 medium red onion, finely diced
• 1 cup dried currants (soak in hot water for 5 minutes if they're old and crusty like mine were)
• 1/3 cup capers (basically a whole jar)
• 5-6 radishes, thinly sliced (I used a food processor, but a mandoline would also work)

Vinaigrette: While the lentils are cooking, shake all ingredients in a leak-proof container. Then, toss with salad ingredients

• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 Tbsp. maple syrup
• 1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 1/2 tsp. pepper
• 1 tsp. ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp. turmeric
• 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
• 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

Before serving, add in, or top each bowl as desired with:

• 1 cup parsley, roughly chopped
• 1 cup crumbled goat cheese

Recipe adapted slightly from My New Roots.