This soup is brought to you by technology, love, and the letter D.

 Made with love. And edamame. 

If that doesn't cure you, what will?

As happens from time to time, I was struck by an illnes last week, and no amount of anything seemed to be getting it to move. No, this is was not any simple summer cold. Those are awful but go away. This wasn't even my standard "oh, fine, I'll work out more" seasonal cough - that involves no actual working out, save for the fact that a few days into it my lungs usually are sore and it hurts my entire torso to cough. This was something else entirely.

This was a cough that was as bad as the one described, but somehow even worse. This was a fever - a really soaring high fever, at that, up and down and off and on. Chills, of the variety that made me look psychotic in a sweater in Chicago in July, and being dizzy and oh, the endless coughing and oh, the frightening fever. It made me take my first sick day since I started this job over a year a go. And I've been sick, people. I went went blind once (it's a long story) and opened that store on time and stayed there all day. I was on time this time too, but I had been arranging someone to come take my shift before I even made it in.

And as I was working a double, with interns, this was pretty much a huge favor. So I missed a day of work, then I missed two days of work, then I had two days off planned anyway but I spent them dying in my apartment. With my cat and my netflix and, sometimes, my roommate. Who made me this soup.

He was starting to get sick, also. And Kelly was texting me that she wished she were here to make me soup when Matt (also via text, from work) asked me if I wanted soup. She relayed to him a soup recipe and he made some additions or changes and lo! A Ginger Chicken Udon soup was served to me. We watched something on Netflix. I tried not to die.

This soup is delicious. I'm not sure how he did it. I'll have to ask. But it's delicious. It features heavily on the ginger root, all diced and steamed and cooked up with some steamed chicken and veg (including cress!) and a delicious broth. Spicy! Awesome. With lazy fat udon noodles from a packet I'd almost forgotten about in the fridge, comforting and invigorating and soothing.

A rough list of ingredients:

- chicken broth
- chicken, steamed
- edamame
- udon noodles
- bell pepper
- diced ginger root
- garlic
- carrot

It didn't herald the end of my sickness, but it certainly brought an evening of comfort and my fever even dropped down to Not Making Me Contemplate the ER levels, which was really the second major thing I wanted. I even coughed less!

That could be due to many factors. Namely, my super awesome Love You Lots So Don't Die Soup.

YEARS AGO, MORE THAN TWO

but god do i love this picture

Thanks, guys. You've always got my back.

Valentine's Day of the Tiger

 

Yeah, I gave someone those. 

Not the really awful looking ones, clearly. 

Delicious though. Very light. Sugar! Nom. 

Valentine's Day was also Lunar New Year this year, which played right into my hot little hands because this year I had an idea to make something cool and holiday appropriate, 'cause I'm sweet like that. Plus, I'd given fortune cookies a go ages and ages ago and learned some valuable lessons in my failure.

I learned that the dough makes a fantastic apple pie crust.

I learned also that I hated life.

But I've grown! I've learned! I've made tuilles! I've discovered patience I didn't know I had!

Well, now I've learned new lessons. Such as it is damn fucking hard to make these buggers. But filled with fortunes like "Give Beth a present!", "You will eat a delicious cookie.", and other things for my friends and then sweeter ones, cleverly, rolled up instead of folded...

Yes, much better.


I think next time I'd involve star anise and a few other things, but we'll see. This drove me insane. Ha ha.


Fortune Cookies of Stress (but delicious stress),from The District Domestic's recipe.


- three egg whites
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup butter, melted
- 1/4 tsp vanilla (I used more. god, I love vanilla.)
- one cup flour

Preheat the oven to 350.

Mix all ingredients together, chuck dough in the fridge for around fifteen (I did longer) minutes, then put a spoon of batter on a well-greased cookie sheet. Spread it around thin, very thin, until the diameter is three inches. Cook for five minutes (browned edges).

Now, be quick here, and put your fortune in the cookie before you either a) roll it up like I did or b) fold it like a fortune cookie. Use a muffin pan to help shape these babies while they cool.

And best of luck to you, strangers, as you attempt this.

If you don't need it, please god tell me the secret!

If you do, then you, like me, will likely just really enjoy the fun of this.

June Daring Cooks - Delicious Pot stickers!

I've made pot stickers before, but was really excited to see that the Daring Cooks challenge was -drumroll- pot stickers! This month's challenge was hosted by Jen from use real butter had pretty flexible requirements - really, the main thing was to make your own dough to form the wrappers. In all the time that I've made potstickers, I've never done this - I would buy wrappers at the grocery store and just have at. It's the same way I make ravioli, generally, as well.

I'm sort of all about the filling.
This time, however, I settled myself into the idea and prepared to curse and then be delighted. I gathered up a soda bottle (switched, quickly, for a whiskey one) to use as a rolling pin and hopped to.


Given Recipe: (double this for the amount of filling, but easier to make it in 2 batches - or just halve the filling recipe)
- 2 cups (250g) all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup (113g) warm water
- flour for work surface

Make the dough: In a large bowl mix flour with 1/4 cup of water and stir until water is absorbed. Continue adding water one teaspoon at a time and mixing thoroughly until dough pulls away from sides of bowl. We want a firm dough that is barely sticky to the touch.

And then: Knead the dough about twenty strokes then cover with a damp towel for 15 minutes. Take the dough and form a flattened dome. Cut into strips about 1 1/2 to 2 inches wide. Shape the strips into rounded long cylinders. On a floured surface, cut the strips into 3/4 inch pieces. Press palm down on each piece to form a flat circle (you can shape the corners in with your fingers). With a rolling pin, roll out a circular wrapper from each flat disc. Take care not to roll out too thin or the dumplings will break during cooking - about 1/16th inch. Leave the centers slightly thicker than the edges. Place a tablespoon of filling in the center of each wrapper and fold the dough in half, pleating the edges along one side.


-
Now. I had a pretty good time with the dough. I rolled it out in very small batches and then made a turkey filling.

- ground turkey
- brown sugar (a few spoons)
- diced onion
- diced garlic (a few cloves)
- sesame oil
- honey (a drizzle or two, really)
- soy sauce
- grated ginger
- cayenne pepper
- sweet basil seeds


I cooked the garlic, onion, ginger, and basil seeds in a little butter, then added the ground turkey. A little salt, a little pepper, a drizzle of honey and the sesame oil and soy sauce (to taste). Cook through, add cayenne (if using) and taste. I love sesame oil, so I generally add more and have found that I usually end up with a little more sweetness than spice. It's delicious!

I spooned the filling into my wrappers, closed them up, and - despite a deep deep love of steaming these babies - tossed them in with a little butter and pan fried them.


My dipping sauce is honey, sesame oil, and soy sauce - given circumstances, I would add sweet rice wine to mix in, but I was out. At any rate. It was delicious. I'm planning on trying it again soon with a different type of filling (one that will have actual measurements, etc, sorry guys!) but I was pretty pleased with myself.

Easy Egg Drop - involve the kids!

There aren't pictures of this soup today because I wasn't able to take any - you ever try cooking with pre-schoolers? Trust me, you need more than one person or only one kid if you expect to get pictures of just about anything. Plus, scalding kids with hot soup doesn't go down all that well, even in Monressori enviroments. And as a former educator (hard to believe at twenty-four you are a 'former' anything...), I ought to know.

One of the mothers in my primary class gave me this recipe. It's a very simple, very cheap Chinese egg drop soup that takes practically no time to make. I like to whip it up when I want just a little something warm or if I feel like my pot stickers don't need a full-fledged stir-fry to make it a meal (or when i don't just feast on potstickers, fighting people for my share). Earlier today, I heated up leftover soup and just ate it with some delicious toast.

God, I love toast. I could just write a whole entry about toast. But this is soup time! So. Focus. Soup.

It is, in fact, so simple that if you want to let your kids help you out - you can! You'll want to be keeping a close eye, but kids like helping out. I mean, I don't have any, but I arguably once had upwards of twenty...so...just saying. Here is what you need:

- green onion (or onion. whatever. green onion is the best though and, when i'm onionless, i just shrug and don't bother. god i love this soup, it is so forgiving of poverty), sliced fine
- chicken stock (veg would be fine too)
- sesame oil
- egg(s), lightly beaten
- slivered garlic, though feel free to add whatever veg you like or even omit the garlic. Although why anyone would ever omit garlic from anything is beyond me...

So. You have your chicken stock all nicely hot and boiling, add the garlic or any veg that needs cooked. Salt, pepper, and just a little bit of sesame oil. About a teaspoon or so per cup of broth, depending on how much you love sesame. Slowly pour the egg into the soup, stiring quickly if you want shredded egg, slowly if you don't. Taste and season as you need, then sprinkle some green onion in and enjoy.

Clearly, the favorite thing the kids like to do is stir the egg. It's pretty exciting for them.

I have made this soup so many times that it is by now second nature. And while there are probably loads of other ways to do it, this is what I do.

My First Wok, My Latest Stir-fry.

The wok you see in the picture is the first wok I ever purchased. I was a junior in college and had my very own studio apartment, complete with a separate, real-sized kitchen. The majority of my kitchen supplies came from a previous roommate (he had far too many pots and pans, thus I got the battered ones) and a run to Ikea for things like knives and silverware and dishes. It wasn't until several months later that I decided I wanted a wok and I bundled myself up and went down the street to the local Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Once there, I agonized over which one I wanted, did I want a steamer, was a bamboo spatula really a good idea, did I plan on frying things... My first real kitchen purchase, not done because I needed the item, persay, but because I wanted it.

I made a selection. Sort of a My First Wok kit, but I think I actually giggled when I paid for it and hustled it back to my studio.

I loved that wok.

I didn't just stir-fry my food with it. I used it as if all the skillets and pots I had previous used had suddenly vanished, as if I didn't have a perfectly good microwave - I'd reheat my leftover Thai food, I made soup, and I vividly remember using my new wok to make a grilled cheese sandwich. At the time, I swore it was the best grilled cheese I had ever had, but that was really just the novelty.

Also, I really enjoyed saying "wok wok wok" under my breath whenever I used it.

Inventive (or strangeness, but who is to say which?) aside, I did use that wok to work on stir-frying meals for myself and, later, others. This was not the first time I set about to cook something, this was not the first time I fell for my kitchen, but this did really kick-start a passion in me to work on my cooking skills. Like many poor college students, sometimes my "gourmet cuisine" was actually a packet of ramen noodles with added peas and a quickly scrambled egg. And, really, there is nothing wrong with that fast (delicious) lunch.

I love stir-fry, love having crisp veg and tender chicken, love figuring out sauces and flavors and how easy it feels to accomplish a pretty healthy meal. I ditched (read: gave to a friend) my wok when I moved across the country, but didn't reclaim it when I returned to Chicago. I had gotten over the joy of a wok and just started using pans, but about a week ago I moved in with a friend of mine.

She has a wonderfully sized kitchen - better than my last two apartments. She has a wok. She (now, we, I suppose) also happen to live very close to Thai Nam and a host of other amazing places and restaurants. So, when I decided that I wanted to cook a stir-fry, I scoped out some produce places nearby and gathered chicken and the veg that I wanted and then dropped by Thai Nam to pick up noodles. Then, enjoying some white wine, I put together this dish.


Tipsy Chicken and Wide Rice Noodles

- rice flake noodles
- extra virgin sesame oil
- grapeseed oil
- soy sauce
- white wine
- boneless, skinless chicken breast (cut into chunks)
- half a large onion (roughly chopped)
- mushrooms (sliced)
- red bell pepper (sliced) (you can also add any other color peppers as well)
- snow peas (although, I forgot them, so I used regular frozen)
- celery (sliced thin)
- garlic (however many cloves you want, sliced thin or diced)
- basil
- water chestnuts or bamboo shoots (or both or none)

First off, boil some water and pour it over the noodles in a large bowl. Follow the directions on the packet (for however many noodles you want), but I tend to let them soak around seven minutes. I generally forget that I've got them waiting for me, but when they are done they will be white, opaque, and, well, it's cooked noodles. Sticky to touch, but still cooked noodles. You'll drain them, then ignore them.

Now, add your cooking oil (I used grapeseed, but peanut or canola are also fine) to the wok. Add garlic, basil, and onion. Stir for a few minutes, then add chicken. Season a little, stirring plenty, and pour in a small amount of wine (a few tablespoons, though you can more if you prefer. you could leave the whole thing out if you wanted.). As the wine cooks off, you should add some soy sauce and sesame oil, then cook chicken through. Add veg and cook until most are quite tender - the celery and water chestnuts will still be crisp. Drizzle some honey onto the mixture and keep stirring. You'll likely want a little more seasoning and soy sauce/sesame oil.

Add in the now-cooked and drained noodles. Continue to stir-fry until the noodles are heated and seasoned. You may need to add more oil at any point during this process, as you do not want anything sticking to the pan. When everything is cooked and seasoned to your satisfaction, simply remove from heat and serve still warm.


There are a lot of variations on this dish and I know there are things I wanted to have done differently (some changes I already made to this recipe), but I threw this together just a few nights ago and was pretty pleased with it. And, anyway, I haven't had the time to perfect it like my Mango-Chicken Stir-fry.