Soups for Winter: Asian Vegetable and Noodle Broth

The arrival of winter means soups, pies and other warm, hearty foods, well, provided you don't live in the tropics. To fill up before heading off to work with grease laden food at my favourite place of employment I whipped up this clean tasting Asian-style broth -- hopefully it'll keep me from scarfing down chips at the end of my shift!

Asian Vegetable & Noodle Broth -- serves 1

500 ml water
2 cm chunk of fresh ginger
the juice of 1/4 of a lime
2-3 springs of fresh coriander, picked, no stems
120 g bok choy, chiffonade (thinly sliced)
60 g of firm tofu, 1 cm cubes
4 g of Asian rice seasoning (Furikake -- for rice balls, inari, etc-- a mixture of shredded seaweed, sesame seeds, etc.)
22 g rice stick noodles
10 ml light soy sauce
2 ml kecap manis (sweet soy sauce)
1 spring onion, cut into 3 portions

Bring the water to a boil along with the ginger root, rice noodles, rice seasoning, soy sauce and kecap manis. Turn down to a simmer and add the tofu, bok choy. Simmer until the noodles are soft and bok choy is tender. Before serving remove spring onion and ginger root. Garnish with fresh coriander and add a squeeze of lime. After finishing the broth you'll find crunchy toasted sesame seeds and shredded nori at the bottom of your bowl for added texture and interest.

108 calories/3.3 g fat/9.1 g protein/98mg calcium

Dirty Tuesday: Asian Super Stores

A new urban-sleek-chic Asian supermarket opened up in Melbourne Central, which is great it you happened to be at Coles and need tofu puffs. However, if you happen to be shopping at Safeway in the QV and need tofu puffs, look no further than Laguna on the second level. It's not sleek and doesn't smell like flowers, but it's rather comprehensive as far as my limited knowledge of Asian products go. I can't read the labels on half of the things in there but I managed to find: tamarind puree (for marinating my tempeh), agar agar (for vodka jelly shots), square rice noodles for kuay tieow-inspired (pronounced: koy-tiao) stir fries and a very authentic tasting pad thai sauce with very bad translations on the label.

I've recently become a fan of tempeh after fashioning a tempeh wrap at work for dinner. The key to making tempeh palatable is marinating it, like tofu, which is what I did for this week's stir fry: Pad Thai-style Kuay Tieow with tamarind-soy tempeh (square rice noodles, vegetables flavoured with pad thai sauce and sauteed tempeh marinated in soy sauce and tamarind puree).

Also on this week's menu...

Honey-Roasted Eggplant and Leek Salad with orzo, sun dried tomatoes and parsley
Channa Dahl with Brown Rice and plenty of fresh coriander
Macaroni Gratinate with a Roasted Red Capsicum Sauce, spinach and Feta

Chez Moi, it's what's for dinner

I had my second demo today. The menu for my practicals on Monday will include: Stir Fried Lemon Chicken, Fried Rice, Scones with Chantilly Cream, Potage Crécy (a lovely carrot puree) and a Ceasar Salad - a very non-vegetarian friendly menu. I really don't understand what Chef Simon Rimmer said vegetarian food being labour intensive. If you want labour intensive try breaking down a chicken, deboning it and chopping into the bits you need! The chicken we'll be using for Monday's practicals is whole, not conveniently prepackaged. Even though it gross me out heaps to watch the instructor "break down" the chicken, including pulling out the next from the chicken's chest cavity, I took down some rather serious notes. My new friend Sazia always invites me share her tuna sandwhich with her; my response is always I'm vegetarian; hers is always "Well then what do you eat?" I can see how it might be difficult to come up with a vegetarian dish when you usually centre your dishes around meat. If you take away the meat then you usually have some rather uninspiring sides to nibble at.

I feel so energized after demo days, I feel like going home and cooking -- which is exactly what I did despite being rather tired from going to bed at 3am and hungover from imbibing numerous tangerine voda spritzers. I'm now hidding in my apartment instead of attending a birthday party I said I would go to. I simply can't be bothered to get dressed and pretend like I feel like socializing with people I don't know. After school I went to a few shops and picked of some tapas plates, individual pot pie ramkins and a brand new wok. I used the shopping as encouragement to walk the 30-40 minutes it takes to walk if I dont' take public transport. I wanted to practice the stir frying techniques from the demo, but I couldn't be bothered with going through all of the trouble to properly season the new wok. The photo above is an attempt to practice proper presentation and portion control. Voilá, a sesame-soy zucchinni and tofu stir fry on a bed of sprouts.

The neat thing about school is getting to take home leftovers, which is also a negative because the patisserie students ALWAYS have extra cakes that they put out in the break room. Constant supply of cake means extra calories, which means extra kilos. Each student has to make their own cake, whatever doesn't get eaten has to go in the bid sadly enough. I must remember to bring containers for my food on Monday. Everything is unedible except for the scones, which looked and tasted a whole heck of a lot like what North Americans call biscuits. I've never had an American-style scone, but they definitely don't look like what I had today!

I say tomayto, you say tomahto. Well, I actually say tomahtos now...if I hear a work repeated enough it sticks. Just like the words ginormous or fantabulous.