le sauce

spicy mushroom hot pot

first taste: soup and rice

Childhood picture books, stories and TV shows that depicted food and dining made a real impression on me. Illustrations of steaming bowls of pasta or a piece of toast smothered in purple jam gave me my first taste of foods I'd yet to try, and are sometimes still the archetypes I hold food up to today. Instead of simply reminisce, I'm going to bring those dishes to life the way I imagined they'd be.

This is a story of a meal that I tasted first at home, not tastes imagined after being influenced by books or media, as with the other recipes in this particular column. I laid eyes on the book Chicken Soup and Rice after years of eating more than my share of bowlfuls.

The way I remember it, we--my cousin and I who grew up in a household of parents, aunts, grandparents--were expected to eat fish curries and rotis and whatever the adults were eating, for sure. But like any kids, we could be picky, and like any busy adults, there were times they just couldn't force us to eat more/worry about how little we'd eaten/deal.with.us. At times like those, we were fed "soup and rice".

Soup-and-rice, said more as one, three-syllable word, referred to salty, packaged, instant chicken noodle soup (which I never tired of and was sure to eat), with cooked white rice stirred in (always on hand as in any Asian household) to fortify the meal and to reassure our family that we fed. To appease us, they often made two packets of soup, strained the noodles out of one and added them to our broth and rice and that measly amount of noodles from just one package. The short, soft and slippery noodles were the treat that always got us to finish our bowls. I developed rituals where I managed to eat as much noodle-less spoonfuls of rice, drink the broth and be left with a glut of the reserved noodles at the bottom, hoarded in 5 minutes to be enjoyed in 5 greedy seconds.

That was pleasure enough but then, in one of the earliest examples I can recall, I saw something I was used to eating depicted elsewhere! Someone else put rice in their soup!? It might not seem like much but it was a validation of sorts. Perhaps you'll understand why if I tell you that when I was finally allowed to eat lunch at school (I hated being walked home for lunch when all of my friends got to bond at the lunchtables) my mom and I had to learn about cold-cuts and what actually might comprise a child's lunchtime sandwich (her use of bread was largely confined to spreading chilies on it). I felt out of touch with the rituals and foods of a country I was born in and one that, though cultrually diverse, still sent their kids to school with oddly identical lunches. Kids who knew instinctively how to order food on "hot dog day" and knew what they liked on their pizza. Finding a book about soup and rice was a taste of something familiar and some sort of nod to what went on in my home. This might have been my earliest taste of what it was to have my food--therefore my culture--therefore a large part of me--acknowledged.

Chicken Soup and Rice words and photos by Maurice Sendak.

Aside from all of that, the book had so much more appeal. I mean just look at this book! How fun! I love Maurice Sendak, as an author and as a honest, sometimes crusty, brilliant person. I love that this book is a book of months, in which each spawns a different season to enjoy chicken soup and rice, in the sea, with March winds knocking over and lapping up your bowls, and for having irreverant sentences like

"Whoppie once, Whoppie twice, Whoopie Chicken Soup and Rice!"

almost too good: rice noodle-wrapped fritters with sesame and hoisin

Congee is so good, as you probably know. If you're no stranger to it, you probably enjoy congee with fried dough fritters for dipping, yes? But have you had the fritters wrapped in rice noodles? They're my favourite. They usually come with sesame paste and hoisin sauce for an added sweetness and umami hit. It's almost too much of a good thing--the kind I eat too fast, too greedily because I want to taste everything again again again!

Sometimes, sometimes, I even pass up chili oil to enjoy it just as pictured above--that should tell you something about how good an experience this is.

sesame somen noodles with enoki mushrooms, napa and sprouts

Soba noodles are wonderful for many reasons, but the two that matter to me are that they're delicious and they play so well with others--meaning they suck up any flavour thrown at them. After a very quick boil in little water (because they're short, I don't boil them in huge pot of water like I do with linguine, even though you're probably supposed to) and a dip in a no-cook sauce of soy sauce, sesame oil and scallions, you have a meal on your hands. Great soba noodles can be hard to find, because instead of being 100% buckwheat flour, or close to it, they've often been cut with a lot of wheat flour, making the texture and taste different from better quality, more pure soba. However, there are times I want a more subtle, less sweet noodle than buckwheat noodles, like when I have a slightly more complex sauce, and one that does the same great job of absorbing flavour. Enter the somen noodle.

Made entirely of wheat flour (and salt and water), they're thin like soba noodles and springier than pasta, and they suck up a ton of sauce. They seem just as starchy as soba noodles so I rinse them in cold water after cooking them too. They're my noodle of choice for this tangy sesame sauce but if you can't find somen noodles, rice noodles would work really well too, or by all means, use soba. 

The sauce here has a big job, to flavour the food it touches long after it's not around to be sipped itself anymore, just like a marinade.  So, like a marinade, it's got big flavour: heat from that minced garlic and ginger, sweetness from a little sugar, tartness from orange juice and, most importantly, that sesame oil used both in the sauce and to sautée the vegetables is my must-have flavour with somen and soba noodles.

Unlike most recipes, this is not one you want to serve immediately, because the sauce makes everything slushy before its had time to be absorbed. You can eat this after a half-hour with the noodles sitting at room temperature or after a chill in the fridge. Essentially, this is a noodle salad, a perfect make-ahead meal, and it's kind of pretty too. The beautiful white colour of the somen strands made me opt for enoki mushrooms, sprouts and napa, as opposed to shiitake mushrooms or red cabbage for crunch. Feel free to make your palette more noisy where mine is neutral. And leave that red chili out if you want too. Red or not, you know I wasn't ever going to leave chilies out of mine. 

Sesame Somen Noodles

For the sauce:
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp grated garlic
1 tsp grated ginger
1 c orange juice
2 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp mirin
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp kosher salt

For the noodles:
1 tbs sesame oil
1 red bird chili, destemmed, thinly sliced (optional)
300 g napa cabbage, thinly sliced on a bias, a small handful of leaves reserved for garnish
1/2 tsp salt
125 g bean sprouts, tails tipped, a small handful reserved for garnish
170 g enoki mushrooms, trimmed, a small handful reserved for garnish
180 g somen noodles, boiled and rinsed under cold water and drained well
3 tbs toasted sesame seeds

First, make the sauce. Heat sesame oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and ginger, stir and sautée for 1 minute. Add the remaining ingredients, bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes or until the sauce has reduced by more than half (to about 1/2 cup.) Set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, proceed with the rest of the recipe. Heat the sesame oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the red chili, if using, for 30 seconds. Add the napa and half the salt, and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the sprouts, toss well and cook for 30 seconds, then add the mushrooms and the remaining salt and stir well. Cook just until the mushrooms have wilted slightly. Set aside to cool slightly. 

Transfer noodles to a large bowl. Pour half of the sauce over them and mix with chopsticks or two forks, separating the noodles and coating them well. Add the napa and mushroom mixture and stir well. Pour a little more of the dressing over top, reserving about 1 tbs for serving, and mix the vegetables into the noodles. Set aside for 15 minutes to allow the mixture to cool to room temperature and absorb the sauce, or refrigerate if you wish to serve it cool.

Before serving, add the reserved vegetables, pour on the reserved dressing, and sprinkle with the toasted sesame seeds.

Makes 4 small servings or 2-3 large servings. 

sesame soba noodle lunch

if packaged ramen noodles weren't, possibly, the worst thing to consume, i would eat one every day for lunch FOREVER and be extremely happy. but they're equally irresistible and scary, so i'm always trying to come up with ways to imitate and curb my cravings for them. a broth of water flavoured with dried shiitake and seaweed is usually where i start, and miso soup has often followed. but this time i turned to a sesame paste in my freezer from a recipe i made months ago. this particular sesame paste was flavoured with tomatoes and herbs, which i think is why it worked so well to round out the broth. and the nutty sesame itself made the soup luscious and aromatic. it was never intended to be a soup base so i can't fault this paste for not being perfect in this, but it was enough to get me thinking about how to create a healthy, vegetarian, ramen (or soba noodle!) soup option. something to work on, and i can't wait to get started.

sometimes i stir an egg into my soup while it's simmering, but in my lunch pictured above, i decided to poach one whole in the soup. toasted sesame seeds and scallions are always nice but do you ever put seasoned nori on your soups? that's nice too. do you have favourite additions? if you want to share them, i'd be grateful, as well as any ideas for that soup base. maybe we can come up with the perfect recipe before there's snow on the ground and we want need this soup every day.

zaru soba feast

it's been hot in the city! so on monday, i served dinner cold. ok, truthfully, dinner at my house has to sit for a portrait most nights, so it's often served cold. but this time, it was supposed to be cold. that's the beauty of zaru soba noodles on a busy, hot weeknight.

good noodles are key. i am lucky enough to have several unique kinds in my pantry--a gift given to me by a sweet co-worker. i used black rice (therefore technically not soba) noodles and very subtly flavoured green tea soba noodles. they were delicious, but i would still say that 100% buckwheat soba noodles are my favourite.

after noodles, it's all about the sauce. i turned to the amazing japanese food blog "just hungry" for tips on making a vegetarian dashi (i used both seaweed and shitake in mine) and kaeshi to combine for my sauce. this may sound fussy, but the hands-on time was, oh...about five minutes.

after that, it was just a matter of boiling, rinsing and serving the soba noodles. making the little bundles took an extra couple of minutes but it was so worth it. you can pick up a perfect little serving to dip into your sauce, instead of having to battle tangled noodles each time. 

i had a a bunch of water spinach and some napa cabbage that needed to be used up. i steamed the spinach over the same water i was boiling for the noodles, and sprinkled toasted sesame seeds and a drizzle of sesame oil on top. the napa cabbage was sliced and served raw to be dipped and crunched. the only thing missing was a cold beer. how i could have overlooked that, i don't know.

ramen noodle week pt. ii

i almost ruined the whole soup while i watched the canadian women's hockey team take the gold medal! but i salvaged tonight's shiitake and white miso ramen, thickened with egg and topped with dumplings, chinese water spinach and some leftover seaweed from tuesday's ramen soup.

i think i prefer tuesday's seaweed broth but i like the addition of the egg tonight to thicken the soup. and, um, i took a picture of my hot sauce-stained soup to show you. i know, it's almost sacrilege. but i do have a few spoonfuls pre-hot sauce dousing to enjoy the broth in its natural state, i swear.

 

   

ramen noodle week pt. i

i bought fresh ramen noodles so i'm experimenting with a couple of homemade ramen soups this week. tonight, a seaweed-steeped broth, with red, coarse miso added late, and pak choy, a few strips of the boiled seaweed, a mollet egg, toasted black sesame seeds and hot sauce. though the amount of hot sauce pictured is not even a quarter of what i end up using. my ramen broth, like my pho broth, ends up the colour of tomato water, i'm slightly embarrassed to say. can't help it, it's just the way i'm used to it. maybe i'll show you in part ii... 

fried rice noodles in black bean sauce

 

when i was in university, there was a chinese food truck that sat on elm st., around the corner from the main hall, and at the time it didn't seem scary to get lunch from there several times a week. in retrospect...sketchy? yes. delicious? YES. it was from this truck that i had my first taste of rice noodles in black bean sauce. i hated it.

all of it. the black bean sauce was far too subtle for either what i was expecting or what i was used to. and the noodles were unlike the rice noodles i'd had before (the thin, al dente sticks found in south asian cuisine), they were sort of gummy and slippery. have i enticed you to try this recipe yet? i know--but stay with me.

i was intrigued enough by my lunch partners' common appreciation for this dish to try it a few more times. what was i missing? once i got past my expectations and stopped comparing it to other things, i finally tasted the appeal. it was actually the subtleties that were so great. by my second serving, i was enjoying the totally distinct flavour of this black bean sauce, rich in its own way without being overwhelming (the way you might expect something fermented to be) and the broad, plain noodles were the that perfect thing to cling to the thick sauce and let its quiet taste shine. i became hooked, ordering those noodles every chance i got, both from that truck and at restaurants. black bean spareribs (the tiny pork short ribs) became my favourite dish at dim sum. 

 

but it would still be years before i figured out how to recreate the flavour at home. jarred black bean sauce is tasty but it's not the flavour found in those restaurant meals. that flavour comes from the fermented black beans themselves. they are much easier to find in your chinese grocery store than sichuan pepper, which i've also started adding to many stir frys. they add a luciousness to sauces that i have a hard time describing. i hope you will try them and see for yourself why they are wonderful, as well as discover the difference between store-bought black bean sauce and this very simple homemade version.

   

fried rice noodles in black bean sauce

2 lbs (about 900 g) fresh rice noodles (if yours are in sheets, cut them into 1/2-inch ribbons)
1 bunch baby bok choy (or pak choy, or other asian green), stems sliced and separated from leaves
2 cups sliced, fresh shiitake mushrooms, stems discarded (or crimini mushrooms)
1/2 medium red onion, sliced 
1 tbs corn starch (or tapioca starch), dissolved in 1 cup water
2 tbs fermented black beans, roughly chopped
1/4 tsp sichuan pepper, ground or crushed 
1 large clove garlic, minced
2 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs chinese cooking wine
1/4 tsp salt, plus 1/4 tsp
3 tbs peanut or vegetable oil

in a large bowl, briefly immerse rice noodles in hot water, separating noodles with your fingers. remove noodles from water and shake off as much water as possible. lay noodles on a clean dishcloth and spread them out to dry.

meanwhile, add the dissolved cornstarch to a bowl, and add the black beans, sichuan pepper, garlic, soy sauce, chinese cooking wine and 1/4 tsp salt. mix well and set aside. 

heat a wok or a large skillet over medium-high heat. allow it to get hot before adding 2 tbs of oil. let the oil heat up before adding the noodles. (if the wok and then the oil are allowed to heat well, the noodles are less apt to stick.) add the noodles and fry, stirring constantly but making sure they fry against the oiled surface too. after a couple of minutes they will become softer and slightly shiny; you can also taste one to check for done-ness. at this point, remove them from the wok and set aside in a bowl. 

add the remaining tbs of oil to the wok and allow it to heat. add the onions and stir-fry for 2 minutes. add the bok choy stems and mushrooms and fry for another 2 minutes. then add the leaves and sprinkle with remaining 1/4 tsp of salt. stir to combine well. with your utensil, make a hole in the centre of the wok or pan, pushing the vegetables to the sides. stir the cornstarch mixture and add to the centre. allow it to cook against the heat of the pan for a minute (stirring if you have a well of liquid in the wok). then mix the sauce and vegetables together, add the noodles back to the wok and stir thoroughly so the sauce coats everything evenly. serve hot.

serves 4.