Vegetable soup with soba noodles

I used to dislike soup. Not in any really meaningful way--I didn't like cooked vegetables for a long time and soup always seemed like it should be reserved for cold winter days when I had a nasty cold. And it had to be Campbell's Chicken Noodle. No other would do. And then, I discovered ramen and stopped having anything in my soup but pre-fried noodles and 10,000% my daily allotment of sodium. And then, I moved out of my mom's house and I left college and I had, like, minus a million dollars all the time and soup suddenly became a lot more appealing. It's cheap, it's pretty filling, and even if you start with a ramen packet, you can make something pretty delicious and healthy by cutting back part of the seasoning packet and adding meat/veggies/eggs/whatever.

This does not involve a ramen packet, thankfully. It's a soup that I cobbled together today for me and Justin. We haven't been so good about that whole "eating more than one meal a day" thing and I figured soup would be a lovely lunch. We had picked up some soba noodles from Uwajimaya last time we went and I wanted to give them a whirl today.

Soba noodles are, basically buckwheat noodles, though they're also frequently augmented with some yam flour. They're a sickly color gray, but they have a mild and delicious taste with a pleasantly very slightly chewy texture. They're nice, give them a go!

So here's what I used in the soup:

From top left:

Chicken broth (preferably low-sodium)

Soy sauce

Eggs (one per person, so in this case, two)

Soba noodles

1/4 large onion

Worcestershire sauce

Hoisin saucse

Ginger

1 carrot

2 cloves of garlic

2 spears of celery

4 large spears of asparagus

Let's get this party started! Dice up your onion, like so:

It's diced, trust me. Now, mince yourself up some garlic. An easy way to do this is a 1-2 punch. Peel it, slice it into thick slices, and then squish each slice with the flat of your knife. It works like a charm and is way faster than mincing via chopping.

It'll look like when it's squished.

Slice your celery spears in half and then chop into dices:

Now, this carrot is really skinny. It's the Kate Moss of carrots. Usually, I advocate cutting carrots into long quarters and then dicing, but due to the skininess of this carrot, I went with really thin coins, like so:

Grate your ginger. For two people, aim for abooooooooooooout a teaspoon. A tad less is fine, a tad more is fine, whatevs. Ideally, you'll have a microplane or one of those badass Japanese ginger graters. I do not. I have a really crappy box grater with a side that has tiny holes, so I used that and scraped the ginger out of the inside. Also, buy a big honking root of ginger, peel it with a spoon (it works great trust me!) wrap it up, and freeze it. Just grate it straight out of the freezer. It'll keep for 900 years and you'll always have fresh ginger!

Add some oil to your soup pot (I went with sesame seed oil, but olive oil or vegetable oil or something would be just fine) and get it to medium heat. Add everything that I just told you to chop/mince/grate with a pinch of salt. Don't overdo the salt at this point! You're going to be adding some salty ingredients later on, so just add enough salt to get your veggies sweating!

Cut the tough ends off of your asparagus spears and cut them into thicker coins than you did the carrot. Set them aside while these veggies work their magic. Asparagus cooks pretty quickly and I don't like mushy veggies. EVER.

When your veggies are nice and soft, jack the heat up to high and add in about 3-4 cups of chicken stock. You can go all vegetarian on this and use mushroom stock or veggie stock or a combination of the two, and you can go vegan by omitting the egg and Worchestershire (unless you get an anchovy-free version of it, of course). Whatever you have on hand and whatever floats your boat. It's soup! You cannot fail!

Add a splash of soy sauce, a few drizzles of Worchestershire, and a small forkful of hoisin. Taste your soup liquid. If it needs something, add it. If it doesn't need anything, don't. If it's too salty, add some water. I added some pepper. I like pepper in everything.

I'll look like this. Well, mine looked like this:

Get your eggs scrambled with about a teaspoon of water. You want to thin them out a little bit. I was going for an egg drop soup consistency with the egg which requires it being able to be poured in a very fine stream. Get your soba noodles into the soup and let them boil for about five minutes. Just before they're done (they take about six minutes to cook through) lower the heat to a simmer and add your egg, so you have this:

Let the egg firm up in your soup before you try stirring it. You want feathers of eggs, not globs. Globs are gross. Believe me, I know.

Now, add your secret ingredient: Lemon pepper. You'll have to select that little area there to show it up. It's a secret, after all! Just add a pinch of it--maybe a quarter of a teaspoon to a half of a teaspoon to the whole pot. You want just a tiny, tiny bit of a lemony hint--something that is noticeable as separate from the other ingredients in the soup, but not instantly identifiable in such a small amount. I love using this in soups made with a predominately Japanese flavor palette.

Now, get that soup into some bowls and slurp to your heart's content! This is a pretty non-soupy soup, so having a fork (or chopsticks!) might be useful for eating it. A spoon might not cope with the soba noodles that well. You can avoid that problem by simply breaking up the soba noodles into 1-inch lengths. They're easy to break, so it won't take any time. You could do it as the veggies are softening up, if you wanted to.

And that's what you have, folks! A tart/sour soup with chewy, mild soba noddles and a delicious ginger kick!

Grilled Cheese

All right, ya'll. I love cheese. I do. I have, so far in my life, not yet met a cheese that I don't like. There have been cheeses that I thought I didn't like, but then I had more quality versions of those cheeses and was proven very, very wrong. I like cheese from sheep, goats, and cows. I like cheese that's hard and stinky, and cheese that's soft and mild. I like cheese that's yellow and cheese that's white and cheese that's really crazy colors. I like it cold, room temperature, and napalm. I just really, really like cheese. Which is pretty much the only reason I've got a grilled cheese post. I mean, it's grilled cheese. You take some bread, some butter, and some cheese and you make into something delicious.

I like to also add mustard and pepper, but I like a little bit of spice to my cheesy deliciousness. For this, I used:

Potato bread
Cheddar cheese (as usual, the sharper the better)
Asiago cheese
Grey Poupon (I'm so fancy!)
Pepper
Butter

So, get your cheese sliced. If you have pre-sliced cheese, you can ignore this step (obviously) but you're also a wuss. Kidding, kidding! I find that getting block cheese is more economical and so I tend to grate/slice my own. I have this really crummy box grater that's been with me for way beyond its natural life span that I use for all my cheese-destroying needs. Here's some cheese porn for you:

This is about enough for two sandwiches. Now, get your bread and butter it! Margarine is fine. Sometimes, when I don't feel like softening the butter, I just put the butter in the pan to melt and put the dry bread on top of it. As long as you get something buttery onto the bread and simultaneously into the pan, you're good.

Now, flip that bread over onto a plate (careful about the butter!) and get some mustard onto it. For grilled cheese, I like something a little spicier, like Grey Poupon, but any whole grain mustard would be really nice. Cheap Yellow mustard isn't quite right for this kind of sandwich. Unless you have provolone, in which case all bets are off.

Get your bread into your pan, on medium heat. I like a nonstick pan for this. The bread doesn't brown as darkly/quickly and you can get away with considerably less butter than you can with stainless steel. Cast iron would also be perfectly fine. I like to use more than one cheese for my grilled cheese sandwiches. This time, I had some cheddar and a tub of pre-grated Asiago, so I used those, but any cheese will do. Seriously, I've made these with spreadable goat cheese and it's delicious. Don't fear the cheese. The cheese should fear you. 

So slap a very thin layer of Asiago onto the mustard-covered bread! Don't lay it on too thick--you want it to melt with the cheddar, not next to it. We want our cheeses to fall in love and get married and have happy, cheesy, cholesterol-laden babies. Not greasy cheese divorce.

Then, add the cheddar in a thicker layer. Keep it nice and even. There's nothing worse than a fatty hunk of unmelted cheese in a grilled cheese sandwich.

Add another thin layer of Asiago and some pepper.

Stick the other piece of bread on and let it cook.

I can't tell you minute amounts or even correct burner temperature. I'm a very, very fiddly cook. I relentlessly mess with stuff until it's done, so I'm always fiddling with the heat, turning things over again and again, taking a peek at cheese meltyness. Just, you know, cook it till the first side is done and then flip it. I like it when it looks like this:

But you might like it a little paler.That's perfectly fine, just cook it over slightly lower heat and pay more attention to it. Make the other side look like the first side and make sure that cheese it totally melted! As much as I love cheese, overloading a grilled cheese sandwich can make cooking much longer and more complicated than it really needs to be, so don't overdo the cheese. Unless you really like babysitting your hot sandwiches, in which case, lay it on thick as can be!

And, of course, the last step: Profit!

Macaroni and Cheese

Very, very easy mac and cheese, here! It's one of my favorite dishes and I make it fairly often. Justin requests it pretty frequently, so it's not like I'm foisting my cheese obsession on him. Well, it's not much like I'm foisting my cheese obsession. Just a little foisting, I'm sure you understand. It's much better than anything pre-made and it's at least as easy. The best part, you can add in anything you like. It's delicious with chicken and broccoli, or a bit of sausage, or even just some peas. The ingredients are simple:

2c macaroni noodles
2c (packed) shredded cheddar cheese--the sharper, the better!
1/4-1/3c milk (use more if you're using something creamier, like half and half)
2T butter
1t corn starch
1/2t lemon juice
salt
pepper

Your cast of characters, minus the butter, salt, and pepper. Why did I not photograph those particular ingredients? Because I suck, that's why.

I grate my cheese by hand. It's just better that way and it seriously takes, like, a minute. Add a teaspoon of corn starch to your cheese and mix it up. The corn starch help the cheese from getting stringy. Squeeze a little lemon juice in your teaspoon measure, so it's about half full (this is how I measure. Don't judge me!) to give even more help to the Not Stringy Cheese Movement.

Cook your pasta. Water, salt, boiling, pasta, profit. Go ahead and do al dente here--this isn't really a baking recipe, so don't worry about undercooking so that you can finish it off later. This is going to be creamy and delicious!

Like that. That's how creamy and delicious it's going to be. So drain your pasta and stick the butter in. Stir it around a couple of times until it's about half melted. Add your cheese, milk, and lemon juice. Fold it all together until the cheese is melted. Add some pepper (if you want, but if you don't you're a heathen. Just saying) and enjoy! It takes about 10 minutes total and is a breeze to make.

Also, Justin just called me "bloggah." I gave him a Look.

Faux Phad Thai

So, I've been experimenting more and more with various vegetables this past summer. A wide variety of veggies isn't really something that I had growing up. Dad was very much a meat and potatoes kind of guy, and he did the bulk of the cooking because of mom's work schedule. So, my usual "vegetables" were actually starches and I was unaware of just how awesome fresh produce is. Something that I've discovered is a love of summer squash. Squash and I have had a shaky relationship thus far--I'm very particular about textures and winter squash is not a texture that I like very much. However, I read a lot of intriguing things about spaghetti squash and decided to give it a shot.

Spaghetti squash is interesting because it has the form of noodles when it's cooked and picked apart, but it doesn't have the texture of noodles. Spaghetti squash is not spaghetti, no matter how you try to slice it. However, that being said, it has a sweet and very mild flavor that supports and compliments stronger flavors quite nicely, so it's a good replacement for noodle dishes that have a spicy and flavorful sauce. The firm texture is also nice for some dishes, especially where there aren't a lot of other textures at play.

I figured that Phad Thai would be an ideal use for the "noodles" of spaghetti squash. So, I got a squash, stabbed it a few times with a knife to let the steam inside seep out during cooking, and I roasted it for an hour at 375 degrees.

I then proceeded to cut it exactly the wrong way. It should be cut along the middle short side, not along end to end. My "noodles" were consequently a little shorter than I'd have liked. However, they worked out perfectly fine and soon I had a heaping bowlful of delicious spaghetti squash strands!

Of course I saved the pulp, picked out the seeds, and gave them a thorough rinse. I'll be salting and roasting them later.

While the squash was in the last few minutes of its roast, I dug out my Phad Thai sauces and some chicken stock. Justin and I have been trying to find the perfect Phad Thai sauce and got two jars from Uwajimaya to experiment. We got a sweet and sour brown sauce (more peanut based) and a spicy red sauce (more... Everything except peanut based). The brown sauce is the clear winner of the two, but needs to be diluted with liquid to coat the food. So, I heated up about 1/4 of a cup of stock to mix the sauces into. Three tablespoons of brown and about a tablespoon of red. Then, I just let it hang out to get the peanuts ready.

I just gave them a quick crush with my mortar and pestle. I got a little shy of 1/4 c of peanuts, crushed when I decided I was done. Feel free to use a processor to crush yours--I just like them a little chunkier, and it's honestly easier to give them a few crushes with my pestle than to fiddle with grinders and blenders and stuff.

When the squash was done and the strands scraped out, the peanuts were crushed, the sauce was deliciously hanging out, and all was right with the world, I heated up some sesame oil in a pan and added some onion. It was a huge fatty onion, and I used about half of it. I cut it into quarters and sliced it rather thickly to make half-rings and into the oil they went, at medium heat, to become soft and delicious.

While they were softening up, I made some other fake noodles. Justin and I picked up a couple of bundles of some really intense asparagus, so I pulled out about six spears of it, cut off the tough ends, and sliced each spear into quarters.

Into the pan they went with the onions to become soft and delicious. I am usually a very strong proponent of the tender-crisp school of vegetable cooking, but since the goal with these was to get them rather noodle-like, I opted to cook them until they were quite soft and pliable.

During this cooking time, I beat three eggs together in a bowl. I don't have a photo of the egg-cooking process, since my sister called right then and she's going through a divorce and her ex is being kind of a butt and and and. I also don't have any pictures of the squash and sauce adding process, but here's pretty much how it went down:

I took the veggies out onto a plate and jacked the heat up to med-high. I added the eggs. I let them get about half firmed up in a thin layer on the bottom of the pan before I started sweeping them around. I shoved them to one side and added the squash. The sauce went on top. Turns out, the sauce was kind of thin, so I added another shot of chicken stock and another tablespoon of brown Phad Thai sauce. That worked pretty well. The veggies went back in for a final stir through. I let the squash soften juuuuuuuuuuuust a smidge in the sauce. I'm talking a smidge here. You don't want it to get mushy and gross. Despite still being on the phone, I didn't let it become inedible.

I also forgot the green onions. And didn't have any bean sprouts. This is about as faux as Phad Thai can get, but still so delicious! The squash was PERFECT and the asparagus added just a hint of flavor without overpowering the Phad Thai sauce. I think I might add more peanuts next time... The peanuts add a really necessary texture and extra shot of flavor.

So there you have it! Some stuff covered in Phad Thai sauce and made totally delicious. :D

Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies

Perhaps it's appropriate that I'm kicking off this blog with some cookies. I have a ravenous sweet tooth--ice cream, cookies, cakes, brownies, unholy combinations of all of the above... I want it all. Unfortunately, I'm poor and so whenever I indulge in treats, I usually try to take care to make sure that they're handmade so that 1) it means more when I DO indulge, and 2) it actually helps me avoid impulse purchases at the store. Which doesn't meant that I am a saint and therefore make NO impulse purchases, but it's a lot harder to blow $5 on cookies when you've only got $10 and have to feed two people for a week.

So anyway, here's some cookies! The recipe was taken from http://jamiescupcakes.blogspot.com/2008/06/peanut-butter-nutella-cookies.html which is a really nice blog with some really ace desserts. I wish I could take credit for coming up with this all by my lonesome, but sadly, I'm still very much a novice baker and as such, I'm just not brave enough to come up with recipes on my own yet. There is still time!

So, without further ado, here's how it works:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup peanut butter (unlike the original cook, I used creamy peanut butter. Obviously, either will do)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
Approx. 1/4 cup Nutella (the original recipe says this is optional. I say this is blasphemy! VIVA LA NUTELLA!)

Like all cookie recipes, this is split between two mixtures: wet and dry, with the wet blended first and the dry added in. In this case, the wet ingredients are everything except the flour, salt, baking powder, and Nutella. Just slap it all in a bowl and whip the crap out of it! I suggest using a mixer that is NOT the mixer that I own, which was purchased from QFC for $20 and always feels like it's going to catch on fire if I mix anything denser than pure water.

I don't have a handy-dandy picture of the ingredients. Why? Because I'm lame. I'm sure you know what butter and flour and sugar look like. I'd even venture a guess that you know what peanut butter looks like. Of COURSE you do, or you wouldn't be my friend. Anyway, here's what it looks like as it's first coming together, as you're adding flour to it. Adding flour in three increments is helpful. You don't get flour everywhere and you get it all thoroughly mixed in without any trouble.

And here it is, looking luscious and tempting, pre-Nutella swirling:

And, of course, post-Nutella swirling. This is what love is made of, folks. Note: Nutella, in my experience, doesn't "drizzle" without a whole lot of help. In this case, help came in the form of 20 seconds in the microwave. You don't want to melt it and cause it to separate, but getting it just warm enough so that it flows rather than glops is really helpful for the actual swirling part. Not that Nutella glops aren't wonderful, of course. Nutella in any form is wonderful.

Now, stick that sucker in the fridge and let your dough firm up a bit. This will give you ample time to get your oven preheated to 350 degrees and do some dishes. Well, I did some dishes. What you do is your business.

Once your dough is cooled, roll it into balls and impose your will on them with your fork.

It's important to let all your baked goods know that you are their god and your ineffable will is not to be thwarted. Forks are instrumental for this.

Notice, too, that there is no parchment or pre-greasing on my pan. I don't believe in pre-greasing for cookies. They're 1,000,000 percent butter! No more grease is necessary! Perhaps if you brought your pans with you from the Peloponnesian War and they're made out of equal parts tar and taffy, some greasing is necessary. My pans are new-fangled and non-stick, so I don't do anything other than slap the cookies onto the pan and profit immediately. Why no parchment? I'm lazy, and cookie pan aftermath isn't exactly a whole lot of cleanup.

Now, get those suckers into the oven! I let mine go about 7 minutes, but my oven is kind of inexplicably hardcore. You want to see just a tiny bit of browning along the bottom edges, but don't let them bake any longer than that. Let them cool for a good five minutes or so before trying to transfer them off of the pan. They're peanut butter cookies, so they're pretty soft and crumbly and liable to fall apart on you.

But LOOK at them!

Arrange them in the pattern of your favorite ritualistic cult meeting and enjoy pure deliciousness. Allow your significant other/family member/roommate/faithful hamster to smother you with hugs for making these cookies.

Here's the link to the original recipe again, in case you missed it the first time. Also, her pictures are much more attractive than mine and I want to be sure to give credit where credit is due: http://jamiescupcakes.blogspot.com/2008/06/peanut-butter-nutella-cookies.html

These are TOTALLY milk and cookies type cookies. I can't imagine anything nicer with these than just that! And, like with pretty much any cookie, they're tastiest when they're still warm and slightly soft and ohmigodsodelicious. So give these a try and have a look-see at the original blog from which I pilfered the recipe. It's really quite lovely!