Chicken Soup for the Body

Your mother was right — when you’re sick, chicken soup is the best medicine. There’s no denying that when you’re feeling stuffed up and miserable, a bowl of chicken soup can bring relief. (My husband and I both confirmed this in independent taste tests yesterday, he with a bowl of Chinese chicken dumpling soup, I with homemade chicken and cabbage soup.) If you can’t order in, though, chances are good that you have all the ingredients to make chicken soup on hand and that you can have a bowl ready in less than 30 minutes, even in your sorry state. Here’s a basic recipe that can be modified to fit your tastes and the ingredients on hand. This is also a great recipe for cleaning out the bits and pieces of leftover vegetables that accumulate in the refrigerator during the week.

Chicken Soup

Serves: 2
Time to make: ~30 minutes

What you’ll need:

• 3 cups chicken stock (store-bought is fine)
• 1 bay leaf
• dried herbs to taste
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• ¼ lb. boneless chicken breast, diced small and seasoned with salt and pepper
• 1½ cups diced vegetables — whatever you have in the fridge will probably work fine, presuming you went to the store sometime before you got sick
• ½ cup small pasta, noodles, potatoes or beans

1. Heat the stock with the bay leaf and herbs in a sauce pot to a simmer
2. Meanwhile, heat the oil over medium-high in a large soup pot
3. Add the vegetables and saute until they start to soften
4. Add the chicken and let brown
5. Pour in the heated stock
6. Add the pasta or other starch
7. Simmer until the pasta and chicken are cooked through, about 10 minutes

Notes: Depending on the vegetables you have available, you will want to vary cooking times. For instance, you will need to saute firmer vegetables like onions, carrots and celery longer than softer vegetables like cabbage, spinach and green beans. Remember that the vegetables will finish cooking in the stock.

Valentines’ Day Food Massacre

As I said in a recent roundup, I’ve set myself a personal challenge of cooking a fun theme menu once a week. This week, it wasn’t difficult to decide what to choose for the theme: l’amour, natch. But I didn’t want to go with the tried-and-trite for my menu: aphrodisiacs, red foods, chocolate…

So I thought about what I wanted to evoke for Valentine’s Day with my partner, and what I came up with was fun and sensuality. I wanted to make interactive food — something spicy, yummy, a little messy. Two courses of Asian-style finger-food favorites seemed to fit the bill. As for dessert, I had a carton of strawberries left over from the previous weekend that I knew had to be consumed somehow. My hubby doesn’t like strawberries, but he had leftover cupcakes, so I didn’t concern myself too much with him.

My Valentine’s Day menu was therefore to be:

• Mushroom Spring Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce — recipe from Simple to Spectacular, by Mark Bittman and Jean-Georges Vongerichten
• Chicken Lettuce Wraps – recipe culled from various places and, as it turned out, partially made up as I went along
• Red Wine-Strawberry Sorbet – okay, I did cave and do something brilliantly, ruthlessly, dynamically red, but it was worth it; recipe also from Simple to Spectacular

The menu sounds pretty great, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the results were … ahem … less than spectacular. So this Valentine’s Day was truly meaningful, since I got to watch my husband scarf down everything I made and declare it fabulous even so, because that’s how much he loves me.

Here’s the blow-by-blow:

The Mushroom Spring Rolls were actually pretty good, and the dipping sauce that went with them — made from toasted, chopped peanuts, chiles, coconut milk and soy sauce — was fantastic. My husband even remarked that he had noticed that I was cooking mushrooms much better these days; all I had changed was the cooking time, since I had learned that I needed to cook mushrooms over medium-high heat until the liquid released and then evaporated, and then take them off the heat. This ensures that they are brown and meaty, not too liquidy. I was taking them off too soon before. You don’t always expect the eater in the family to notice these little things, so I was secretly gratified.

The problem with the Spring Rolls was that the recipe called for phyllo dough to evoke the crispiness of a spring roll without the necessity of deep-frying. A good idea in theory, but in practice, it didn’t quite work for me. The phyllo was too light and crispy, and didn’t have enough substance. Besides, it reminded me of a mushroom spanakopita, which didn’t go at all with the Southeast Asian-style dipping sauce. So the recipe wasn’t a keeper for me.

Chicken Lettuce Wraps was the main course, in which I was hoping to re-create one of our favorite Chinese restaurant appetizers. Once I started the base recipe, however, I realized that there were a few things wrong with it. For instance, it tried to combine lemongrass and fish sauce and teriyaki sauce and soy sauce all in one thing — it was kind of a mess. Also, it was too thick and pasty. So I started rapidly adapting, trying instead for a more straightforward black bean sauce lightened with chicken stock. It actually was very tasty — if a bit salty and still a little too thick from too much fermented black bean paste — and it did taste a lot like what we were used to from the restaurant.

The problem was that I had cooked the cabbage in the sauce, and it turned this blue-green-gray color — very unappetizing. It brought home again the lesson that food needs to look good as well as taste good. But I did achieve the goal of making something very messy; I got sauce and chicken all over the place. My husband, who is usually as big a slob as I am, managed somehow to hardly even dirty his plate. I guess he’s more adroit at wrapping things in lettuce leaves than I am.

On to dessert… The sorbet was the winner of the night and of the week. Unfortunately — or fortunately, depending on how selfish you are when it comes to homemade sorbet — I was the only person who ate it. With a little forethought, it is possible to make sorbet on a weeknight, a handy tip to keep in mind. And since the recipe is so simple and so delicious, I will pass it on to you, crediting Simple to Spectacular.

Strawberry-Red Wine Sorbet for Your Valentine

Combine:

• 2 cups strawberries, quartered
• ½ cup good-quality red wine
• 1 cup sugar
• the seeds of 1 vanilla bean
• 2 tbsp. lemon juice

1. Let the mixture sit for about 1 hour
2. Puree the mixture in a blender
3. Freeze in an ice cream maker — you do have an ice cream maker, don’t you?
4. If you have the time, firm up in the freezer for a few hours before serving

Hidden Moon Noodles in Broth

This Asian-inspired soup is called “Hidden Moon Noodles” because of the egg hidden among all the vegetables. It makes a hearty and filling main course.

Hidden Moon Noodles

Serves: 2
Time to make: ~30 minutes

• 1½ oz. dried shiitake mushrooms
• ¼ lb. Chinese-style noodles or spaghetti
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 3 tbsp. soy sauce
• 3 tbsp. rice wine
• ½ tbsp. sugar
• ¼ head Napa cabbage, shredded
• 1 medium carrot, julienned
• 2 eggs
• sesame oil
• fresh bean sprouts
• ½ tbsp. grated ginger

1. Soak the dried mushrooms in hot water for 10 minutes, until rehydrated
2. Boil the noodles according to the package directions; drain and apportion into serving bowls
3. Heat the stock to a simmer
4. Add the soy sauce, rice wine and sugar
5. Add the rehydrated mushrooms, cabbage, and carrot
6. Simmer until just tender, about 3 minutes
7. Break each egg into individual cups and slip each egg into the broth
8. Simmer until set, 3 minutes
9. Ladle the soup with 1 egg per serving over the noodles
10. Garnish with a drizzle of sesame oil, bean sprouts and ginger

Notes: This recipe works best if you can get fresh Chinese noodles, which only require 3 minutes or so to cook. Check in the produce section with the wonton and egg roll wrappers.

Steamed Vegetables with Sesame Dressing

This Asian-influenced sesame dressing is a light accompaniment for pretty much any vegetable that can be steamed: asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, green beans, snow peas or sugar snap peas. (If you substitute another longer cooking vegetable, remember to adjust the steaming time accordingly.) Serve this as a light starter before a heartier soup or stew. Serves 4.

1. Prepare 2 cups of the vegetable by trimming and/or cutting into equally sized pieces
2. Place a steamer basket over about ½ inch of water in a large, shallow pan and bring to a boil
3. Reduce to a gentle simmer, place the vegetables in the basket and cover
4. Steam until tender and bright green, 4-7 minutes

Meanwhile, prepare the dressing by mixing together:

• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 2 tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 tsp. honey
• 2 tbsp. toasted sesame seeds

Pour the dressing over the steamed vegetables and serve.

How to Make the Perfect Stir-Fry

The secrets to a successful stir-fry are organization and preparation, which are also the keys to accomplishing pretty much any complex task. Cooking is a small mirror held up to life (profound, huh?). If you can pull off a good stir-fry, you can probably successfully manage three complex software development projects with deliverables expected in late December, or the equivalent. We’ll see.

Before you even start cooking, you’ll want to get yourself and all of your ingredients organized. When the cooking starts, it goes fast, so you’ll need to have everything ready and at hand. The first thing I do is cook the starch, either rice or noodles, such as Chinese ramen-style noodles or angel hair pasta. The rice will steam and then stay warm while I’m preparing the stir-fry. The noodles will be done fast and then can sit in their pot until I’m ready to mix them in and reheat them.

Second, prepare the protein. I usually use boneless chicken breast for this dish, but turkey, pork, shrimp, scallops, fish or tofu should also work just fine. For 2 people, I use about ¼ pound of protein. Remember, traditional stir-fries are skimpy on the meat and generous with the vegetables. Cube the meat and let sit in a mixture of 1 tbsp. soy sauce, 1 tbsp. sherry and ¼ cup water while you prepare the vegetables.

Choose 2-3 vegetables for the dish, enough to make ½ pound. Keeping it simple keeps both you and the stir-fry from getting overwhelmed. Dice or slice each vegetable into as nearly uniform pieces as you can make them. Arrange the cut vegetables in bowls in order of their cooking time, with the longest cooking vegetables first:

1. Mushrooms: 5-10 minutes, depending on type and thickness
2. Cabbage, spinach, other greens: 4-6 minutes
3. Asparagus, broccoli, carrots, green beans: 3-5 minutes
4. Peppers, snow peas, sugar snap peas, summer squash, zucchini: 2-3 minutes
5. Bean sprouts: less than 1 minute

These are just suggestions. You may want to try other vegetables.

In addition, mince 2 garlic cloves and ½ tbsp. ginger root, and place them in line behind all the vegetables.

Next, prepare the sauce. My base stir-fry sauce is a mixture of ¼ cup chicken stock, 2 tbsp. soy sauce, 1 tsp. cornstarch and 1 tbsp. flavoring, such as a bottled Asian sauce, sake or rice wine, or fermented black beans soaked in sherry. Feel free to experiment. I give a suggested variation at the end of this post.

Finally, get your garnishes together. Chopped nuts, sliced scallions, raw bean sprouts and minced fresh herbs all make good garnishes.

The last step is to prepare a coating for the protein for cooking it. Drain away the marinade and toss the chicken (or whatever you’re using) in a mixture of ½ tbsp. sesame oil, 1 tsp. cornstarch and 1 tsp. flour.

Now you’re ready to assemble the stir-fry:

1. Heat 1 tbsp. peanut oil in a nonstick skillet over high until shimmering
2. Add the protein in a single layer and cook without disturbing until browned
3. Flip each piece and brown the other side in the same manner
4. Remove the cooked protein to a plate
5. If needed, add another ½ tbsp. peanut oil to the pan
6. Add the vegetables in order of their cooking times and stir-fry, keeping the food moving constantly, until tender
7. Add the garlic and ginger, and stir-fry 30 seconds
8. Reduce the heat to medium
9. Return to the protein to the pan and mix in the sauce
10. Stir-fry until the sauce thickens
11. If using noodles, stir them in and heat through
12. Remove from heat, garnish and serve

Sweet Chili-Garlic Stir-Fry Sauce

Serves: 2

Mix together:

• ¼ cup chicken stock
• 2 tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 tbsp. honey
• ½ tbsp. rice wine vinegar
• 1-2 tsp. chili sauce, depending on taste
• 2 tsp. minced garlic
• 1 tsp. cornstarch

Simmered Squash with Asian Flavors

This is a very simple recipe that uses the technique of simmering. Simmering is different from boiling in that a lot less liquid is used. By the time the squash is cooked through, most of the cooking liquid will have boiled away, and the flavors in the liquid will have infused the squash. So the trick is to use enough liquid to cook the squash but not so much that you have a lot of liquid left over at the end. This is mostly a judgment call depending on how much squash you are cooking, but as a general rule, it is better to start with too little and add more as you go along.

Simmered Squash with Asian Flavors

Serves: 2
Time to make: ~30 minutes

What you need:

• 2 cups winter squash, peeled, seeded and cubed
• 2 tbsp. soy sauce
• 2 tbsp. sake
• 2 tsp. garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp. ginger, minced
• scallion greens, minced, for garnish

1. Add the squash to a pot with enough water to cover the squash halfway
2. Add the soy sauce, sake, garlic and ginger to the pot
3. Bring to a boil
4. Cover, reduce the heat and let simmer until the squash is tender and mashes easily, 20-25 minutes
5. Garnish with minced scallion greens

Notes:

I used butternut squash, but any winter squash will do. Japanese squashes would be well-suited to this dish.

Start with ¼ cup water and check the squash frequently as it cooks. If it’s looking dry, add a little more water.