2:12 PM Rice Cooker Udon Noodle Soup

This is my recipe for rice cooker udon noodle soup. Since I make this soup at my office where there is no sink to wash dirty dishes, I have managed to put this recipe together with very little utensils and measuring devices. This kind of soup is well adapted to changes. You can add just about whatever you want to it, although the base of the soup should stay comprised of Bonito and some sort of seaweed as that is the classic Dashi stock used in many Japanese soup recipes.

This is the small rice cooker I use in my office. I have used it to make regular Ramen as well as to steam veggies and dumplings for my lunch. Thanks to this little rice cooker, I don't have to rely on the microwave.


The first step is to measure out some water for the stock. I use one of those large latte mugs for my soups because they are big enough to hold the noodles and soup contents. They also have a handy dandy little handle which saves your hands from burning when you transport the soup from the cooking area. Fill the mug up to about a 1/2 inch from the top.


Pour the water from the mug in the rice cooker bowl. At this time, you will want to turn the rice cooker on. Go ahead and switch it on to cook as opposed to leaving it on warm.

After you have gotten the water settled, it's time to put in the stock ingredients. For classic Dashi stock, Bonito flakes and Kombu seaweed is boiled together. But then the Dashi is drained so that the Bonito and Kombu are filtered out. I use Wakame seaweed instead of Kombu and leave the Bonito in the soup. It's a personal preference because I want to eat the seaweed and I don't mind eating the Bonito. You can use the traditional Dashi recipe if you're making this at home and want the clean broth.


I measure the ingredients in my hand since I don't have any measuring tools. You can adjust the measurements to taste. Keep in mind that the Bonito will compact, and even some will dissolve, when wet. Additionally, the Wakame will expand quite a lot when re-hydrated.



I use one medium to large sized Shitake mushroom for the broth. I like the depth that it adds to the Dashi. After wiping the mushroom with a little damp cloth, remove the stem. Removing the stem is easy, just hold the cap gently in one hand and the stem firmly in the other, and twist the stem off of the cap. Sometimes you'll have to pull while twisting to make it happen.


Then slice up the mushroom like so.


You can slice the mushroom thinner and leave the pieces long, or you can cube them like I have below. I eat my noodle soup with chopsticks, so I prefer thicker mushrooms.


Then put the mushrooms in the water along with the Dashi ingredients.


I've used a couple of different kinds of noodles for this soup. I've used regular Ramen noodles; I've used soft Udon noodles which are packaged similarly to Ramen; I've used a smaller flat asian noodle that comes in a little nest (I don't read Chinese so I have no idea what these noodles are); and finally I've used these flat Udon noodles. My favorite noodles were the soft Udon noodles, but those come individually packaged at $1/package. So there's extra plastic waste plus the waste of the unused flavor pack. For this blog, I used the flat Udon noodles pictured below. I do like them, however I just found a store nearby which sells the round Udon noodles packaged similarly to these. I will be trying those next time because those soft Udon noodles I liked so much were also round. I like the round ones because they are more dough-ey than the flat noodles.

For this package, I had to measure my own noodles. All the previous noodles had their own portioning methods, this one didn't. So I remembered that the Soba noodles I've purchased before in a similar package had three portions in it. Thus I divided this package into thirds and placed the noodles in the bowl to cook alongside the Dashi ingredients. You don't have to cook the Dashi first, it can all cook together to save time.


The Cons of using this kind of noodle is that they don't fit in the bowl all at once. However, as the noodles cook, they will droop and end up completely submerged. You don't have to cover the soup for it to cook, so not only can you just walk away from the soup until it is done, but that makes one less item you have to take home to wash.


You'll want the soup mixture to cook until it comes to this slight boil. The soup is ready when the noodles are cooked to the desired consistency.


Once everything is done, pour the whole soup into your mug and Enjoy! Sometimes I'll also add a topping of Furikake or a dash of soy just to make things a little different, but it is not needed.

8:12 PM Pasta with Mushrooms and Lima Beans

Tonight was a new dish made of items I needed to use out of the fridge. My portions are for one and I didn't measure anything, so you'll need to adjust for how many you are feeding.

2 slices of red onion
2 mushrooms, sliced
handful of frozen Lima beans
one clove of garlic, chopped
tablespoon of pesto
1/2 teaspoon of tomato paste
olive oil
salt
pepper
Parmesan cheese
small handful of whole wheat spaghetti

Prepare spaghetti noodles as directed on the package. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in skillet. divide slices of onion into quarters and begin saute. Salt onions to sweat. Once onions are beginning to go clear, add sliced mushrooms. Stir and salt again to sweat. Add Lima beans and saute until mushrooms are carmelized and lima beans are cooked. Add garlic and stir. Cook for about 30 seconds and turn heat off of burner. Garlic will continue to cook, but won't burn.


Once pasta is cooked al dente, drain and place in skillet with saute. Stir until noodles are coated. If skillet has cooled down, bring back up to low until finished stirring noodles.

Transfer noodle and veggies to a plate and add pesto and tomato paste.

Stir until coated. Season with pepper and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.


This dish was extremely satisfying. It was a nice easy comfort meal. I accompanied the dish with Meridian Chardonnay and some green olives. The whole dish can be made Vegan with the omission of Parmesan and subbing a Vegan Pesto.

6:46 PM Same old collard greens, different mushrooms

I've made a couple of variations on this recipe before. Last time I made this recipe, I wasn't exactly happy with the sausage. This time the dish was Fantastic! The addition of shitake mushrooms was the big difference I think.

Ingredients:

Yellow onion
carrots
shitake mushrooms
sausage
collard greens
garlic
olive oil
lemon juice
salt, pepper, tony chacherie's

8:26 PM Collard Greens and Lentils

At this year's local SCA Twelfth Night Feast, one of the items of the feast was boiled lentils. The lentils were very simply prepared just in water with salt and pepper and possibly a small amount of animal fat. The dish could have used more flavoring, but I enjoyed it enough that I was inspired to modify it for one of my regular super cheap home recipes. And then while I was thinking of how I would improve the dish, I decided I needed to add something to it to make a more substantial meal. The lentils would be best as a side for something more hearty. At that point, I knew I needed to finally try my hand at making some collard greens. I'm southern, but nobody in my family ever made collard greens. They are one of those vegetables that I have been a little afraid to try until recently. But I had heard some wonderful things about sauteeing collard greens the European way, and I was determined to try it out. What follows is a pictorial of my experiment.

Unfortunately, I forgot to photograph the process of making the lentils. But the way I made them was the basic process of boiling beans with an animal fat. First, I soaked about 1 quarter of a package of dried red beans for 8 hours. Once those were finished soaking, I then placed them in a stockpot with two ham hocks and filled the stockpot with water until the ham hocks were covered. Then I set the water to boil. After the boiling point was reached, I let the pot simmer on Medium for several hours until the ham hocks were tender enough to pull from the bone.

By looking at the liquid in the stockpot, I knew that the flavor was going to be Incredibly dense, so I decided to take out all of the liquid, except what just covered the beans out of the pot, to reserve for later. Then I took the meat off the ham hock bones and put part of the meat in the stock pot and part in the reserved liquid. At that point it was getting late, so I simply set both containers of liquid out to cool before I put them away in the fridge for the night.

Tonight, I took the stockpot out of the fridge and put about half a bag of lentils and a quarter bag of yellow split peas in and then filled the pot up with water. I added salt and pepper and then set the pot to boil. Once boiling, I lowered the heat to Medium and simmered until lentils and peas were tender. During all of this it is important to not forget to skim the surface of the liquid of any foam or bubbles. This process reduces gas!



While the lentils were simmering, I started cooking the sausage for the collard greens. I used this Fabulous chicken sausage with sundried tomatoes!


I started with a very lightly oiled cast iron skillet with EVOO. I browned the sausage on both sides and then removed the sausage from the skillet. While the sausage was browning I sliced two baby bella mushrooms and a large garlic clove. I also thickly sliced the sausage link. Then more olive oil went into the skillet. I added the sliced ingredients and some salt and pepper and began sauteeing.


While that was going, I rolled and sliced the previously washed greens and then added those to the skillet.


At first, I thought that I may have put too much food in the skillet for me to eat on my own, but then as the greens cooked, they wilted and shrunk similar to how spinach does.


I don't know how long I sauteed everything. I just cooked until I figured the greens looked tender enough. Once I believed I was finished, I plated everything and squeezed some lemon juice and cracked some pepper over the top.


The bread you see on the plate is simply a Wheat slice toasted with butter, garlic salt, pepper and parmesean cheese.

This meal was So Good! It was actually satisfying enough that I would consider it Comfort Food. For the Collard Greens I wouldn't change a Thing. They were garlicky and the lemon and sundried tomatoes in the sausage elevated the whole dish to a fabulous other level. For the lentils, I may just boil those with a chunk of salt pork next time instead of the ham hocks. The reason being I would get more meat out of the salt pork and the cooking liquid would have a milder taste. The lentils are good as they are, but I think the taste of the actual lentils and beans would come through better with the salt pork. It's a thought for next time for sure.

8:40 PM Stuffed Squash

Tonight I decided to finally make that quiche I was planning on making for Christmas and just didn't have time to make. I'll blog on the quiche later, but in the process of making the quiche, I had more squash than I needed as well as more leeks and I also needed to use up the baby bella mushrooms sitting in my fridge. So I experimented with a Stuffed Squash.

The part of the Butternut Squash I had leftover from the quiche was the perfect little bell part. The part that is hollowed out and gives us those Glorious little squash seeds which I like to roast. So I hollowed out the bell just like I normally do, and I placed the bell in a little dish and drizzled it with olive oil. I then placed it in a pre-heated oven of 400 degrees until the squash was a little soft.

While the squash was roasting, I boiled some water and made some Taboule as directed on the package, except for the "put in the refridgerator for 30 minutes part, I just let the grain steam on the counter.


After I had the Taboule started, I then sauteed my leeks, baby bella mushrooms, and some frozen peas.


Once the Squash was a little soft, I then removed the squash from the oven and began to stuff the bell in layers. 1st layer was the saute mix, then the 2nd layer was Taboule. I layered in this fashion until a final layer of Taboule was level with the top and then I garnished with the saute layer.




I then placed the Squash back in the oven to finish roasting. I served the squash right in its little baking dish.


So what's the verdict on the taste??

Well, it was ok. It wasn't Great, but it has promise. Firstly, my squash was a bit dry. Next time I will add more olive oil and I will cover the squash with foil to keep the moisture in. Also, it was missing something. I think it needed a small element of sweet. It may be that the butternut squash will be better once it's able to retain its moisture. But actually I think the recipe would benefit from the addition of some golden raisins at the time of layering just before the final roast. I think I will do that next time as this is a rather healthy dish and I feel I ought to work on it until I get it right. Plus it is relatively easy and has a nice presentation for dinner parties.