A Hard Day’s Night & Fried Noodle Soup Delight

I come back today with the promise of a soup recipe for my friend RS, who lives by herself and often works late. By the time she comes back home, she is so dog-tired that the idea of cooking something for herself does not appeal to her at all. She ends up eating out and then burning calories on the treadmill!

I have been there and done that too! Hence my experiments with food often are results of my own experiences.
RS, this soup is for you and hundreds of bachelorettes who fly high but like the comfort of their own kitchen. Ingredients for Fried Noodle Soup are:

6 cups broth/stock (vegetable or chicken)
1 cup fried noodles
Half cup bean sprouts
One and half cup bok choy, stems removed
Few flowerets of broccoli
Handful of very finely sliced green onions
Quarter cup julienned carrots
Handful of cilantro leaves
2 tablespoon dark soy sauce 
1 tablespoon green chili sauce
1 tablespoon cooking oil
Little dice of unsalted butter
Salt and pepper for seasoning

Fry the noodles in oil till crispy, drain excess oil on paper towels and keep aside.

In a large open mouth sauce pan, boil the stock with little butter and add all the vegetables one by one – starting from the most hardy. Season with soy sauce, chili sauce, and black pepper powder. Check on the salt as soy sauce already is salty.

We don’t need to cook the vegetables, its important to maintain the crunch and the color in this soup.

Ladle out the soup in bowls and top it with the fried noodles. Garnish with green onions and cilantro leaves.

I wouldn’t suggest making this soup ahead of time, as it is important not to have soggy vegetables in it. Cook and serve only when you are about to eat.Comfort food on your couch will never let you down! Ask the boys from The Beatles…

Noodles With Hoisin Chicken & Shrimp

This is straight-out-of-a-recipe book. Its that good. Most ingredients are easy to find, some even sitting in your own pantry. I picked the bottle of Hoisin Sauce from a Chinese grocery store. But most supermarkets also have it.

The original recipe has lamb in it, but I made it with chicken. (Photo from the cookbook The Asian Kitchen by Lilian Wu)

The ingredients for Noodles With Hoisin Chicken and Shrimp are:

2-3 cups egg noodles
250 gms boneless chicken cut into thick slices
250 gms shrimp (deveined and cleaned)
3 cloves of garlic crushed
2 inch fresh ginger crushed
2 spring onions
100 gms French beans
100 gms fresh bok choy
2 hard boiled eggs
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp orange juice
2 tbsp cooking wine
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tbsp corn starch
1 tbsp veg oil
3-4 dried red chilies

Marinade the chicken and shrimp with crushed ginger and garlic, orange juice, 1 tbsp cooking wine, brown sugar, veg oil, 3-4 dried red chili, 1 tbsp soy sauce and keep aside for 30 minutes.

Prepare a sauce with 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp cooking wine, and 2 tbsp hoisin sauce. Mix some corn starch with water separately. Cook the marinated chicken-shrimp in a wok for about 7-8 minutes. Add the sauce you have prepared after the chicken becomes tender. Let it simmer for about five minutes.
Add the corn starch mixture to thicken the sauce. And cook for another 3-4 minutes stirring all the while.

Heat water and add some salt and drops of veg oil in a broad vessel. Blanch the halved French beans and bok choy leaves along with the noodles till they are done. Do not overcook or cover while cooking. Strain the noodles. Add the noodles to the chicken – shrimp sauce and mix well.
Garnish the noodles with green onions and boiled eggs. This recipe was originally made with lamb (boneless), but I tried this with chicken and shrimp and it turned out equally authentic.
There you have it- another one from my Asian-inspired  kitchen!!

*If you are using lamb, the marinating time goes up to at least four hours.

A popular Chinese belief is that noodles served on birthdays should not be broken. If you break the noodles, you shorten the person’s life!