I made this on a public holiday, so you can imagine I could only work with what I had in the pantry and the fridge

The idea was sparked by the need for something with Asian flavours. My housemate and I have made plenty of Moroccan, Italian and Mediterranean inspired dishes, but it had definitely been a while since something Asian.

Now I haven’t mentioned this so far but being the budgeter I am I buy my ginger and garlic in bottles in the pantry section, which saves me the labour of chopping/ mincing etc. I really do prefer fresh ingredients; but having just had surgery and having to be an adult paying rent and bills, I go the less expensive and less labour intensive option.

The first day I moved in to my new place I bought long life noodles. They’d been sitting in my pantry for 2 months. I thought it was time to use them. I looked up a few noodle with soup/broth recipes, but they all needed something, and in my opinion it was five spice.

I did not have five spice.

What I did have was cinnamon sticks, pepper corns, cloves and cumin seeds and no mortar and pestle. I decided a garlic crusher would do the trick.

Makeshift *five* spice powder

1. In a pan roast off all your raw spices
2. Once you start to smell the aroma and a little bit of steam rising, take them off the heat and fill your garlic crusher or better a mortar and pestle.
3. Grind/crush the spices down to as far as they will go
4. Roast them off again and repeat until you have a medium coarse powder

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I also wanted this to be as fast as possible.

Frozen vegies are great for this purpose. I nearly always have mushrooms in my fridge, which makes life a little easier

What you’ll need

• Couple of tablespoons of your favourite/most easily accessible cooking oil
• Your favourite frozen stir-fry mix
• Frozen corn if your mix doesn’t have them
• If your mix doesn’t have snow peas I’d recommend using some frozen peas
• Mushrooms
• Some sort of chilli paste or Asian curry paste [used the Thai green curry paste I had in the fridge]
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Five spice powder
• Vegie stock cube
• Chilli Flakes
• Red Chilli Powder
• Green Chillies
• [NOTE: if you cannot handle your chilli, leave out one of the chilli ingredients]
• Long life noodles
• Lemon Juice
• A lemon and ginger tea bag
• Honey

Procedure

1. In a deep saucepan add oil, chilli flakes, green chillies, curry paste, garlic, ginger and five spice and sauté
2. Add mushrooms and lightly sauté, you don’t want them to start sweating too much.
3. Add your stir fry mix and any vegies you see fit. Lightly sauté again. You want the vegies to still be undercooked as the boiling will cook them further.
4. Add stock cube, red chilli powder and plenty of water [I boiled the kettle and filled my saucepan to just above the 1.5 L mark]
5. Allow the mixture to boil for about 5 minutes
6. Add in a couple of long life noodle cakes.
7. Allow to boil until the noodles are cooked through
8. Turn off the heat, add some lemon juice, and hang the lemon and ginger teabag in the pot. Add some honey
9. Wait 5 minutes and remove the tea bag

While I’m sure you know how to serve soup, I found using a pair of tongs to get the noodles out first then following up with a ladle for the broth was much easier