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
- In a pan roast off all your raw spices
- 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.
- Grind/crush the spices down to as far as they will go
- 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
- In a deep saucepan add oil, chilli flakes, green chillies, curry paste, garlic, ginger and five spice and sauté
- Add mushrooms and lightly sauté, you don’t want them to start sweating too much.
- 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.
- 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]
- Allow the mixture to boil for about 5 minutes
- Add in a couple of long life noodle cakes.
- Allow to boil until the noodles are cooked through
- Turn off the heat, add some lemon juice, and hang the lemon and ginger teabag in the pot. Add some honey
- 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