Category: Soup

Cha Ca (Ling Fillets marinated with dill and tumeric)

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves 6

According to Google translate, ‘kinh ngạc’ is amazing in Vietnamese and I do hope it is because this dish is a-mazing.

It’s got it all.

Healthy, hot, filling, so tasty.

Seriously, copy paste these ingredients and clear your schedule for tonight because this is going to make tonight – and every night you cook it – very special.

Mark Jensen of Red Lantern is a genius!

Ingredients

1kg ling fillets
8 spring onions (scallions)
4 garlic cloves
1 tbsp ground turmeric
2 tsp hot curry power
2 tbsp plain yoghurt
1/2 cup fish sauce
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 bunch dill
125g rice vermicelli
1 cup fish stock
1 lemon
300g bean sprouts

Method

  1. Cut the fish into 4cm pieces, place in a bowl and set aside.
  2. Put the white heads of the spring onions (reserving the stalks) and garlic in a mortar and pound to a paste.
  3. Add the paste, turmeric, curry powder, yoghurt, fish sauce, sugar, 2 tablespoons of the oil and a third of the dill, roughly chopped) to the fish and mix well. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
  4. Cook the vermicelli in boiling water for 5 minutes, turn off the heat and let sit for a further 5 minutes. Strain, refresh under cold water a set aside. (This may contradict instructions on pack, though don’t worry!).
  5. Thinly, diagonally slice 4 or 5 of the green spring onion stalks.
  6. Heat a large frying pan over medium heat, add the remaining oil and fry the fillets for 30 seconds on one side.
  7. Turn the fillets over, add the fish stock and simmer for 3-5 minutes until the fish is cooked through.
  8. Remove the fish and squeeze over the juice from the lemon.
  9. Mix the bean sprouts, sliced spring onion, remaining dill and vermicelli together, place into bowls and spoon over the fish fillets and sauce.

Jamie Oliver’s Real Mushroom Soup

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Serves: 6 – 8

It is true – I think – that at its most basic, mushroom soup is mushroom soup. It’s tasty enough, it is nice warm or cold, it’s filling and it’s healthy.

This spin on mushroom soup by Jamie Oliver not only adds a bit of zing to the whole thing, it is one of those cannot-be-ignored opportunities to use truffle oil!

And it’s still healthy which is why I must have two gallons of it frozen and ready for dethaw on any given night where I am too tired to cook.

You should consider the same!

(Slight adaptation of the recipe where I increased mushrooms from 600gm to 1kg.)

Ingredients

1 small handful dried porcini (I also used some shiitake)
Extra virgin olive oil
1kg mixed fresh wild mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 handful fresh thyme, leaves picked
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 litre chicken stock (or vegetable stock)
1 handful fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and roughly chopped
1 tablespoon mascarpone cheese
1 lemon
Truffle oil (optional)
Sliced loaf of bread, brushed with olive oil and grilled

 

Method

  1. Place the porcini in a small dish, cover with boiling water and leave aside.
  2. Heat a heavy saucepan medium-hot and as Jamie Oliver famously puts it, ‘add a good couple of lugs’ of the olive oil and add your mushrooms. Stir for a minute or so and then add the garlic, onion, thyme and season. Meanwhile, chop half your porcini, reserving the liquid.
  3. After a minute or so of cooking, add the chopped and whole porcini and the reserved liquid. Continue cooking on a medium heat for 20 minutes or until most of the liquid has disappeared.
  4. Season again and add the stock. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes.
  5. Remove half of the soup and whiz in a blender until smooth. Reintroduce to the remaining soup together with the parsley, mascarpone and a final seasoning as needed.
  6. To serve, a small drizzle of truffle oil, maybe a squeeze of lemon, chopped parsley, perhaps a few reserved and cooked slices of mushroom, a crack of pepper and some oiled and grilled sliced bread.

Spicy Braised Beef Soup with Hot Bean Paste

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Spicy Braised Beef Soup with Hot Bean Paste

Serves 4

I found this recipe on the Rockpool website – I assume it is sourced from Spice Temple.

It is a wonderful and really fresh dish, though spend some time making sure you track down the right pastes. There are dozens and dozens and at the Chinese grocer I went to, they said they had little knowledge of the Korean pastes other than whether they were used in soups or not.

The reason I say to take care is that you want this soup’s spice level dialled to 11; it’s the reason this dish is so good.

Ingredients
700gm piece beef brisket, trimmed
1 star anise
1 tsp Szechuan peppercorns
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 cinnamon quill
4 tbsp vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1 tsp finely chopped ginger
2 spring onions, finely sliced into rounds
2 tbsp Korean fermented hot chilli bean paste (gochujang)
2 tbsp Chinese soybean paste (huang jing)
1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
¼ cup light soy sauce
1 tbsp castor sugar
160gm fresh Shanghai noodles
3 Chinese cabbage leaves
1 long red chilli, finely sliced
Handful coriander leaveshandful coriander leaves

Method

  1. Place the beef in a pot covered with plenty of cold water and bring to the boil; when the scum rises, remove the beef and rinse. Cut beef into 2cm pieces.
  2. Dry-roast the spices in a pan for 4-5 mins until fragrant, Allow to cool and wrap in a tied muslin cloth.
  3. In a large pot, put in the beef, spices (in the muslin cloth) and 2 ½ litres; bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours. Lift out the beef and the spice bag and reserve including the stock.
  4. Heat oil to hot in a large wok. Stir-fry the garlic, ginger, and spring-onions for 1 minute. Add both the bean pastes and fry until fragrant.
  5. Deglaze with Shaoxing wine, then season with the soy and sugar. Check seasoning.
  6. Add the beef and spice bag and 1 ¼ litres of the beef stock; bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
  7. Cook the noodles until al dente; 8 – 10 minutes or according to instructions; I doubled the amount of noodle though this does change the dish to more of a noodle dish than a soup.
  8. Remove the spice bag from the wok and discard; dice the cabbage leaves into 3cm pieces and blanch for a minute in the stock; add the noodles to heat through.
  9. Ladle the soup into four large bowls and garnish with the chilli and coriander.