Miso Soup #2

Lunch today was miso soup for one. Nothing like a big bowl of miso soup to fill you up without making you feel too full. Lucky for me my vegetable garden is producing abundant sugar snap peas and silverbeet, (or swiss chard) both of which make great additions to miso soup. I used the same base as previous miso post (except I forgot the mirin) and this time I added..

 

Silverbeet

Sugar snap peas

Soba noodles (~45gm dried)* this is pretty low carb

3 dried shiitake mushrooms

 

First you have to do is boil the kettle and cover your dried shiitake mushrroms in hot water. I weigh them down with a smaller plate to ensure they are submerged properly in the water. They take about 20 minutes to soften. After they are done, cut off their hard stems and dice or slice them as you please. I like their strong flavour so I chop them pretty roughly. I think that the more refined Japanese palate would suggest slicing them finely.

 

To make your soup, bring about 2 cups of water to boil in a saucepan. The soba noodles I use only take about 5 minutes so I put mine on to cook around 15 minutes after soaking the mushrooms. While the noodles were cooking I added some miso paste (~1 & ½ tbl) and instant bonito (~1-2 tsp) to the water, pushing the paste up against the side of the pot to help it dissolve.  The exact amount of miso paste and bonito that you use is down to personal taste. If you want it salty and strong, add more. If you want light and not so salty, add less. It’s pretty simple.

 

After 3 minutes add the sugar snap peas and chopped mushrooms. 2 minutes later the noodles should be cooked. Turn off the heat and add the silverbeet (roughly shredded with central white steam removed) and you're done.

 

(if I'd had a diced spring onion or two it would have been close to perfect!)