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!)

 

A Tasty Tuna Sandwich

It's lunchtime on Sunday, the fridge is a little bare, but with a little effort and the help of a well stocked pantry (you'd think I believed the apocalypse was imminent), I manage to put together a pretty nice sandwich. It's based on the classic flavour combination of dill (from the pickle), tuna and mayonnaise. If I had fresh dill I would use it, but unfortunately it is not very popular in Australia and typically hard to find.

The main point I'm trying to make in this post is that I think you should always make an effort, even if it's just to make a sandwich, you owe it to the food and to the people who grew, caught, made, killed or transported it for you. Food is so central to our lives and so often we consume it without even thinking... This was quick, easy and delicious!

A Tasty Tuna Sandwich - enough filling for two

1 x 95gm tin tuna 

(for what it's worth I buy SAFCOL responsibly fished tuna)

1/2 tsp dijon mustard

chopped parsley

about 1- 2 tsp finely diced white onion

1 tsp capers

2 tsp mayonnaise

1 diced polski ogorki dill cucumber pickle (I buy "always fresh")

I added a little grated carrot, sliced cucumber and diced red capsicum

then put it all together between two slices of grainy bread, which I toasted because it was a little stale making it crunchy and delicious!

Mary's Salad Roll

This is a nostalgic food post, back to my days at Darwin High School when Mary and Peter ran the school canteen and made the worlds best salad roll, well a really good one anyway. I cannot figure out how to spell their last name, it is Polish and sounds like Grow-tears, but spelt completely different, she was always nice and he was an awesome metal work teacher. I remember he eventually quit teaching because he got fed up with getting into trouble for arranging apprenticeships for blokes in year 10 who spent their time at school feeling dumb, smoking pot and wagging. He was one cool dude.

We didn't get bought lunches in primary school, my lunch box usually contained a promite and cheese sandwich (warm and oily from being in my bag all morning), an apple and maybe some sultanas and almonds. I'd always look so forlornly at the other kids with their warm sausage rolls with tomato sauce and would shamelessly finish a friends if they offered it to me... Luckily in my final years of high school I was flush with cash from hours spent toiling away serving fast food and finally buying lunch at school was in my reach.

a cool $2 coin bought you one of Mary's Salad rolls and they were the shit!

Mary's Salad roll

shredded iceberg lettuce

tinned beetroot

grated carrot

tomato

cucumber

red onion

whole egg mayonnaise

white bread roll, preferably with sesame seeds

Sounds simple enough, but I tell you the combination is pretty frick'n good. You can be more healthy and make it with a wholemeal roll or grainy bread and it still tastes pretty great, but for me there is something about a plain, fluffy white roll with sesame seeds that I can rarely go past for this one.

It also came with ham, which was also pretty great... but I'm currently rethinking my relationship with pork so I'm skipping it for today

Hummus Wrap #1

Hummus & Dukkah Wrap

1/2 a tomato, diced

1/4 red capsicum, diced

1/3 Lebanese cucumber, diced

1 thin slice of red onion

1/2 a hot chili

a few coriander and mint leaves

dukkah & hummus (recipe here)

pita bread, lightly toasted

it's so simple and so frick'n delicious