Noodle Soup with River Bass | You've Got Meal!

River bass is one of my favorite fish. The meaty, lean, white, subtle fish is very versatile and can be cooked in so many ways that is too bad that I don’t get my hands on bass very often.

And considering the fact that Mrs. G’s name day was coming, I decided to turn this fabulous fish into an Asian style noodle soup. To say she loves those is an understatement, and I would really like to see what she would do in a Ramen restaurant.

Cooking this soup is super simple and it’s composed of 3 parts: the fish, the stir fry, the boiled ingredients and the broth (the base of the soup). This feels like actually building the soup from different parts, the ingredients for each being: green onions, carrots, chili, garlic, ginger, sugar, soy sauce and fish sauce  (1 teaspoon each for the last 3) for the stir fry; broccoli and instant noodles to boil; cardamom, allspice, star anise, pepper, salt for the broth.

Start of by  gutting and cleaning the fish. Next, take all the ingredients for the broth and put them in a tea satchel. Place it in salted water and boil until the liquid has been infused by the spices. Next, massage the fish with some salt and a hint of 5 spice and place it in the oven, high heat, on a rack that has a tray under. Depending on the size of the fish, it will take to cook from 8-15 minutes.

Remove the fish from the oven and set aside. The next 2 parts take literally 2 minutes. At  the same time, boil the broccoli in the broth and stir fry the vegetables in a wok, in a little peanut oil .

Time to plate your soup. First, place the vegetables from the wok, then the instant noodles (that’s the kind I used here, but you can choose a different kind- just be careful with the ones that take longer to cook – boil them in the infused broth before adding them to the soup ), soup (up to 90% of the bowl), pieces of broccoli and flaked pieces of bass. Let the noodles cook- it takes 2-3 minutes, they will absorb a fair amount of liquid so feel free to add more broth to the soup if you feel like necessary.

Now, I’m gonna go and say here that the resulting dish was a comforting, savory soup. Thing is, in order to fully demonstrate this would be to actually show you Mrs. G just munching it away in under a minute (but she hid the recording). Like I said before, she LOVES her noodle soups.

Enjoy,

Asian-Style Chicken Noodle Soup

For the past 24 hours we've been having tremendous amounts of rain falling, a matter very difficult especially for our ceiling, that decided that it had enough and made us a gift in the form of a couple of leaking spots. In this dire situation I did what any foodie would do: I cooked some comfort food, more precisely an Asian style chicken soup.I just love this type of cooking soup, that beautiful way in which they manage to combine great tastes. A very special combo for me is one that brings together spicy, sweet and salty in perfectly balanced dish.



For a rather rich and otherwise thick soup I used: 

2 packages of pho noodles, 2 tbs of canned bamboo slices, 2 green onions, a thumb size of ginger, 2 green chillies (use red for a nicer coloring), 2 garlic cloves, 3 tbs of black chanterelle mushrooms,2 tbs of canned mung bean sprouts, some sweet corn, soy sauce, 200 grams of boiled and finely diced chicken meat, mint leaves for garnishing. 

Start by heating up 3 tbs of vegetable oil and cooking in it the diced ginger and chilli for 2 minutes. Add the chopped onion, diced garlic, corn and  mushrooms and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Add the soy sauce and mix for another minute, after which  add the stock, bring to a simmer and cook for a couple of minutes more. Turn of the heat and add the chicken and the noodles that will cook in 3 minutes. Pour in a soup plate and garnish with mung bean sprouts and mint leaves (add some more extra soy sauce if you need salt). 



So there you have it, the perfect way to admire any leaking walls: with some comforting chicken soup. You won't think about the amount of work needed to repair the damages. That's what I call eating your problems away.

Take care,Mr. G.

Trout Noodle Stir Fry

Instant noodles, we all know them, they’ve been there for us on those hard, lazy nights or when we were pretty much broke, and that’s a thing that can’t be said about a lot of foods. So I wanted to cook  something to elevate those bad boys, and I decided to give things a mix with some trout meat and crunchy vegetables.

For the fish, I just fried 2 of them whole in 2 tbs of olive oil until the skin got a golden color, after which I let it rest before removing all the meat from the bones, resulting in 200 grams of trout flakes, that can be prepared a day before, or you can use some leftovers from other fish dishes (cod works nice here).

For the stir fry: 3 medium carrots, 4-5 cucumbers, both cut into strips with the veggie peeler, 3-4 spring onions, white part separate from the green, 50 grams bean sprouts (soy, pea, etc., visit your local supermarket for more info), garlic, diced, 1 piece of ginger, thumb size, grated, 3 packages of instant noodles (only use the pasta, throw away those other things in there). 

Get your wok (or other similar pan) nice and hot, pour in some peanut oil, add the carrots, beans and the white part of the onion, mix for 2 minutes, add the cucumbers, garlic and ginger, cook for another minute, then add the green part of the onions (those also cut in to strips) and a mix of grinded coriander, fennel seeds and pepper. Mix this whole thing, add the flaked fish, pour in 2 tbs of soy sauce and 1 tsp of fish sauce. After stirring this combo throw in the noodles (in this case, the packages suggested a 3 minute cooking time, so I just boiled them for 2 and cooked them in the pan for another minute), and give it a strong stir, to make sure the soy sauce covers everything (add more soy sauce  if you feel like the dish needs more salt).

Enjoy!
Mr. G.

Reinventing Leftovers

Leftover meatballs + Stir-fry noodles + Amaaaazing oven-roasted carrots!

Enjoy your every meal!
xo