April 15, 2016 Lunch – Miso Noodle Soup, Dinner – Red Cooked Chicken Thighs and Asparagus and Rice

April 15, 2016 Lunch – Miso Noodle Soup, Dinner – Red Cooked Chicken Thighs and Asparagus and Rice

Breakfast was perfect.  Tropical fruit salad, granola, LaLa Mango yogurt and no milk.  The fruit salad is one week old and generating enough liquid to fully moisten the granola and liquefy the yogurt,producing a pleasant fruit flavored liquid without any distracting milk flavor.

I worked on a response in the LRG water case until noon.  I had an appointment at 1:30 so decided to make a quick noodle soup.  Having purchased tofu yesterday at sprouts, I now had all the ingredients for Miso soup.  I filled a 2 quart pot ¾ full of water and added 1 tsp. of dehydrated dashi and opened anew bag of finely chopped seaweed and added about 1 T. of the new finely chopped seaweed to the water.  Then I went to the garden and plucked a small stalk of lovage and de-stemmed and chopped the leaves and added the lovage plus 1 T. of red onion and 1T. of dried Shitake mushrooms, plus two sliced fresh portobello mushrooms and three beef meatballs to the soup.

I then added Bun rice noodles and 1 clump of vegetarian wheat noodles and removed and sliced the meatballs.

I sliced a 3 oz. slice of tofu off the 14 oz. chunk and diced it into ¼ inch squares and added it to the soup.

After about fifteen minutes of simmering I added two chopped stalks of baby Bok Choy and the meatball slices and simmered for another fifteen minutes, until the noodles were soft.  The good thing about soup is it does not require any close maintenance and I returned to my desk to work while it simmered.

After about 30 minutes I dissolved 1 heaping T. of red Miso and stirred it into some of the soup stock, which is the Japanese method of adding miso to soup and chopped a green onion for garnish. I added seven heads off shrimp and let the soup cook for another five to ten minutes.

I then scooped noodles and soup into a bowl and garnished it with finely sliced green onion and served it with hoisin sauce, Shiracha, and fresh cilantro.

My appointment did not show up so I finished the response by 4:30 and then rode to Montano.

When I returned home at 5:39 I was tired and hungry so I made np myself two toasted pieces of rye bread spread with peanut butter and honey.  

Suzette was not yet home, so I knew she would be too tired to cook.  Since there was a package of fresh chicken thighs I had bought on Wednesday at Lowe’s for $1.89/lb., I decided to make one of my favorite and easiest Chinese chicken dishes, Red Cooked Chicken.

Red Cooked Chicken

1 chicken chopped into pieces.  I used 5 thighs, but have cooked up to 8 thighs with this recipe

¼ cup brown sugar or honey

1 cup Sherry

1 cup water. I used ½ cup

1 cup soy sauce  I used ½ cup 

Four scallions cut into 1 inch lengths.  I used three

Heat the ingredients in a pan or wok, dry the chicken pieces and put the chicken and scallion pieces into the cooking medium.  Simmer for40 to 60 minutes, turning occasionally, until the chicken is cooked and the sauce slightly reduced.

Pretty simple.  

I cooked one cup of Basmati rice with ½ tsp. of Knorr dehydrated chicken stock.  

I usually cook the chicken in an uncovered wok to allow the sauce to thicken but tonight I covered the wok to preserve as much liquid as possible because I intended to add some asparagus spears.  When I judged that we were about eight minutes from the rice being ready, which was almost a hour after I began cooking the chicken, I cut the ends off about 20 stalks of asparagus and cut them into 1 ½ inch lengths and threw them into the sauce in the wok.

  The Red Cooked Chicken thighs

  The rice cooked with lily buds

When everything was cooked I spooned a pile of rice onto a plate and spooned a piece of chicken and several spoonfuls of asparagus laden sauce onto the rice.  We drank tea with dinner. 

This dish is very soy dominated.  If you do not like soy, you may wish to reduce the amount of soy or avoid this dish.

Bon Appetit