Miso For weekday soups

 Recipe for a workweek's worth of miso soup.

make a quart of dashi broth. Kombu and don't skimp on the Katsuboshi. 

next, take a pint of the dashi and make the miso broth. This will make (roughly) three servings.

• 16 oz. dashi broth
  
• 2 tbsp miso paste
• 1 tbsp mirin

I prefer to mix the miso, mirin, and 2 oz. of the dashi broth, and then add it to the rest of the broth. Like you're making a roux. Then, you can adjust to taste, depending on how strong you want your miso broth. Once it is appropriately strong, take it off the heat. Let it cool, and store it in the fridge.

Day of, Take six oz. or so of the miso broth, put it over heat, add mushrooms, nori, green onions. Meanwhile, cut up tofu into bite size pieces. Put the tofu in the serving bowl (or thermos, or whatever). Bring the heat up slowly. If eating immediately, serve the broth once warmed, and mushrooms are cooked. If putting in a thermos, I heat the broth slowly, let the mushrooms cook, then bring the whole mixture to a boil, then pour into the thermos, to ensure it remains warm. Do as you please, though.

Ramen ... for once

Small confession: I've never had good ramen. I know there are hip eateries entirely devoted to the noodles, and people who have had the real deal in Japan swear by it. The only place I've had that approximates good ramen is a noodle shop in Manhattan, near Columbia University. I have no idea if that was good ramen or not.

My daughter is a Japanese food nut, and she wants ramen. She announced this half way through a food supply run and it forced me to change up my game a little. Find the ingredients and give it a shot. So I scared up a few recipes, made some adjustments, and then put this out there:

STEP 1: THE PROTEIN

I fried up some boneless/skinless chicken breasts in butter in a cast-iron skillet, and finished them in the oven. They had a nice crust.

I boiled some water and then soft boiled three eggs. the technique was to reduce the boil to a simmer and cook the eggs for 6 minutes, then give them an ice water bath and a manicure. My daughter peeled the eggs. She's better at it than I am.

STEP 2: THE BROTH

the base

2 tsp minced ginger
3 tsp minced garlic
2 tsp sesame seed oil

(fry up garlic and ginger in oil in heavy bottoomed sauce/frying pan), about one minute, then add:

3 tbsp soy sauce (low sodium, as it happens)
2 tbsp mirin

(The broth is too salty, so I recommend reducing the soy-mirin base and increasing the garlic-ginger base.)
(update: reduced the soy-mirin base by 1/2 and doubled garlic and ginger. Much better broth!)

(let flavors meld, then add:)

3 1/2 cups chicken broth (homemade, which is why it wasn't 4)
1/2 cup water
Shitake mushrooms

This is our broth.

I served it over fresh noodles that were a little more like Udon or Soba than Ramen, or so I'm told. I like the noodles, but my wife and chil do not, so I will have to try different ones.

Garnished with scallions.

Creamy Broccoli Soup

This is a straightforward application of a realsimple recipe,doubled, and made with our chicken-vegetable stock and water. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 bunch broccoli, forets roughly chopped and stems peeled and sliced.
1 large russet potato
sea salt
black pepper
2 ounces sharp white cheddar
2 cups vegetable broth

1. Heat the oil in a large dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion and red pepper (if using) and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft, 4-6 minutes






2. Add the broth, broccoli, potato, 2 CUPS WATER, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simer, covered, until the vegetables are very tender, 18-20 minutes.





3. Blend ingredients. Return to dutch oven. Top servings with cheddar cheese. Croutons would be nice...

chicken stock to chicken soup

Two experiments with chicken stock, which has become a new favorite in the house. First stock was from one roaster, tin of discarded vegetables and water enough. Second stock started with less water and simmered longer, allowing for a strong reduction--nearly 1/3 of already reduced water content.

The result was 6 cups to 2. The 2 cups were extremely potent. Because I was planning to use it right away, I left it overnight in the fridge. It came out gelatinous. Made soup two nights later out of leftover chicken breast, two bags of remainder egg noodles (not sure how much was there), some celery and carrots. Could have used parsley, and potentially something other than salt to spice it up, but am not sure what at present. First attempt at soup labeled a success.

UPDATE: the reduced stock doesn't work super well for soups, unless you like it thick. More broth would have been better. In future, reserve reduced stock for sauces to intensify flavor without too much sodium addition.