Occasionally, I love a nice light and hearty soup starter when I'm going all-out on making something Asian for dinner. This soup uses some beautiful locally cultivated oyster and trumpet mushrooms. This soup comes together fast with some mung bean starch noodles, a rich broth, and a few extras.
Keep in mind, that no rule requires you to use MSG. When you consume mushrooms, you are consuming MSG. You have been consuming foods that have MSG already and may not realize just how many foods have this: tomatoes, parmesan cheese, instant noodles, bottled sauces, packaged savory and sweet snacks, walnuts, soy sauce, tamari, potatoes, eggs, carrots, onions, cabbage, shrimp, anchovies, frozen foods, convenience ready-to-eat foods to name a few. Even if you don't add MSG, you are still getting MSG through the foods you eat, including this soup.
No video is available as soup-making is cut and dry. This will feed about 4-6 people. Unless of course you are my husband and can eat half of this in one sitting. You then realize you should have doubled the recipe so you can enjoy leftovers while the husband gorged himself silly on soup.
INGREDIENTS: 2 QT Roasted Vegetable Stock, strained
1 tsp Turmeric
MSG/Kosher salt, to taste White Pepper, to taste
5 1/3 oz/150g Mung Bean Starch Vermicelli* (pink-colored netted bag)
1 lb/453g Wild/Cultivated mushrooms (i.e., oyster, comb tooth, trumpet, shiitake), cut into strips and sliced rounds
1 Bunch of Scallions, chopped
8oz/226g Napa Cabbage, finely chopped
4 Garlic cloves, sliced thin
3-4 TB Tamari
1-2 TB Rice Vinegar
2 tsp Ginger, pureed
Curry powder, to taste
Sesame oil
1.) In a medium pot, fill half way with water and get this boiling. 2.) Add your mung bean vermicelli to the boiling water and shut off the heat. These noodles cook within 50-60 seconds, up to a couple of minutes. Once cooked, drain and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking process. Drain well and place noodles into small bowl. Drizzle a little sesame oil and mix this into your noodles. This will help prevent the noodles from sticking.
3.) Prep all of your ingredients and place them into separate containers. Bring your prepped ingredients to the stove.
4.) Into a wok or saute pan on medium-high heat, add about one to two tablespoons of neutral oil. In that same medium pot used for cooking your noodles, add your vegetable stock, turmeric, MSG/kosher salt, and white pepper. On medium-high heat, bring this to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. 5.) Begin sauteing your mushrooms for a couple of minutes, stirring regularly. Add your garlic, ginger, curry powder, and mix well. In the next five minutes, add your scallions, cabbage, tamari, rice vinegar, and another drizzle of sesame oil. You want to continue stir-frying this for another one to three minutes, or until everything has cooked thoroughly and the mushrooms have a nice toothsome feel to them.
6.) Into each bowl, grab some of the cooked/chilled noodles and place in the middle. Ladle your hot soup base into the bowl. Because the noodles are super thin, they will come up to temperature with the hot soup base fast.
7.) Add your mushroom-cabbage stir fry to each soup bowl.
Garnish with fresh chopped chives, scallions, or chili crisp. A nice dusting of your favorite hot pepper powder goes extremely well with this soup. Fresh mint and Thai basil are VERY tasty in this soup as well.
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