This is a third Kharkiv Opera posting, about a pleasant, playful, joyous event staged in the face of terrible times. Previously on this blog:
— on 3/9, “The dandelion caper”, about the enjoyment of the plants and flowers around us
— on 3/11, “Music of the night, about the enjoyment of music
Today, it’s about the enjoyment of food, in particular a 2/17 soup* I contrived from things I happened to have in the house — leftovers from a Chinese food delivery; some leftover crunchy salad greens; rice sticks (maifun), which are staple household supplies in my kitchen cupboard; beef broth in a carton, ditto; and some fine chili power that I got as a gift a while back. The result was fabulous, and there was enough for three meals. Amazing Wok duet mushroom beef, Taylor Farms Mediterranean crunch salad, Dynasty rice vermicelli, and Penzey’s medium hot chili powder: I salute you.
[*The mills of the mammoth grind exceedingly slowly.]
The troika: protein, greens, and carbs. One by one.
Protein. From the menu of the Amazing Wok restaurant in San Carlos CA:
C15. Duet Mushroom Beef 双菇牛: 2 kinds mushroom stir fried in brown sauce
Mushrooms, delicate strips of coated beef, and snow pea pods. For the soup, cut them all into bite-sized pieces, adding the the brown sauce.
Note: the base dish is otherwise known as Asian style beef and mushroom, as in this HomeHeadChef video on YouTube, still photo here:
(#1) From the site: “a beautiful stir fry with strips of steak, mushrooms and snow peas in a sweet & tangy Asian sauce”
Greens. Leftover Mediterranean Crunch vegetables from a Taylor Farms salad pack: escarole, endive, broccoli stalks, cauliflower, radicchio, carrot shreds, and red cabbage (about a third of the crunchy vegetables left over after two meals of salad):
(#2) The Taylor Farms bag
Add the leftover crunchy veg to the leftover duet mushroom beef.
Carbs. Rice sticks / rice noodles / rice vermicelli simmered in beef broth with lots of chili powder — this smells wonderful while it’s cooking — then cut them into shorter pieces, yielding dark spicy noodle bits; add the pieces to the leftovers.
(#3) Rice sticks (made from rice grains), aka maifun (‘rice’ in Cantonese)
(#4) You might have your own favorite brand, of course
This recipe can use any very thin noodles, for example bean thread / cellophane noodles / glass noodles (made from mung bean starch, or sometimes other starches, like potato or sweet potato), aka saifun (‘cellophone noodle’ in Cantonese):
(#5) Dynasty brand saifun
Or capellini / angel hair pasta (made from wheat), as used in Italian cooking. Or the somewhat thicker wheat noodles also used in Chinese cooking, and borrowed by the Japanese as ramen noodles.
End game. You now have the beef and mushroom bits, the crunchy veg, and the dark spicy noodle bits all together in a bowl. Add broth — any kind of broth, though beef would be the obvious choice — mix everything thoroughly, and microwave the soup. This will give you something like this:
(#6) My photo of the fortuitous soup, in my very own big bowl (the alarming purple bit is just some red cabbage); soup photography is an extraordinarily demanding art form, and I don’t pretend to have mastered its ways
The soup, on the other hand, was fabulous.