Soba Noodles with Chicken and Almond Maple Sauce

The recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan have left me stunned and with an aching heart. I haven't yet made my way to Japan, but it has long been on the top of my travel wish list as a destination and culture that fascinates me. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone there in their recovery.

Soba noodles are one of my favorite Japanese comfort foods. Soba are usually made from a mixture of buckwheat and wheat flours. Buckwheat, contrary to its name, is not a type of wheat, and is gluten-free. But most soba noodles also contain a bit of regular wheat flour as well to make them less fragile. I used Eden Selected 100% buckwheat soba noodles, available locally at Whole Foods. I'm still on the hunt for a certified gluten-free soba noodle, which Eden's is not, but I have used these repeatedly and have had no problems.

When I went to Seattle, Lara Ferroni turned me on to the cookbook, Lucid Food by Louisa Shafia. She said she was inspired by the gorgeous, natural photography by Jennifer Martiné. I can see why. This is a book you can get lost in looking at the photographs. Kale has never looked so sexy. I was also charmed by the hand-drawn graphics embellishing the book.

This book seduces you with its storytelling, all the while teaching you to "green your cuisine" and eat in more sustainable ways. I love the introduction... Shafia describes the magic of a power outtage in New York City caused by a multistate blackout. Disconnected from trains, computers, and air conditioning, New Yorkers took to the streets for an impromptu party on the sidewalk. With their tvs turned off, neighbors chatted under a full moon and enjoyed the simple pleasures of a summer evening.

One of my favorite recipes from Lucid Food is this one for soba noodles with an almond butter sauce sweetened with maple syrup. Shafia makes it with tofu. I'm off soy for now, so I subbed some roasted chicken. The soba noodles have a soft, nutty, earthiness that is bathed in a very seductive sauce. It's made with a base of almond butter sweetened gently with maple syrup and sesame oil.

The sauce also includes a shot of soy sauce for savory saltiness. As I mentioned, I'm off soy for now, so I found a substitute that works well in this kind of context as a seasoning. It's Coconut Secret brand raw coconut amino. It is a gluten-free, soy-free, organic, coconut-based amino seasoning sauce. It also has much less salt than traditional soy sauce. It's raw, vegan, gmo-free, and contains 17 amino acids. I found it at Whole Foods, next to the soy sauce.

Along with the sobas and almond butter sauce, these noodles have snap peas for a fresh, green crunch. One of the things I love about this recipe is that Shafia pours the hot noodle water over the peas in a colander (also draining the noodles) to quickly cook the snap peas just enough. I also added some strips of red bell pepper too.

One note: the Eden Selected web site recommended cooking these 100% buckwheat sobas the traditional Japanese way to create a firmer noodle. This is easily done by shocking the noodles while they are cooking. Bring your water up to a boil, add the noodles, stir, and then let them come back up to a boil. As soon as the water begins to boil, add about 1/2 cup of cold water to the pan to stop the boiling. Repeat this one or two more times until the noodles are cooked through — when the inside of the noodle is the same color as the outside and they are still firm yet tender to the bite. This will happen quickly, in about 5-6 minutes.

We liked this sauce so much that I increased the proportion of sauce to make a little more of it. You can serve the extra at the table to add as you like.

Soba Noodles with Chicken and Almond Maple Sauce

1 pound roasted chicken meat, shredded

sauce:
3/4 cup almond butter
2-4 tablespoons soy sauce or soy-free Coconut Aminos
6 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced or grated
2 cloves garlic, minced or grated
2 tablespoons rice vinegar

noodles:
3 cups snap peas, ends trimmed and sliced diagonally
8-12 ounces soba noodles
1 red bell pepper, sliced
3 scallions, thinly sliced
one bunch cilantro
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
chili oil for serving

Make the sauce: Combine the almond butter, soy sauce (or aminos), maple syrup, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, and rice vinegar. Whisk together until it becomes a cohesive sauce. Set aside.

Place the sliced snap peas in a colander in the sink.

Fill a large pot with water, sprinkle in a pinch of salt and bring to a boil. Add the noodles, return to a boil. As soon as the water returns to a boil, add about 1/2 cup cold water to stop the boiling. Let it come back to a boil again, and repeat with another 1/2 cup cold water. Repeat one more time, if necessary, until noodles are cooked through. This should take only about 5-6 minutes.

When the noodles are completely cooked, drain them into the colander with the peas. The hot water will cook the snap peas just enough. Rinse the noodles and peas in the colander briefly with cool water. Drain and then pour them out into a large serving bowl.

Add the shredded chicken, bell peppers, cilantro and scallions to the noodles and peas. Drizzle with about half of the sauce. Toss together with tongs until all of the noodles are coated with the sauce.

Before serving, sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds. Serve with chili oil and more almond butter sauce to add as you like at the table.

Serves 4.

Adapted from Lucid Food by Louisa Shafia.

San Francisco Soup

This week is my friend Kelley's birthday. She and her husband used to live in San Francisco and I was lucky enough to visit them there frequently. Bless them for their generosity and hospitality. It was always a delight to get to spend time with them there and get to know the city with them as guides. I first made this soup for them there after a day of walking up and down those hills and foraging for fixin's at the neighborhood market in Pacific Heights. I always think of them and want to be back in San Francisco whenever I make it.

This is basically a minestrone with pesto. It's not so much a recipe as a guideline. You can make it with what you like. The thing that makes it is the dollop of pesto you add just before serving. I've been making this for years. I used to make it with chicken but now we use chicken Italian sausage for a little more flavor. I sometimes make it using (store-bought) veal stock mixed with chicken stock, sometimes just chicken. Sometimes I add beans, sometimes I don't. Do what you please. Experiment and make it your own. It's good to warm your bones on a cold, foggy day. It's best served immediately when it's made so the veggies and pasta keep their snap.

San Francisco Soup

1 pound chicken Italian sausage
olive oil
1 medium onion or 2 leeks or 2 shallots, peeled and chopped
veggies: 1 yellow squash, 2 zucchini, 2 carrots, 1 pound green beans, chopped into bite-sized pieces
herbs: thyme, rosemary, basil, parsley, as much as you like
1/2 - 1 cup white wine
32 ounces chicken stock
16 ounces veal stock
1 small can (approximately 15 ounces) cannellini beans
1/2 - 3/4 pound short pasta like penne or rigatoni
2 large tomatoes, chopped, or 1 pint cherry tomatoes, cut in half, to serve
1 cup basil pesto to serve
chopped parsley to serve
shredded parmesan to serve

Brown the sausage on both sides over medium heat in a little olive oil.

Remove from pan and cut into slices. Set aside.

If necessary, add a little more olive oil to the pan and cook the onion, leek or shallot until softened, several minutes.

Add your veggies and herbs and cook 2-3 minutes more.

Add your white wine and continue cooking 2-3 more minutes.

Add stock and sausage and bring heat up to high. Add your cannellini beans, if using. Bring up to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer.

Add pasta and simmer until pasta is ready. Serve immediately.

Ladle into individual bowls, then add a few chunks of tomato. Serve with a spoonful of pesto on top of each serving and spinkled with fresh parsley and parmesan.

Serves approximately 6.

Comfort Food

Well, we battened down the hatches and "hunkered down," as they like to keep saying on the news. But Ike brought us only a few breezy gusts of wind and not one drop of rain as it blew by just east of Austin.

Bless the hearts of all those folks in Galveston, Houston and all along the coast. I know it's unlikely, but I hope everyone finds their homes safe and sound upon return. Wish I could make them all something comforting to eat.

This is the kind of time you want some food to feed your soul. Chicken and dumplings is comfort food in the truest sense. Granted, it's not diet food. But this is not the kind of thing you eat regularly. It's something to reach for like a warm, soft blanket to pull around you like a hug. Chicken and dumplings can do that.

We made a big batch of these to take with us on vacation. Chicken and dumplings also make great cold weather cabin food. Happily, they hold up well to freezing. I might go so far as to say they were even better the second time around.

When I was growing up, my grandmother would make me chicken and dumplings. So they hold a place in my heart right up there along with her hugs, and the warm, soft quilts she made me. I still pull those quilts around me and they comfort me every time. Chicken and dumplings are like that. Like a hug in your tummy, and who doesn't need that sometimes?

Sadly, my grandmother is gone and I don't have her recipe. But my husband's family also makes chicken and dumplings – the closest I've ever tasted to my grandmother's, so we started with a recipe his mother provided. (Thanks, Phyllis!) I added a few more veggies, just trying to make them a little more of a well-rounded meal, and a few herbs. My husband is in charge of dumplings (being chief biscuit maker around here) and he has perfected these. These dumplings are worth marrying him for all by themselves.

We also noticed, after several experimental batches, that even though the dumpling dough is almost the same as biscuit dough, the texture is much improved – chewier – by using all purpose flour instead of the usual self-rising.

These also take some time. I used an already roasted chicken for some of the meat and to make the broth. You could certainly use an uncooked bird. This was just my shortcut. You could also add more veggies. Peas would be a nice addition. It's still an all day weekend kind of thing. But it's kind of Zen, actually. If you take your time and enjoy the process, the making of this dish can be as good for you as the eating of it.

This is a huge batch. But if you're going to go to all this trouble, is nice to be able to put some in the freezer for a rainy day or two.

Try them and see if you don't feel better.


Chicken and Dumplings


Before you start, put a stick of unsalted butter in the freezer.

Step 1: Make the broth.

one approximately 2 1/2 pound roasted chicken
1 onion, peeled and quartered
3 cloves garlic
2 carrots, peeled and cut in half
1 large parsnip, peeled and cut in half
2 stalks celery
5 sprigs fresh thyme
6 quarts of water

Remove the meat from the roasted chicken. Shred the meat and put it in a covered container in the fridge.

Note: I used the pasta insert that came with my stockpot to line the pan. Made it a lot easier to fish out the chicken bones and veggies after.

Toss the chicken bones and skin into a large stockpot. Add the onion, garlic, carrots, parsnip, celery, thyme, and water.

Bring up to a low boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 60-90 minutes.

Remove chicken bones and veggies. You can strain the broth, if you like, but we didn't bother. Pour the broth into another container while you move on to the rest of the recipe.


2. Make the "stew" part of the chicken and dumplings.

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 carrots, peeled and chopped into half moons
1 parsnip, peeled and chopped into half moons
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 cup pearl onions (frozen worked fine here)
3-4 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves stripped from the stalks
meat from the roast chicken
1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast
broth (above)

Sauté the vegetables and thyme in olive oil in the stockpot until softened. (They will continue cooking.)

Add the chicken breasts and broth and simmer until the chicken breasts are cooked through. Take out the chicken breasts and shred them with forks (like pulled pork). Return the shredded chicken to the pot. Add the roasted chicken meat.


3. Make dumplings (helps to have someone else making these while you're fiddling with the stew part.)

6 cups all purpose flour (yes, really, 6 cups; more dumplings are better)
3 tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
8 tablespoons frozen unsalted butter (1 stick)
2 1/2 - 3 cups of buttermilk (we used low-fat)

In the biggest bowl you've got, mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper.

Using a microplan with large grate or a cheese grater, grate the frozen butter into the flour mixture. With your fingertips, mix the butter with the flour mixture (use a brushing motion with your thumb against your fingertips). You want the dough to have a pebblelike consistency. It's ok to have little pebbles of butter not completely mixed in.

Stir in (my husband likes to use his hands) 2 1/2 cups of the buttermilk. Set aside the extra half cup and see if you need it. Very gently, stir together the dough. If you still need it, add the extra 1/2 cup buttermilk (in little shots) until the dough comes together just a bit drier than biscuit dough.

Roll out the dough on a clean floured surface, half batch at a time with a floured pin. It should be about 1/4" thick. Cut into strips about 1" x 3/4" long.

Drop the dumplings into the simmering chicken stew. Note: we did the first half of the batch of dumplings, let them cook, and then sat down to eat. After we'd finished, we put the second batch of dumplings in and cooked them before letting the whole thing cool and putting into containers in the freezer. It's easier that way.

Once the dumplings are in, I used a Asian spider (or you could use a ladle or really big spoon) to move the dumplings around and turn them over so they cooked evenly in the broth. At first, they'll float. We found that the longer they cooked, even until they sunk, the better it all tasted. Even after refrigerating the whole thing overnight and reheating the next day, the dumplings were really good and the broth/stew was even better the second day after the dumplings had thickened the stew. Simmer the dumplings at least 30-40 minutes. When you first put them in the pot, you may need to raise the heat a bit.

Serves at least 8-10.

Food for tummyaches

My husband had a tummyache this week. I wanted to make him something comforting so off I went to the store for applesauce and bananas and ginger and Gatorade and squooshy bread. (And, of course, the pink stuff.) Yesterday, he had recovered enough to adventure back into the world real food. And since we’ve just returned from backpacking in the Tetons, I was ready to get back into the kitchen. Boiling water for freeze-dried pouches is not cooking.

I started with udon noodles. The fat, pillowy noodles appeal to all tummies, especially recovering ones. (I use frozen udon from a local Japanese market. They're fatter and fluffier than the dried ones you cook in boiling water. You can defrost these in the microwave briefly and then pour your broth right over them. Almost instant.)

Add a little chicken, a lot of ginger, some onion, garlic and a splash of fish sauce for body. And finally, some bok choy, to make it interesting. He said he was up to it. On a normal day, this might benefit from a pinch of hot pepper flakes to give it a little kick. But this way it’s very smooth and soothing with just enough structure.

As a little bonus treat and to continue our ginger theme, I made pear and ginger crisp from Eric Gower’s The Breakaway Cook. It’s the ultimate in comfort food. Soft, smooth pears with ginger and little maple syrup. “It’s good on a lot of different levels,” the hubby said. So true. It’s so good you want to crawl in the pan and roll around in it. As it bakes in the oven, you’re drawn to the kitchen, standing at the oven window, wanting it to be ready now. “Do we have to wait for it to cool?” he said as soon as it came out of the oven. Then there’s the juice in the bottom of the pan. It’s pure pear heaven. I have a few ingredient crushes and pears are high on the list. This is one of the reasons why. (David Lebovitz pear caramel ice cream and King’s Cupboard’s pear caramel sauce are two of the other reasons.)

So if you’re tummy needs some soothing or if you’ve just had a bumpy day, this is your meal.



Ginger Chicken Udon Soup

1-2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, chopped
2-inch piece of ginger, peeled, sliced into coins
splash of Asian fish sauce
2 chicken breasts, (I used boneless/skinless), about 1.5 pounds
2 quarts (reduced sodium) chicken broth
half of a bunch of cilantro, particularly the stems, finely chopped
4 heads of baby bok choy, cleaned, sliced
frozen udon noodles, defrosted, however much you want per bowl


Sweat the onions, garlic and ginger in a little olive oil until softened. I added the chicken before the broth so it could take in these flavors before being bathed in the broth. Brown chicken lightly on both sides. Add broth. Bring it up to a low boil. Lower heat. Add fish sauce and cilantro. Simmer until chicken is cooked through. Remove chicken to cutting board and shred with forks, removing those chewy bits. Toss the chicken back in. Just before serving, drop in the bok choy, to preserve it’s crunch and color. Serve over a bed of udon noodles. (If you’re going to have leftovers, save some of the bok choy to put in after reheating the next day.) Garnish with cilantro.

Serves 4-6.