It surprises people when I tell them that I only started cooking a few years ago.
In University, I literally lived on a diet of Super Noodles (Beef was my flavour of choice). In fact, my favourite meal was a Super Noodle SANDWICH. You read correctly. Sloppy beef noodles wedged between two heavily buttered, white, acrylic pieces of Hovis. Eaten stood up in the Kitchen hungover watching Jeremy Kyle while my Uni work suffered separation anxiety in my bedroom.
While I can tell you that I no longer watch Jeremy Kyle and my Uni work is now done, my love for noodles has remained. Particularly ones I can just make with a kettle.
So in essence, this recipe s is basically a glam Super Noodle soup.
Yes there are a few more steps to it than literally pouring a kettle over some noodles and dusting over some suspicious beef scented powder, but it’s all the better for it.
There is a sense of reassurance in the fact that this meal is only a few kettle clicks away. And if you do away with the egg and make it vegan, you don’t even use your hob. It’s the perfect welcome home from a day in work when you genuinely can’t be arsed to cook.
Now I have specified porcini mushrooms here because they are made with a kettle and there is something so irresistible about the nutty, chewy earthiness of porcini that I crave against the saline sloppiness of noodles.
However if this isn’t feasible, go for some roughly torn up mushrooms and fry them in a little oil instead of soaking them with a kettle as instructed here. But do go for porcini if you can because the soaking liquid builds up half of the ‘stock’ in the soup.
Boil a full kettle.
Rip up a packet of porcini mushrooms and put in a bowl, covering them with the boiling water. Only cover them slightly, don’t fill the bowl. Cover the bowl and leave to steep for a bit. Throw some egg noodles in a big bowl and cover them with the rest of the boiling water to cook.
Boil the kettle again.
Fill a saucepan with cold water and add an egg. Bring to a rolling boil and let bubble for 7/8 minutes. Take the egg out of the water and immediately plunge it into ice cold water. If you let it cool slowly on its own, it’ll grow those spooky grey rings around the yolk. Leave it cool in the ice cold water while you crack on with the rest of the soup.
Chop some florets from a head of broccoli, fling them in a colander in the sink. Pour over the remaining boiled water slowly so that it runs through all of the broccoli, essentially blanching them.
Boil the kettle again.
In the bowls you’re going to serve your soups from we can start building the stock. Add a teaspoon of miso paste to each bowl followed by some grated ginger (about half a teaspoon to each).
Now add a splash of fish sauce and soy sauce. Take two chillies and pierce them all over with the tip of a knife and slide into the bowls. Squeeze over the juice of half a lime to each bowls.
Add the blanched broccoli to the bowls along with the now cooked noodles. Now pour the soaked mushrooms, and their brown soaking liquid, evenly across the two bowls. Now top up the bowls with some boiled water.
Fork all of the ingredients together in the bowl to break up the miso paste into the liquid and let sit until the broth is not so boiling you burn your tongue.
Speaking from experience.
