Soup!

I LOVE SOUP! I am sad to report that I had have a persistent cough for the past few days. On a happy note, my cold gave me the incentive to experiment with making soups. I made a Chinese-inspired soup today for dinner, based on the soup I had for lunch yesterday in NY's Ctown. This soup was a great discovery for me, because I love soup, but I'm always afraid the soup in Ctowns across America have meat in it or meat broth. It's hard to tell, you know?

Recipe for Chinese-inspired soup:

1. Boil 6 cups water in a large wok. A big pot works too, but I was too lazy to clean one!

2. Add 1 tbsp minced garlic, 1 tbsp minced ginger root, and 2 finely diced green chili peppers to the boiling water.

3. Add 4 tsp low sodium soy sauce, 4 tsp seasoned rice vinegar, 2 tsp sesame oil to the wok. Let it continue simmering for a few minutes.

4. Add 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms.

5. Add 2 cups baby bok choy and 2 cups cooked rice noodles to the wok. The rice noodles should be cooked by boiling water in a pot, removing from heat, adding noodles, and covering the pot. Strain and then add to the soup. Also, the bok choy can be prepared by cutting off the ends, separating the leaves, and washing the veggies. Let simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from heat or the bok choy leaves will turn yellow. If you won't be serving the soup for awhile, wait until just before serving to add any leafy veggies or any veggies you want to keep the crunch in.

6. Right before serving the soup, add 1/8 cup chopped cilantro and 1 tsp fresh lime juice. Salt and pepper to taste.

This soup cleared my nose and throat AND tasted delicious at the same time! The best thing about this soup is that you can use many types of veggies. I think it would taste good with different types of mushrooms or fresh spinach (not the bagged kind with E. coli O157:H7!) or broccoli. Also, you can make this more or less spicy by changing the quantity of chili peppers!