Everything soup

Ed made a soup, and it was delicious, so I took pictures. As with most Ed-recipes, who knows what the recipe actually is. Hopefully I'll be able to get you close, though. Basically, we fried a bunch of things, and then added them to the hot soup of noodles and dashi and daikon. It might not sound glamorous, but it was tasty, and relatively cheap as far as our fancy meals go.

The fried things on top were tofu, spicy red peppers (the long skinny kind, but not the thai red peppers, these were pretty smooth-skinned), and oyster mushrooms. We put them in a pretty dish, which precipitated me taking pictures and putting this on a blog. The soup broth was entirely dashi, which is little pellets of tuna, with some julianed daikon, a little kale, and egg noodles. We happen to have dashi because Ed discovered that you can get a giant box of it at the super88, and it goes really well as a broth for cold soba noodles. I'll do my best with a recipe...

Asian-flavored everything soup
Makes approximately 4 servings

1 bunch of fresh egg noodles (about half a pound to a pound? the measurement doesn't matter too much)
3/4 daikon root, julianned
4-6C water
3 tbs of dashi (look at the instructions on the package)
~1C kale, chopped finely
~9oz firm tofu
~2C cooking oil
2 long skinny smooth-skinned red peppers, sliced crosswise into little pieces
~4C oyster mushrooms, chopped coarsely
~4 tbs butter
Salt

First, you need to press the tofu. If it comes in a block, the way ours does, slice it into thirds, and place it on a dish towel. Fold the dish towel over the top of the tofu and put a cutting board or something else thats big and flat on top. Then add a couple cookbooks, maybe 15 pounds worth of weight, and let it sit for 20-30 minutes.

Start cooking your mushrooms, because they take a while. Salt them liberally, and add 2-3 tbs of butter to a pan. Cook the mushrooms on medium high for about 20 minutes, adding butter as needed, until they're nice and crispy. Don't be afraid of the salt, a lot of it gets used to draw the water out of the mushrooms.

Meanwhile, put about an inch of oil into a wok or other big pot. Get the oil hot by putting it on high heat, and before it starts smoking, turn it down. Add the pepper slices, and toss them around just until they're cooked - you don't want them to turn brown. Take them out of the oil and set them on a paper-towel-covered plate to drain. Don't skip this step, the deep-fried peppers are really awesome. It kind of takes away some of the heat so you can actually taste pepper-ness. Its good. I was able to taste the peppers once they were cooked without running to the fridge for a glass of cream.

Take the books off the tofu, and slice it into bite-sized pieces. Add the tofu to the oil, turning up the heat as you add the tofu, and then turning it down a little once its back up to heat. You sort of have to just use your intuition on this one. Stir around the tofu once or twice so it doesn't stick, and take it out when its golden brown and crispy looking. Add it to the paper-towel-covered-plate.

Your mushrooms will be close to done by now, so set a pot of water on to boil, with the dashi and the daikon and kale. Once the water is boiling, these things are mostly done, so you can add the noodles, which cook really quickly since they're fresh. Taste them after a minute, you want to take the soup off the heat while the noodles are still pretty chewy, so that they don't turn to mush.

Serve the soup in a bowl, with the crunchy things sprinkled on top. Enjoy!