The forecast today calls for a major wind chill warning, and I quote, "Long term exposure can result in hypothermia, frost bite, or DEATH." Cheery, no? That last part is my favorite. What that means for us is no time outside, and my tolerance for getting in and out of the car is at an all time low. THAT means, I had to get gas for carpool, so that used up my "getting out of the car" quotient for the day, so that means, Refrigerator Roulette! Here's a rough summary of Matt and my week night thought process:
Matt: The new Bon Appetit came yesterday!
Katie: Oooooooo, what's on the cover?
Matt: Fancy chicken and dumplings! With mushrooms!
Katie: Oohhhhh, we have mushrooms!
Matt: We could make this!
Katie: Okay, I'll thaw some chicken!
Matt:......reading
Katie: *Googling hot and sour soup because the cover photo looked more like hot and sour soup than chicken and dumplings*
Matt: This takes two and a half hours and you have to own a pressure cooker. Also what's a morel?
Katie: That's okay, I'm already making hot and sour soup! Also, I'm not thawing chicken, because I will probably eat all the left over pizza while our shitty microwave takes ten hours to thaw all the chicken.
So the long and the short of it is that we made hot and sour soup with left over breakfast sausage.
Hot and sour soup is something that you only buy the morning after one too many 7 and 7's in a Chinese restaurant (you can infer the kind of Chinese restaurant by the fact that this story takes place in the morning...), and you only have $15 in your bank account (i.e. college). It is full of meat, egg, mushrooms, and grease, and can usually be purchased in near-gallon-drum quantities for a little less than dirt cheap. While this does not aptly describe our circumstances this evening, since we haven't been 21 now for several years (read: I drink a glass of wine, make some sort of creation for dinner, and fall asleep watching Dr. Quinn in bed at 9 p.m. nearly every day), and we have to get up in the morning for silly things like work, and feeding the fur babies, and drinking coffee, this turned out particularly well. I also didn't use any of the recipes I found, since most of them required things like tofu, so here's how to make my faux hot and sour soup!
To make my week night savior Hot and Sour Soup you will need:
1/2 pound shitake mushrooms sliced
6 mini bell peppers, for color, sliced in little rings
1 head broccoli, chopped
1 small onion halved and sliced
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3 green onions, chopped
a few tablespoons olive oil
3/4 lb. browned sausage (or any kind of protein, chicken or pork would also be great, Matt usually doesn't define a dish as dinner unless it contains animal)
4 eggs, lightly whisked
2 cans (4 cups) Chicken stock
2 cups water
1/2 cup white wine
5 tbsp corn starch
3 tbsp sriracha
1 tsp chili flakes, or to taste
1/4 cup white vinegar
3 tbsp. soy sauce (I always use low sodium)
Brown the onion, garlic, broccoli, mushrooms and peppers in olive oil in a large stock pot. Add in the sausage, stock, water, wine, sriracha, chili flake, soy sauce, and vinegar. Bring to a boil, add in the corn starch, simmer for 15 minutes to thicken. Bring the heat down to medium, drizzle the egg into the hot soup, stir lightly. Stir in the green onion. Serve with egg rolls (which I did not, in fact, have. If it were payday, I would serve this with egg rolls...). Although the picture might suggest otherwise, you should not share this with the furry children. Unless you are fond of cleaning spicy, spicy carpet stains.
Enjoy, because it's mighty cold out there, friends. Remember, don't prolongedly expose yourself, because of that whole "death" thing. Really it makes far more sense to make yourself some soup and drink a glass of whatever. As always, love and best fishes!
