Cooking with Blobby

When 710 sent me this recipe, I should have made it immediately, as Spicy Pork Noodle Soup screams 'cold weather' and earlier last week it had dropped from 78 to 31. We wet back to the 70s, so it doesn't seem like soup weather............but I had already acquired the ingredients. 

Luckily (?) temps are on their way down to the 20s - again. It even snowed a bit yesterday morning. So Spicy Pork Noodle Soup it was. 

It looked easy enough and it seemed different enough that it could be very good. 

I guess we're about to find out, no? 

Ingredients 

Yield: 4 servings 

12 ounces thin dry noodles (such as ramen or soba) 

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil 

½ pound ground pork 

 Salt and freshly ground black pepper 

4 garlic cloves, minced 

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger 

1 bird’s-eye chile (optional), sliced 

1 teaspoon ground turmeric 

1 teaspoon ground cumin 

4 cups chicken stock 

6 ounces snow peas, thinly sliced on the diagonal (see Tip for other seasonal options) 

3 scallions, thinly sliced 

Preparation 

Step 1 Prepare the noodles: Boil the noodles in a pot or saucepan according to package instructions. Rinse under cold water to halt the cooking. 

Step 2 Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium-high. Add the pork and spread it into an even layer, then cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until well browned underneath. Season the pork with salt and pepper while it browns. Break up the pork into small pieces with a wooden spoon. 

Step 3 Add the garlic, ginger, chile (if using), turmeric and cumin, and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until fragrant. 

Ooops. I forgot to put in the chile at this point. No worries. 

Add the stock and bring to a boil. Season to taste with salt and pepper. 

Step 4 Just before serving, slide the snow peas into the hot broth. 

Step 5 Divide the noodles among bowls and ladle the soup over top. Garnish with scallions. 

Tip This evergreen soup was created with springtime snow peas in mind, but is great for any season (or craving!): A mix of fresh corn kernels and chopped tomatoes would be delicious in the summer, as would thinly sliced winter greens like kale during the winter.

A few take aways:  I would use less oil next time. Like half of what it called for. It's a lot. And I did cut the ginger by about half. To me - a little goes a LONG way and I like ginger, but I don't love it. It was the the right call. 

I'd also cut the noodle total in half. 12 oz is a lot of ramen. Far more than the 4 cups of stock used. I will have ramen for days and days. 

As you saw I did use peppers. But for the life of me - almost every recipe I see has a certain name of a chile, and no store carries any chile by that name. And since I'm not fluent in Scoville heat levels, whatever I bought was a crap shoot. And I used two instead of one. It brought the heat, but nothing over the top. 

You can see, it's a pretty dish. In the title pic you can see a lime too. Asian cooking almost screams 'lime' and I should have used it, but I forgot. It would have brought a brightness to it. 

I also might have added more stock. The liquid / noodle ratio was off - not so much for dinner itself, but for leftovers. As for the pork, you may as well used ground turkey or chicken. The flavours are never really coming from the protein in this dish. 

710 really liked it. Said he wasn't sure what to expect when he sent it to me, but it wasn't what the final product was. I liked it. I didn't love. But I think there might be too much ginger. And even a little too much cumin. 

Still it was good and very different. I'm all for that. As we are moving into the warmer months, I doubt I'd come back to this until later in the Autumn, but I'd try it again.