NOODLE SOUP

On a fall or winter Sunday there is nothing better than a pot of slow-cooked meat with noodles, greens and root vegetables. Yesterday I made a Chinese version with chicken. It took about two hours total and was perfect after a day of raking leaves, turning the garden beds and chopping a pile of old wood into kindling. Turning the garden beds was particularly gratifying. I have about 150 square feet of vegetable beds in front of my house with an evolving, improvised fence that manages to keep the tame deer out. I had let it go after the cucumbers and squash died. There’s a row of arugula and a few napa cabbages left but mostly it was weeds. I cleared out the old and dead plants, weeded it and turned it and then put in some organic fertilizer, peat moss and last year’s compost. The compost didn’t look like much. It had been cooking for a year though, and as I dug into it it fluffed up beautifully. This is not a great garden bed. There is an enormous white pine nearby, a weedy Norwegian maple on its north side and farther away, a black walnut whose crown is approaching the border. But I manage to eke out enough to eat from it to justify the work. I turned in the compost, fertilizer and peat moss and buried it in leaves. On the first warm day in March we’ll rake the leaves off and fertilize again, and then plant on the next warm weekend, probably after St. Patrick’s Day.

At four I was ready to quit and have a pot of green tea and read Thomas Hardy’s poems in front of the fire. But first the chicken! I chopped a 4.5 lb chicken up into pieces in this way: legs and thighs get cut into two pieces each, breasts into six pieces each (in half lengthwise and then three chops across the width). Freeze the wing tips and backs for stock. It helps to have a sharp meat cleaver. You can use bigger pieces, but this releases more flavor. The bones are important. Then chop two onions, mince 2 T of ginger and chop ¼ C. of garlic. Heat an iron pot or other heavy bottomed pot and add 3-4 T of oil (not Olive oil! Safflower is great, canola will do), then cook the onions, garlic and ginger until soft, over high heat, stir frying constantly so they don’t burn. Add the chicken pieces and cook until it changes color. Add ¼ cup of Shaoxing wine, 3 star anise, a good pinch of salt and ground black pepper, then cover with water, bring to a boil and simmer, covered, over very low heat for an hour and fifteen minutes. Then add two cups of cubed rutabaga, about ten dried shitake mushrooms with the soaking liquid and continue to cook. Put on the pasta water. Make a pound of whole wheat fettuccini. I had some napa cabbage and beet greens lying around, so I used these. Because the pot was crowded I removed the chicken (as best I could) with a slotted spoon and set it aside. I added the roughly chopped greens (any greens will do, but tougher ones need to cook longer, so plan accordingly) and after they were tender, another ¼ cup of Shaoxing wine, 2-3 T coconut vinegar (I like it vinegary, so keep tasting and adding, you can also use lime juice or other kinds of vinegar too), ¼ C fish sauce, black pepper, a small red onion sliced and chopped cilantro. Taste for salt. Serve the soup, the chicken and the noodles with chopped chilies or other hot sauce (chili oil is OK, pickled chilies, any kind of heat is good). Eat with chopsticks and watch 4 Malcolm in the Middles.