Noodle soup with seafood

Yummy! This was perfect yesterday for weekend brunch on a freezing, icy but sunny day.

So many good things in this one, and it IS simple, although it might look like a long list of ingredients.

Read it through to get a sense of the simplicity.

Quantities are kind of up to you and what you feel like, but for two I used this.

I made a paste with the pestle and mortar, gently pounding (CAN you 'gently' pound? Well, I can when I'm trying not to get the food on my white sweater ha!):

a piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated

a clove of garlic, peeled and minced

a chopped red chilli

a couple of kaffir line leaves (stalks removed)

a stick of lemongrass (only the middle part, outer woody layers removed, minced)

1 scant tablespoon each of runny honey, light soy sauce, fish sauce, toasted sesame oil

Then 3/4 of this paste went into a pan of boiling water along with a Knorr chicken stock cube, and the other 1/4 into a bowl to marinade squid and prawns and mushrooms.

You could mix it up of course - try chicken instead, add scallops, have just all sorts of different mushrooms.

Cook the seafood on a hot griddle pan or in a non-stick frying pan - you could of course just add to the soup if you want to keep it really simple but I love this charred griddled seafood.

I added another squeeze of runny honey over the seafood in the last minute or so.

Add lots of diced vegetables to the broth along with a nest of rice noodles (thin ones or wider ones, both work!) for a couple of minutes.

Finish with a squeeze of lime and a dash more soy or fish sauce as needed - to taste.

Share the noodles into two bowls, ladle over the soup and vegetables, top with seafood, griddled mushrooms or meat.

This is one that once you've made it you can just play with, adapting to whatever you feel like and whatever you have in the fridge and cupboard.

It was perfect for a frosty morning here in London, lots of warming flavours with the chilli, garlic and ginger, and then the rousing citrus lemongrass and lime juice, alongside comforting broth and noodles.

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Pork and prawn balls in noodle soup

This is a really lovely soup and very quick to make too (well, after the meatballs have chilled for half an hour in the fridge!).  Very clean tasting broth with lime and ginger, and great textures with the soup, meatballs and noodles - and then fresh spring onions and chillies layer the flavour even more.

Especially quick if you are using up left over pork and prawn mixture after making sesame toasts. And also if, like me, you're using a ready mixed pack of stir fry veg and 'straight to wok' type noodles.

I'm not really sure about quantities here as I used up leftovers, but you'll need to make the full amount anyway as it uses a whole egg. The mixture freezes really well though so if you don't use it all at once, it will freeze for another day, or you could make some pork and prawn sesame toasts.  

Here's how to make the paste:

400g total weight of pork tenderloin and prawns (I used half and half but it doesn't have to be precise)

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1/2 teaspoon each salt and white pepper

small handful of coriander leaves, chopped

2 teaspoons soy sauce

one egg, beaten

Whizz the pork first in a food processor to mince, then add the prawns and just pulse as it will come together very quickly. Add the garlic, salt and pepper and coriander leaves and pulse again.

Add the soy sauce and beaten egg and mix by hand to combine.

This is the mixture for the sesame toasts so if you have that already you now need to add a few other things. I had probably a quarter of this quantity left and added the following:

1 red chilli, chopped

1 spring onion, chopped

a good pinch of sugar

a tiny splash of fish sauce

Mix all the ingredients together, then make little balls and put on a plate in the fridge to chill for around 30 minutes. The mixture is quite wet so I didn't make balls as such, just sort of little blobs.

For the soup itself - and again these aren't precise quantities so just add to taste and adjust as necessary  - I used the following for two portions

a bit less than half a litre water

about half a Knorr chicken stock cube

a piece of ginger, perhaps 2 cm or so, sliced

juice of half a lime (it was a really juicy one so you might need more)

a good splash of fish sauce, perhaps half a tablespoon

about half a teaspoon of sugar, perhaps a little more

a big handful of veg from a packet of stir fry veg (or use a mixture of cabbage, book choy, bean sprouts or whatever you like)

rice noodles

to serve: coriander and mint if you have them, sliced red chilli and spring onions

Bring the water to the boil in the pan and add the stock cube then the ginger, lime juice, fish sauce and sugar and simmer for three or four minutes.

Drop in the meatballs / blobs and simmer for another five minutes.

Add the vegetables and rice noodles and simmer for a further two to three minutes.

Ladle into bowls and top with the fresh herbs, if using, and the sliced chillies and spring onions. Add another squeeze of lime if needed.

This is so delicious I really hope you try it. Let me know what you think!

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