Zucchini & Mushroom Udon Soup

In September I went back to Oregon for my sister Mandy's wedding reception. It was lovely, of course. I also made the time to jaunt up to Uwajimaya, a wonderful Asian food grocery store. It is there that I bought some difficult-to-find-in-normal-grocery-stores ingredients, and that is what made this delicious meal possible.

This recipe is modified from The Essential Asian Cookbook. The original called for pork and leeks, and I had neither. (I also lacked spring onions and shimichi togarashi, but who's counting?) Instead, I substituted zucchini and mushrooms, and the results were divine.


Zucchini & Mushroom Udon Soup

Ingredients
6 1/3 oz dried udon noodles
2 cups water
1 1/2 tsp dashi granules
1/2 small zucchini
2 large mushrooms
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 Tbsp non-alcoholic mirin

Instructions
Slice zucchini into thin strips. Slice mushrooms in large, but thin, pieces. Set aside.

Follow instructions on udon packaging to cook. Do not rinse. Drain and cover to keep warm.

Bring water and dashi to a boil in a medium sauce pan. Add zucchini and simmer for five minutes. Add mushrooms, soy sauce, and mirin and simmer for two minutes.

Divide noodles into three medium bowls. Spoon soup over noodles and serve.

I have been craving Japanese food lately, and this made my evening. Udon is readily available at most competent grocery stores. The dashi (dried fish granules) and mirin (sweetened rice wine) are harder to come by, and they are absolutely essential to this dish. The non-alcoholic mirin was especially difficult. I went through an entire display of bottles at Uwajimaya until I found one that said non-alcoholic in English.

But now I have an entire liter of the stuff, so I'm hoping that I'll be able to post many more Japanese cooking adventures in the future.

Hearty Vegetable and Sausage Pasta

When it comes to food, “cheap” doesn’t have to mean “tasteless,” and it certainly doesn’t have to mean “unhealthy.” Audrey and I make a variation on this pasta dish at least once or twice a month. It’s nutritious and delicious, and one recipe can easily feed two people for three or four meals. It’s also astonishingly quick--less than 30 minutes from fridge to table!

One of the things I love about this recipe is how versatile it is. You never have to make it with the same vegetables twice! Use those gorgeous speckled eggplants from the farmer’s market or that elderly-but-still-firm zucchini at the back of the fridge. Leftover roasted carrots and cauliflower from last night’s dinner, chopped up small, add some excitement in flavor, color, and texture. Substitute Italian sausage for the chicken sausages, or use regular ground beef instead. (Just make sure to precook the meat if it isn’t already.) Jazz it up and enjoy!

Hearty Vegetable and Sausage Pasta

Ingredients

1 medium zucchini, thinly sliced
1 medium bell pepper, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
Other vegetables as desired (yellow summer squash, eggplant, carrots, etc)
2 sundried tomato chicken sausages, precooked, sliced
1 jar good pasta sauce (we like Bertolli’s and Classico, usually the “Tomato and Basil” variety)
Dried oregano
Dried basil
Fresh basil, to garnish
Fresh parmesan
1/3 box whole-wheat pasta

Instructions

In a large saucepan, saute the sausage. (You can use a little olive oil to keep the sausage from sticking to the pan, if you like, but since you’ll be adding liquid later I generally don’t bother). Add vegetables and saute until soft. Pour in pasta sauce; season to taste with dried oregano and basil. Let simmer while you prepare the pasta according to package directions--this will help the sauce thicken and develop the flavors. Top with fresh shaved parmesan and serve with crusty baguettes or hot garlic bread (look forward to a baguette recipe coming next week!)


Cost
$0.50 1 zucchini
$1.00 1 purple bell pepper (or save even more by going green!)
$2.08 1 jar Classico pasta sauce
$2.19 2 sundried tomato chicken sausages
$0.33 1/3 box Barilla whole-grain rotini

$6.10 Total

This total is a little deceptive, because I didn’t calculate the cost of the dried oregano or basil (pantry staples), the fresh basil (from a $3 plant on our back porch which I’ve had for weeks and have used for countless meals), the carrots and cauliflower (left over from dinner a few days ago) or the fresh parmesan (about $5 for a large triangle which we’ve kept for months and used for even more meals; like many hard cheeses, Parmesan keeps a very long time!). The bread was homemade; I’ll have both the recipe and the cost breakdown up next week.

Keep in mind that this recipe not only served the two of us, but it did so for dinner the first night, Audrey’s lunch the next day, Audrey’s dinner the day after that, and dinner for both of us a few days later. That works out to about 6 servings, which means this costs just a little more than $1 per serving. Pretty good when your dinner budget’s only $20 a week!