Friday 4 February 2011

Green Noodles

This is my favourite quick-meal all through winter, and at the end of long days even on hot summer evenings. For the life of me I cannot get my parents or family to eat it -- it's too bland and healthy for their palate, apparently -- but nothing can tear me away from a steaming bowl of this on chilly afternoons and tired evenings. Try it, and you'll know why.

There's a more elaborate version of this that my family *does* love. It's in the queue :-)

Ingredients:
Noodles.
Cabbage, any kind of beans you like.
Salt, pepper.

Yeah, that's all. Plus some oil and water, but who needs to specifically know that there'll be some oil and water in cooking at some point? In fact, I should take the salt off the list. Anyway, here's how you do it, in pictures!

 Green beans and cabbage


 Chopped green beans and cabbage


 Toss the chopped green beans in a tablespoon of hot oil. Wait till the beans darken and start looking fried. Give it about three to five minutes.


 Add the cabbage. Toss in well for the first few minutes to make sure the oil mixes evenly with it. Now let it cook for another three minutes.


 See the slight brown fry-lines on the cabbage? When you start seeing those, start tossing again on high or medium.


 When the cabbage is fried and slightly crispy, add water.


 When the water bubbles, drop a washed chunk of noodle into. The usual noodles one gets in India definitely needs washing, because otherwise your soup is going end up really starchy.


 Let the bubbling escalate to a rolling boiling.


 After ten minutes, it'll look like this. If there's too much gravy, slide the noodle into a bowl and boil the extra gravy off.


 See the starch-marks at the edge of the dish? I forgot to wash my noodle this time, and that's what you end up with. I had to throw away most of the delicious thick gravy.


I sprinkled some salt and lots of pepper, and splashed on some chili sauce made by the Pou Chong Brothers. Bless their hearts.

Previous noodle-soup recipes here.

12 comments:

Abhishek Mukherjee said...

Shun vegetarianism! Accept humanity!!

Rimi said...

... you want me to eat people?

Dea-chan said...

Aha -- I'm turned you Ukrainian (from afar and I really have no idea how...)! If you left it at salt and pepper, that'd be a fine Eastern European meal. And I've made it!

Rimi said...

Gosh, I had no idea! What can I say, I'm instinctively cosmopolitan ;-)

Anonymous said...

reduced to this grub!
pity sistah.

Srin said...

This is more like the thukpa I know (with the soupy gravy). Not the extreme vegetables thing you posted once. Looks yum.

Soapsuds said...

Cabbages make you fart...
But then again, like Shrek says, its better out than in...
Looks quite delicious...and is healthy.
Starch marks don't look nice. :/

Sachinky said...

Just cabbages and green beans? I gotta give this a try!

Daisy Majumdar said...

I made said soup today! :)

Though, in lieu of unavailable noodles, I threw in those roundish, elbowy macaroni that are found under the Licia brand name. Not much starch in those, so I had to reduce the whole thing to a gravy-chow consistency.

Oh, I also added two cloves of chopped garlic (for one large bowl of green soup, just before I dropped in the macaroni to boil with the cabbage and beans. With fantastic results. It looked, smelt and tasted Chinese.

Love you Rimi, for this very simple and very, very tasty stuff. <3

Rimi said...

Looks like you just made it that much better, Daisy :-)

sumana001 said...

Hi Rimi, I often steal your recipes - and certainly your innovative tips - to, as she said, "prettify" and tastify my cooking. I tried this one today, with variations: I went green with a vengeance, adding baby green peas, green capsicum, green chillies (without the seeds) and a dash of minced coriander leaves apart from, of course, the beans and cabbage which you did. Green always is yum for me, but when the strictly nonveg eating husband said it was lovely, I thought it was time I made an acknowledgement, lest I'm accused of plagiarism, y'know :) I love your blog. I only wish you updated it more often - but that means cooking more often too, does it? :p

Rimi said...

Hello Sumana, it's lovely to hear from you. Those are kind words indeed! Thank you :-)

I would update oftner if I cooked regularly, but I really don't. As I might have mentioned somewhere on the blog, I love food and I like cooking, but I hate doing it on a regular schedule. But it's good to know someone wants me to :-)

I love the idea of more greens in this. I'll certainly try your version, along with Daisy's recommendation of garlic. Do let me know when you improve upon more of my recipes.