Most of the food articles you see in the next few weeks will, inevitably, revolve around Valentine’s Day. Dozens of things to do with chocolate, elaborate meals to share with your beau, tips for picking restaurants that won’t be crowded, tacky, or overly expensive.
Regardless of whether you are celebrating on February 14th, there are twenty-seven other days in the month to keep yourself fed and healthy. It is the month at the heart of winter, a month when everyone and his second cousin seems to be coughing, when midterms and papers are starting to come thick and fast, a month you cannot afford to lose. Everyone has comfort food for the moments of overwhelming busyness or sickness—chicken noodle soup, macaroni and cheese, scrambled eggs on toast. Something to add to the rotation is miso soup, a healthy, tasty, and endlessly variable meal that can be ready from scratch in less than ten minutes.
(There are, of course, no laws against sharing such a meal with someone else!)
Here is how to get started.
First, pick your miso. There are different kinds, from mild-flavoured white miso to heartier red and brown misos, made with brown rice or barley. Start light if you’re not used to the taste of miso, and experiment.
You can, of course, have just a spoonful of miso stirred into hot water. This is tasty, but not much of a meal. Some possible add-ins:
- Diced carrots, green beans, broccoli, bok choy, spinach, watercress, edamame, daikon, burdock, green onion, or wakame
- Ginger!
- Soba noodles, ramen, or rice
- Tofu, shiitake or enoki mushrooms, or cooked shrimp
Boil some water in a small saucepan, about a cup and a half per person. Add in anything that needs to be cooked. Heavier vegetables like carrots or broccoli will take longer to cook—5 to 8 minutes depending on how small you cut them—while more delicate ones like spinach should be given only about a minute of cooking time. If you want ginger, grate some in at the same time as the vegetables.
Once your vegetables are just barely tender, throw in your starch and protein and simmer everything for another minute, until it’s all piping hot.
Finally, take the soup off the heat and stir in about a tablespoon of miso for each person.
Guten Appetit!
Photo source: http://www.kitchenlark.com/2012/10/23/miso-soup-with-carrot-and-wakame/