Once, a very, very long time ago, I made a turducken. If you’re thinking it’s a little excessive to make a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken, it is. Throw in the fact that you need to de-bone three birds, create three different kinds of stuffing, and cook the final product for over 9 hours and I think you’ll agree that turducken is not really worth the effort.
I’m not a big fan of the dumplings in chicken and dumplings, there’s something about filling-less dumplings that doesn’t sit quite right with me. Then again, it could just be that I haven’t had proper chicken and dumplings. When I have had them, the dumplings are dough-y, thick and strangely flavourless. Generally, they taste like un-cooked balls of dough.
I was hoping that Keller’s recipe for Chicken Soup with Dumplings would change all my biases against filling-less dumplings. All of the Ad Hoc recipes I’ve tried so far have been winners, so it was a good bet that this recipe would be a winner as well. The photo of the soup in the book is gorgeous: succulent chicken, creamy soup and dumplings that look like they’re made out of mashed potatoes.
Kimchi stew is what made me fall in love with kimchi – either that or David Chang’s kimchi recipe. Honestly though, I think there’s something about cooking kimchi that mellows out the flavours and makes it more accessible. Kimchi stew is spicy, sweet and one of my favourite fast meals.
I know you’re probably wondering, when is she going to get back to the Momofuku stuff? Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about Chang and his crazy recipes, in fact, I just received my sample size of Activa meat glue in the mail. Meat glue equals Brick Chicken and whatever other weird and wondrous meat monstrosities I can come up with for Meat Glue Week.
In the mean time, I’m still recuperating from my lingering cough with my seemingly endless chicken soups. Miso chicken ramen is one of my favourites and one that you can definitely make with pre-home-made or store-bought chicken stock.
Don’t worry, this soup doesn’t have any alligator meat it in, just alligator noodles. When Mike was young, he was obsessed with eating Lipton’s Alligator Soup, an instant chicken noodle soup with alligator shaped noodles. They’ve discontinued the soup, but Mike craves it in that way you crave food from your childhood.
The Momofuku name is a registered trademark of Momofuku and David Chang. I'm just using it (fair use?) to refer to his restaurant and cookbook.
All original content and photos is © 2010 copyright & all rights reserved Stephanie Le.
momofukufor2.com is where I document the little tips and tricks I learned while cooking through the Momofuku Cookbook by David Chang and Peter Meehan.
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