Rice Noodle Soup for Mother’s Day

Posted on May 13, 2013 by admin

Soup and sandwiches were on the menu for Mother’s Day brunch with my family yesterday, but the soup wasn’t your typical American Sunday fare. We opted to have the Rice Noodle Soup from Simply Yunnan to celebrate the day (see recipe below).

Rice Noodle Soup

We met at my cousin Karen’s house and celebrated with my mom and my aunt — an admirable group of mothers who have made an impact on my life for years and continue to do so as I adjust to my new life as a (step)mom. Karen did a delicious job with the Rice Noodle Soup. For the greens she used rainbow chard from our latest vegetable co-op shipment, and I brought over some cooked chicken from my freezer to contribute as our meat option.

The soup is light yet flavorful, and rice noodles are a perfect wheat-free option for those on special diets. The recipe below is featured in my cookbook, Simply Yunnan: Simple Ingredients, Simple Technique, available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle version.

I love to make the soup after I’ve cooked a whole chicken in my crock pot and have let the bones simmer overnight for a hearty, healthful broth — one chicken provides several meals worth of cooked chicken and several cups worth of broth. For more information on how to cook a whole chicken and make bone broth, check out my friend Roxie’s recipe on her blog, Crunchy in the Panhandle (the West Virginia panhandle, not the Texas one). Side note that brings the crock pot chicken back to Yunnan — Roxie first showed me how to cook a chicken this way in her kitchen in Kunming. From Kunming to West Virginia to Texas, it’s my favorite way to get the most bang for my buck when cooking a whole chicken.

I hope you enjoy a bowl of Rice Noodle Soup soon!

Rice Noodle Soup

Serves 4

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 35 minutes

12 oz. rice noodles (usually labelled as “rice stick” or “rice vermicelli”)

10 c. water

10 c. beef or chicken stock

1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and crushed with the flat side of a cleaver blade

3 whole star anise

2 whole cloves

salt to taste

1 to 1 1/2 c. cooked meat (beef or chicken, depending on which type of stock you use), thinly sliced

1 c. cabbage or spinach, cut in 2-inch pieces

2 spring onions, cut in 1-inch strips

chopped cilantro, red pepper flakes, soy sauce, vinegar for seasoning

In a large stock pot, bring the meat stock to a boil over medium-high heat, along with the ginger, star anise, and cloves. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove the ginger, star anise, and cloves from the soup. Add the meat slices and simmer for 2 minutes. Add the cabbage or spinach and spring onions and simmer for 3 minutes.

During the final 10 minutes of cooking the soup, prepare the rice noodles. In a large pot, bring 10 c. water to a boil over medium-high heat. Add the rice noodles, reduce heat to medium, and boil the noodles for 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and allow the noodles to continue soaking in the hot water for another 4 to 5 minutes. Alternatively, prepare the noodles according to the package’s instructions. Drain the water from the noodles.

Divide the noodles evenly into 4 large soup bowls. Ladle equal amounts of soup with meat, onions, and leafy vegetables over the noodles in each bowl. Allow each person to add cilantro, red pepper flakes, soy sauce, and vinegar according to his or her own taste.

Shopping note:

This noodle soup is best prepared using a type of thin, round rice noodle usually labeled in English as “rice stick” or “rice vermicelli” and found at Asian markets or on the Asian aisle at your grocery store.

Preparation note:

Plan to make this soup when you have leftover cooked meat that you can thinly slice; choose to make the soup with beef or chicken stock according to the type of meat you have leftover.

Yunnan books now available!

Posted on March 25, 2013 by admin

Now available on Amazon

From the Tea Village (novel) — paperback or Kindle

Simply Yunnan (cookbook) — paperback or Kindle

After several years of work, my novel and its companion cookbook are now available for purchase on Amazon. In so many ways these books were made possible by your loving support. I truly hope you enjoy them both!

10 Ways to Help Launch These Books:

1. Buy a paperback copy — I’ll sign it next time I see you!
2. Give a Kindle version as a gift — you can request an “authorgraph” and inscription for e-books as well.
3. “Like” the Facebook pages for the novel and the cookbook.
4. Add the novel and cookbook to your Goodreads shelf and become a fan of my author page.
5. Leave honest reviews of the books on Amazon and Goodreads.
6. Give a paperback copy of From the Tea Village to a tween girl as a birthday/Easter/summer reading gift.
7. Share your opinions of the books by posting on Facebook or Twitter.
8. Make a Simply Yunnan meal for your family or friends and post pics on the Facebook page.
9. Suggest Tea Village as reading for your book club, small group, etc.
10. Host a Simply Yunnan party and cook a few dishes with your friends — I might be able to join your party if it’s in driving distance of Fort Worth (contact me for details).

Thank you for all the ways you support my writing! You are the best readers an author could ask for.

Cover Reveal for Yunnan Books

Posted on February 12, 2013 by admin

Introducing…

the cover artwork for the upcoming books by Rebecca D. Henderson

Everything’s more official when the design work is finished, right? The wonderful team at Streetlight Graphics put together the cover designs for both books, and I’m thrilled to be able to share their completed work with you today.

Both books will be available in paperback and Kindle edition through Amazon on 3-18-13. More details to come at that time. Until then, thank you as always for your support for these creative endeavors.

Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter (using the form in the left sidebar) to be the first to hear about upcoming dates, releases, and special offers.

If you use Goodreads, please take a moment to add my books to your Want to Read shelf. Click here for Tea Village and click here for Simply Yunnan.

And if you’re on Facebook, you can also “like” the books: here for Tea Village and here for Simply Yunnan.

Thanks!

Two Book Launches in March!!

Posted on December 6, 2012 by admin

I’ve never used an exclamation mark in the title of a blog post, but this news is pretty darn exciting.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not just one, but two books will be ready for release in March 2013 — my middle grade novel From the Tea Village and the cookbook Simply Yunnan. Both books sprang forth from my years of living in Yunnan, China, and though they each stand alone, they also complement each other.

From the Tea Village

Ye Sun grew up in an ethnic Bulang village in Yunnan Province, but she now lives in the Chinese world of her boarding school. While other students decide to stay home after sixth grade, Ye Sun sticks with it and moves to middle school in the market town. Her friendships broaden, but she also faces more difficult subjects, an abusive teacher, and taunts over her faltering Mandarin. Just as she thinks the situation is at its worst, a harrowing accident turns her family — and her life — upside-down.

Simply Yunnan

Ten years of eating in Yunnan led to this cookbook. I want to share the simple recipes I’ve collected from friends and from trial-and-error recreating dishes from favorite restaurants. These are the dishes I like to cook to remind myself of towns where I lived, of people I miss — to remind me of places and moments wrapped up in flavors and textures. Simple ingredients. Simple technique. Simply Yunnan.

Look for more news on where to find print and e-book versions of both books to come in the days ahead. Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter (using the form in the left sidebar) to be the first to hear about upcoming dates, releases, and special offers.

Thank you, friends!

Dumplings for Chinese New Year

Posted on January 19, 2012 by admin

Chinese New Year is January 23 this year, and since I’ll be in Texas doing research at that time, I decided to celebrate a little early with my friends here in Washington. We’re entering into the Year of the Dragon, the year I was born in, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make a ton of food and a pot of eight treasures tea and enjoy the evening with my friends. The celebration was a bit inauthenthic in that we didn’t set off a barrage of firecrackers outside the neighbors’ doors, but hey, we’re within city limits in the U.S., what do you expect?

When I made nacatamales with my friends for Christmas Eve a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I’d been wanting to teach them how to make dumplings. You can buy them frozen at Costco or wherever, and they’re really pretty good — but I still have a mental block that assures me anything I buy in a bag from the freezer section can’t be as good as what I make from scratch. It just can’t be. Yes, it’s time consuming and labor intensive to put together 120 dumplings for a dinner party, but what’s a little time spent in the afternoon compared to the yumminess of homemade dumplings?

Here we are, filling the wrappers. You can buy packages of the wrappers at the grocery store, usually in the section where you’ll find tofu. If I were a good little Chinese grandma (which I’m not, on several counts), I would roll out my own wrappers from flour and water. But that would be just silly.

We made dumplings with two different fillings: pork and cabbage in one, beef and carrot in the other. The filling also has all sorts of other wonderful ingredients, like garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and scallions. A small spoonful of filling is lovingly nestled in the center of each wrapper, before the edges are sealed and the tiny pocket of deliciousness is tucked in its spot in the row to await the pot, where it will fulfill its dumpling destiny.

Some of the dumplings went into a large soup pot. Once the water comes to a boil, you put several dumplings in, bring the water back to a boil, and then cool the water off again by adding a cup of cold water. You bring the water to a boil again, add more cold water, boil, add cold water, and by the third time the water comes back to a boil, they should be done. Adding cold water keeps the outside of the dumpling from cooking faster than the inside, which would result in a tough wrapper.

We also did a few dumplings in true potsticker style by pan frying them. It’s a less healthy cooking method, for sure, but who doesn’t enjoy a little oil now and then?

Thank you, Jane and Andy, for letting me take over your kitchen to make dumplings! (Jane and Andy aren’t in this photo, but this is their table and place settings with our dumpling feast.)

Nacatamales on Christmas Eve

Posted on December 26, 2011 by admin

My first Christmas in Washington, but not my first Christmas away from home. I’m somewhat used to being away from family at the holidays — although, do not hear me say that I don’t miss my family when I’m away at Christmas. I do. I just can’t always be there with them, and I’ve made my peace with that.

At Christmas meals on both sides of my family last year we had tamales, and I decided that I want that to be a holiday tradition. Apparently my family didn’t stick with it this year without me, but that’s ok, no worries, I can keep traditions by myself.

My friends Abner and Laura invited me to spend Christmas Eve with their families in Grandview, Washington, about 45 minutes from where I live in the Tri-Cities. Abner’s family is from Nicaragua, and they always make nacatamales for Christmas. Making the nacatamales takes most of the morning, and then they have to cook for a few hours, so there’s a lot of sitting around and talking and hanging out while you wait.

Like Mexican tamales, the key component of nacatamales is masa. But there are a lot more fresh ingredients that go into nacatamales than the Mexican tamales you may have eaten.

You don’t just make a couple of nacatamales at a time — you make a few dozen. So you have to have a big pot to cook the masa, along with onions and bacon grease and potato and garlic and a spice called achiote that the Solanos get on trips to Nicaragua.

Once the masa has thickened, the assembly line starts putting together the nacatamales. Unlike Mexican tamales wrapped in corn husks, nacatamales are wrapped in banana leaves and are a few times bigger. First, you spread a generous amount of masa on the center of the banana leaf. Then you add the rest of the goodies: pork rubbed in achiote, rice mixed with achiote, slices of potato, carrot, bell pepper, tomato, a few raisins, a green olive, and a sprig of mint.

At the end of the assembly line, you fold the banana leaf over the ingredients, and you wrap the entire thing in foil, making sure it’s sealed good enough to stay together when you boil it. In Nicaragua, where banana leaves are abundant, you wouldn’t need the foil. Banana leaves are pricey in Washington, though, so you have to make do with one layer of banana leaf and the outer foil layer.

Somehow I ended up at the end of the line and got to learn to fold the nacatamales — which was fun, but also a bit nerve-wracking because I worried that not sealing it properly would ruin the entire nacatamale. When I learned to make Chinese dumplings, I had the same concern about not sealing the dough and letting the contents escape during boiling. For dumplings, though, you’re only ruining one bite if it comes apart in the boiling water — a loosely sealed nacatamale could ruin a meal for one person. So much pressure!

We made over 40 nacatamales in all, and the Solanos will eat them for several days. The foil packets were boiled in a huge pot on a burner in the back yard.

Here’s a nacatamale on a banana leaf after they were cooked. So very yummy! Lots of fresh ingredients and good flavors all mixed together. And I love anything in a banana leaf — reminds me of Sipsongpanna.

So, my new Christmas tradition will continue next year with tamales once again, Mexican, Nicaraguan, or otherwise.

The Importance of Kitchen Stuff

Posted on April 14, 2011 by admin

(Continued from previous…)

The one exception for me in not wanting to own stuff is where the kitchen is involved. Cooking from scratch is a big deal to me, and having my own decked-out kitchen has been the one thing I’ve truly missed in this year of spare bedrooms. I’ve cooked in every house I’ve been a guest in, but it’s different when it’s my kitchen. I like my own kitchen, like keeping fresh foods around so that I don’t have to eat out so much or make convenience food at home.

And so I carried back from China my favorite stir-fry utensils, and my first purchase here in Kennewick was a rice cooker and wok. I’ve been able to use the other pots and pans of my gracious hostess since staying in her house, but those two items were a necessity for me.

So, while the thought of needing to acquire a couch stresses me out, the idea of not having kitchen items to be able to cook with right away when I move in to my apartment at the end of the month, well that stresses me out a bit, too.

Then, last week, I was given a most beautiful surprise by friends here in Kennewick. Through Craigslist (that ever-intriguing source of serendipitous finds and questionable claims) they learned of a family who had to suddenly pack up and move to Maui. Oh, for such a fate. Anyway, because of shipping expenses, they were getting rid of a lot of their stuff. Including their entire kitchen.

My friends went to their house to see what was available and ended up bringing back complete sets of dishes, pots, pans, baking-ware, the entire silverware drawer (along with the organizer), glasses, mugs, a toaster, can opener, and other miscellaneous items I can’t remember right now. Pretty much everything you need to set up a basic kitchen.

And they gave it to me. They’re keeping it in storage for me until the end of the month, and then I’ll get to move into my apartment and start cooking right away. No $.99 menu from Taco Bell until I can stock the kitchen. I am good to go.

Isn’t that the coolest?

God knows what I need, and He knew that I needed a kitchen. Pretty exciting to see how He used some dear friends to do that for me.

If you’re ever in town, come by for dinner. Let me know ahead of time whether you prefer Chinese, Indian, Thai, Italian, or Mexican — my fresh pico de gallo is pretty amazing, if I do say so.

A Few Cooking Resources

Posted on February 1, 2010 by admin

As a follow-up to the story I posted yesterday about learning to cook while in China, I thought I should mention a few of my more commonly used resources. I found myself wanting to mention them in the previous post, but decided not to interrupt the flow of the story by including too many details.

For breads and cakes, I have worn out my Betty Crocker’s New Cookbook. I learned a while back that if you can start to get a feel for the right proportions of dry and wet ingredients in a recipe, you can adapt it to your own flavor preferences, and this standard cookbook has some solid, basic recipes that I’ve tweaked over and over again to make breads and cakes with my own flair. Betty Crocker is also where I tend to turn for basic information about meat and vegetable preparation—it’s just a solid resource book.

A few years back, a roommate introduced me to More-with-Less Cookbook, by Doris Janzen Longacre. For someone living overseas, this book is a must. So many simple, yet delicious recipes. I love that the recipes don’t start with a can of cream of mushroom soup or a block of Velveeta or any number of other American recipe staples that I can’t get here (and really shouldn’t be eating on a regular basis in America, anyway).

My favorite online resource is allrecipes.com, in large part because of its ingredients search function. I can search for recipes that include ingredients that I have on hand, as well as excluding ingredients that aren’t available to me—a big deal if I’m trying to find a recipe that, say, uses cocoa powder instead of baking chocolate. And, again, if you get a feel for how to use the right proportions, this site is a good place to read through several similar recipes for ideas and then strike out on your own.

Several people have asked me over the years about writing up some local recipes, and I just haven’t had time to do it in addition to my other work (with the exception of a blog entry I posted last year of Lydia’s mom’s steamed fish). Chinese cookbooks abound, if you’re in the mood for Cantonese or Sichuan or some of the more popular cuisines. But recipes from Yunnan are a bit more hard to come by, so I was quite excited when a friend gave me a recently published cookbook called A Taste of Shan by Page Bingham, with recipes from the Shan State in northern Myanmar, just across the border from where I live. The Shan of Myanmar have ethnic (and therefore, culinary) ties with the Dai of China, so this book will be a treasure to me in days to come, when I need to whip up something to remind me of southern Yunnan.

(Thanks, Emily, for More-with-Less, and thank you, Erin, for A Taste of Shan.)

Next in the “Finishing Well” series: ”What to do with our talents”

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

Posted on January 31, 2010 by admin

In college, I cooked with a coffee maker. I cooked a lot of coffee, but I also cooked a lot of hot water for instant oatmeal and ramen noodles in my dorm room. On days when I was feeling exceptionally adventurous on a culinary level, I might make Pillsbury cinnamon rolls in the kitchen on our hall.

To me, the epitome of being a grown-up was cooking. So when I moved from the dorm to an apartment for my last semester at school, I made the grown-up purchase of a rice cooker that would also steam vegetables. I couldn’t have known at the time that those were the forerunner of many meals to come for me—I was just thrilled to fix dinners that required something slightly more involved than dissolving packets in boiling water.

My first few years in China were marked by suitcases and care packages full of cake mixes and Martha White muffins. Man, I love Martha White. Just add milk and you’ve got muffins in 20 minutes. Eventually I realized that I could bake a much greater variety of breads and cakes, as well as never run out of ingredients, if I went local. Flour, sugar, yeast, baking powder, salt, butter–all of these can be purchased locally, so why not begin experimenting with baking from scratch? My first attempts weren’t very successful (i.e. appetizing) because Kunming and Lincang are both at high altitude, but by the time I got to low-lying Jinghong I could make a batch of muffins using only local ingredients and fresh fruit in just a few minutes more than it would take to mix up a package of Martha White.

In due time, entrees followed. With a crock pot and a wok, a world of endless possibilities opened up right there in my kitchen. I began using fresh ingredients to make spaghetti sauce, vegetable soup, chicken curry, and other standards that now populate my repertoire, including my own fried rice that I find tastier (and less oily) than a lot of what I can buy on the street.

My proudest achievement, I must say, has been to make enchiladas completely from scratch, including rolling out the tortillas, peeling and boiling tomatoes for the sauce, cooking and shredding the chicken. It’s an all-day affair, and I’ve only done it a handful of times, but it is worth it. Totally worth it.

When I look back at my progression in China from a box of mac and cheese mixed with a can of Rotel mailed from home to chicken enchiladas with my own tomato sauce, I can do so with a sense of gratitude for the opportunity to learn these skills. Preparing a meal and serving it to guests brings me satisfaction, and I’m not sure I would have discovered this unless I’d come to a place where the convenience of mixes and packages was removed from me to a great extent. Though I may not cook completely from scratch as much back in the States as I do here, at least now I have the confidence to try new meals when the fancy strikes.

Next in the “Finishing Well” series: ”A Few Cooking Resources“

Steamed Fish Recipe

Posted on May 1, 2009 by admin

A while back I was asked about recipes for local dishes from where I live, and I’ve thought about putting some together in a little cookbook—but many of the ingredients would be difficult to find in the States. I decided to post the recipe for Lydia’s steamed fish. If you can get the ingredients, it’s a worthy dish to try at home!

For this dish, Lydia brought home two live fish, so that we could learn how to clean and prepare them from the very start. I asked her to teach me how to do it, but found out later that she had actually never cleaned a fish on her own until this day, so we learned together. The fish accidentally died in the bucket, which turned out to be a good thing because neither of us wanted to have to kill the fish.

So—we bought two tilapia, and we each took one and cleaned the scales off and took the insides out. We left the heads in tact, though, because local people consider those quite tasty. After they were completely cleaned, we cut them into large chunks, bones and all, and placed them in a large bowl.

We then prepared all the seasonings:

2 Tbsp of ginger in julienne slices

diced chili peppers for as hot as you want the fish (Lydia used 5 small chilies)

3/4 tsp ground numbing spice

2 Tbsp whole coriander seeds

1 1/2 tsp salt

a handful of cilantro torn into pieces

another handful of an herb called “Wa people cilantro”

a handful of green onions cut into strips

2 Tbsp of oil

So after the pieces of fish were in the bowl, we added the ginger, numbing spice, coriander seeds, chili peppers, and salt, and we mixed it up to coat the fish well.

Then we placed the fish pieces in a ceramic plate or bowl and drizzled the oil on top, and then we put the herbs and onions on the very top of that. We then made a steamer by placing chopsticks in a pan so that they would hold the plate up off the bottom of the pan. We filled the bottom of the pan with water, put the lid on, and steamed the fish for 13-15 minutes until it was done. (If you have a steamer pan without holes in the bottom, that would work too. We just had to engineer the chopsticks and plate because my steamer pan has holes and all the juices and seasonings would drip out.)

The finished product tasted really great, and it’s pretty healthy. We ate it with stir-fried corn and peas, a local fern stir-fried, and spicy cold rice noodles.

你们慢慢吃！

Rebecca Henderson

writing, reading, living

Tag Archives: cooking