Recipe Tin Eats – Dinner

Every so often a cookbook comes along that you want to shout from the skies about. This is one of those books. I was, however, going to wait until later in the year to tell you about it (as a review with the cookbook club I’ve recently joined…more on that in a couple of weeks) but by then I suspect I’ll have run out of dishes to cook so will come up with another book to suggest. This book is that good.

I’ve been following Nagi Maehashi through her website Recipe Tin Eats and Instagram (@recipe_tin) for a long time now – my “saved” Instagram is full of midweek meal ideas posted by her – and was thrilled when she announced she was writing a cookbook. And she hasn’t just written it, she’s tested all the recipes (and retested them – the vanilla cake was tested 89 times) taken most of the photographs, and videoed every recipe. Yep, every recipe can be watched simply by scanning the QR code in the book. Seriously.

The book was scheduled for release while we were in the UK and I was so keen to get my hands on a copy that I preordered a digital copy so I could read it on my iPad immediately. One of the first meals I cooked when we got back was the One-Pot Baked Greek Chicken and Lemon Rice. (the recipe is here and it’s a cracker.)

So what else have I cooked? So much. I’ve made Vietnamese Baked Chicken, Chicken Shawarma, Asian glazed Salmon, Teriyaki Beef Bowls, Spicy Sichuan Pork Noodles, Magic Baked Chicken Fried Rice, Chorizo Potato Stew-Soup, Vietnamese Shaking Beef, Vietnamese Caramel Pork Mince…and so much more.

Spicy Sichuan Noodles

Vietnamese Chicken Salad

Gyoza

With so many recipes perfect for midweek meals it is, at the moment anyway, my most used recipe book. So well used that Adventure Spaniel bought Sarah a copy for Christmas and now she’s cooking weekly from it too. (yes, my dog has fabulous taste in cookbooks…). While I haven’t tried it yet, Sarah tells me that The Rainbow – a quinoa salad with ginger dressing – is her fave batch-cook-on-a-Sunday-afternoon-for-lunch-during-the-week lunch.

The recipe I’m choosing to feature for you though is her Chinese Noodle Soup. Taking about 20 minutes from start to slurp, this is the noodle soup designed to satisfy noodle soup cravings and I’ve already lost count of how often I’ve made it – although weirdly I’ve never taken a photo – which is why you get the photo of the photo in the book.

Chinese Noodle Soup

(serves 2)

What you need

• 180g fresh thin egg noodles or 75g dried egg noodles or even 75g dried rice noodles. We made it once with 2 minute noodles prepared without the flavour sachet.
• 1 cup (160g) shredded poached chicken (or leftover roast chicken). (As an aside, there is a completely fool-proof way to poach chicken on her website that always delivers juicy, tender cooked-through chicken – you’ll never poach chicken another way again).
• 2 baby bok choy cut in half lengthwise (or other Asian greens)

For the broth…

• 3 cups (750ml) salt-reduced chicken stock
• 2 garlic cloves, smashed, but left whole
• 1.5cm piece of ginger cut into 3 slices – no need to peel
• 1 ½ tbsp light soy sauce (all-purpose soy is ok, but dark soy will upset the colour and balance of the broth)
• 2 tsp white sugar
• 1 ½ tbsp Chinese cooking wine (Shaoxing)
• ½ tsp sesame oil

Garnishes (optional)

Chilli paste/sauce eg sriracha, sliced spring (green) onions (scallions), crispy fried shallots

What you do with it

Place the broth ingredients in a medium saucepan, cover and bring to a boil, then reduce to medium and let it simmer for 8-10 minutes to let the flavours develop.

Cook the noodles according to the packet instructions. Drain but don’t rinse (even if the packet tells you to) and divide between two bowls.

Add the bok choy (or other veg) to the broth and cook for a minute.

Fish out the ginger and garlic and ladle the broth over the noodles and top with the chicken, bok choy and your garnish/es of choice (we always have a dollop of chilli sauce or sambal for spice).

Slurp!

A pic of the pic from the book

Note: As of the time of writing this post the US/Canada release date has been deferred until March. In the meantime check out the website – plenty of the recipes are on that – or Nagi’s Instagram. For FAQs and behind-the-scenes of the cookbook, check out this post.