Penny Hero (dot) Net

I discovered by accident today that I can cook soup from scratch. Here’s how it happened:

I wanted a bacon-egg-ranch sandwich, but I didn’t want to clean up a frying pan full of grease, so I decided to try boiling the bacon and poaching the eggs (for fun. plus boiled stuff is less fatty than fried, right?). So, I threw pieces of bacon in boiling water in our wok and watched it shyabu-shyabu to yumminess. Then I pulled them all out, and let them drain. I threw in an egg and watched to my initial dismay that the egg kind of flew apart in the boiling water and was breaking into chunks too small to go into a sandwich. Luckily I saved enough for my lunch, but the water was still filled with whispy bits of egg… much like *drumroll please* EGG FLOUR SOUP.

So that was my inspiration moment. I figured the water already tasted like bacon, and had soupy egg stuff in it… so I decided to run with this and see where it went. I added more water and chopped up and added a yellow onion, black pepper, garlic and basil. Brought it to a boil again. Tasted it, and decided it was pretty bland. So I added two red chili peppers and this black-sesame/salt seasoning I have. (mostly for the salt. I was pleased to discover that the sesame seeds floated to the top and made the soup look complex and pretty). I tasted it again, and found the peppers weren’t adding much… so I pulled them out and chopped them up into small bits. (later discovered this was a mistake) After letting it bubble for a while, I tasted it again. All the flavors were coming out really nicely, but it was still pretty bland. too herby… not enough salt. So I added plain salt. Finally it started to taste really really yummy. I added a little corn-starch to thicken it up and let it boil down slightly.

It was sooo yummy. Had this super cool kinda complex flavor of basil, onion, garlic, and bacon with quite a bit of heat from the peppers. I ate it with my sandwich.

All afternoon I thought about how to improve it. I’ve decided mushrooms and potatoes would be really good, as would some actual bacon–and not just bacon-flavored water. I even thought about adding sour-cream like Val’s mom does with soup, and thought using bullion cubes instead of table salt would probably be yummier.

At dinner I ate the leftovers with coffee and english muffins… which was when I discovered that chopping up the peppers was a big mistake. All the time it had been sitting in the fridge, the peppers were still adding their spicy hawtness to the soup… I added quite a bit of milk, but it was still really hot. Next time I’ll add whole peppers earlier in the cooking process, and pull them out before it’s finished.

I’ve got two other ways of cooking stuff I want to mess around with. I helped Ethan cook for Ina once or twice… chinese stuff. and i wrote down what he used.

where the fuck did this “fun with cooking” stuff come from? I’m a horrible cook. But I went through a period like this after Tomo and I broke up… I stole all his pasta recipes from memory and started cooking pasta all the time. Now I’m cooking soup from scratch! odd. odd odd girl I am.