FREEDOM AND SOUP

"Beautiful soup, so rich so green

Waiting in a hot tureen!

Who for such dainties would not stoop?

Soup of the evening beautiful soup!

Beautiful soup! Who cares for fish

Game or any other dish?

Who would not give all else for two

Pennyworth of Beautiful soup?

~Lewis Carroll, 'Alice in Wonderland'

Ever since I read this post I have been craving kimchi soup. I have been unable to make said soup because I live out in the boonies and do not have access to these particular ingredients namely the miso and the dumplings or mandu. What is one to do in my situation? Make it all from scratch.

I am sorry but I do not have a picture for this one...but take it from me this is a comforting, and yummy soup!

I found a couple of food blogs that provided recipes in which I based mine off of. I had to improvise because we did not have miso or kimchi. What is kimchi you say? Truthfully I had to look that one up. What would we all do with out Wikipedia? Well kimchi is a mixture of spiced fermented vegetables mostly cabbage. It is a staple in Korean cooking, much like sauerkraut is to the Germans.

I spent the afternoon of our Independence day crafting the soup and it came out quite tasty. You definitely have to set aside part of a day for this whole thing...but it is soooooo worth it.


There is a very descriptive tutorial over Aeri's Kitchen for the mandu dumplings. She even has a YouTube video illustrating how to fold the dumplings. There is also a good recipe at My Korean Kitchen. This is where I got the basic idea. I definitely used the "Make Do" philosophy here. You could use any combination of vegetables or meats for the dumplings and soup.

So for anyone out there who lives in the sticks or just wants to make this soup, here is the recipe.




On-the-Fly Kimchi Dumpling Soup

Mandu Dumplings:
ingredients

dumpling skins (I used wanton wrappers...actually had those on hand believe it or not)
1 small head of cabbage
1 med onion
1 lb sausage
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce


Cook sausage in skillet over medium heat until cooked through. Finely dice onion and cabbage. (I did this while sausage was browning) Strain grease and remove sausage from pan. Allow to drain on paper towel. De-glaze the pan with the rice wine vinegar and soy sauce. You can use water if you don't have this on hand. Cook until tender.


Squeeze the cabbage/ onion mixture out in a dish towel. (see Aeri's tutorial if you are unsure how to do this) Reserve this liquid in another bowl to add to your soup stock for extra flavor.


Mix all of the ingredients in a bowl.


Add 1 tsp rice wine vinegar, 1/2 tsp of sesame oil and salt and pepper to taste. You can add more or less of all of these according to your taste.


Construct your dumplings. Check out Aeri's tutorial for in depth instructions.


I lined the bottom of a steamer basket with a couple of chard leaves and placed my dumplings in the basket. I then waited to put the basket on the soup pot until I added the chard at the very end. See below instructions.


SOUP:

ingredients
about 2 qts of chicken stock

***Note I made mine by boiling a whole chicken until cooked through. I then removed the chicken and strained the broth to use for the soup. I will use the chicken later this week.

1 medium onion sliced in strips
1 head of shredded chard (save a couple of leaves to line steamer basket)
2 carrots sliced in half moons




Pour the chicken stock into a large pot. Bring to a boil. Add onion and carrot and cook until tender. Add the chard and place steamer basket on top of soup pot.


Cook about 10-15 minutes until chard is tender and dumplings become sort of translucent.


Place 2-3 dumplings in soup bowl and laddle soup on top. Enjoy!