The sick day soups edition 🤧

So we meet again, the common cold. Plus, we review the famed Mochi Cake mix at Trader Joe’s.

Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we fight a cold, but never lose our appetite. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate. 

Roast duck noodle soup at Tasty Hand Pulled Noodles II

648 9th Ave, New York, NY 10036

It’s been a good long while since I’ve gotten regular ol’ sick. I guess I’ve spent the past two (or is it three?) years trying to evade COVID-19 and also dealing with things like mysterious skin infections I forgot that the common cold really, really knocks you out. The one upside? I get to increase my diet from 50% noodle soup to 99% noodle soup. My two favorite sick day soups to order are the herbal chicken noodle soup from the Tang and this roast duck noodle soup from Tasty Hand Pulled Noodles II (it’s probably even better at Tasty Hand Pulled Noodles I, but I live outside of their delivery zone). Growing up, my mom would buy Canto roast duck at the Asian grocery store for special occasions, and the next day she would stew the leftover pieces of duck until they got soft and tender with napa cabbage and noodles to make soup. The roast duck noodle soup at Tasty Hand Pulled Noodles has a really similar homemade taste, except if your mom also pulled noodles from scratch, which I think most moms have better things to do. Honestly, I think I like this roast duck noodle soup even better than the herbal chicken, and at ⅔ the price, it’s now going to be my default Sick Day Soup.

Roasted pepper and sausage rice soup at home

Recipe below.

I never understood the purpose of paprika (the spice, not the flirty dream detective) until I made this soup. You see, the shaker lid on my spice jar popped off, and dumped a whole spoonful of the spice into my onion-and-pepper base, and fried in the oil. That’s when I learned that paprika does, in fact, have some spice to it. It even helped clear my sinuses in this warming, peppery soup. To make it, fry 1 small red onion, diced, and two large cloves of garlic, smashed, in olive oil until caramelized. Sprinkle in a lot (maybe a teaspoon) of paprika, regular (not smoked, although that could be even better), and let fry in the oil. Then, add in a half cup of diced mini bell peppers (or two large red ones), and cook until wilted. Add 4-6 links of cooked Italian sausage of the chicken variety, sliced, and stir fry until browned. Add ¾ cup of rice (I used a rice cooker cup of sushi rice), and 4 cups of water, a bouillon cube, and a bay leaf. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until rice is cooked. Stir in 2 tablespoons of ketchup (my favorite secret sauce), and half a bag of baby kale or spinach. Enjoy warm. (Makes approx 4-6 servings.) 

Note: Like all rice soups, it has the issue (or possibly non-issue) of absorbing all the broth and becoming more like jambalaya on day (or hour) two. You can add a cup of broth to loosen it up, or enjoy it as is.

Sick day milk tea at home

Here is the tea.*

You know I’m sick sick when I suddenly can’t stomach the smell or taste of coffee. Having a sore throat and stuffy nose really highlights all the savory notes in coffee, to the point where a cup tastes almost too salty and bitter to swallow, like a weird bean soup. I like to judge my recovery by smelling coffee beans each morning and seeing if I can enjoy it or not. So far, it’s been a miss. That’s when I turn to my favorite comforting caffeinated beverage, the extra hot mug of extra-milky milk tea. Tea always goes down nice, no matter how stuffy I feel, and as a bonus, the tannins in black tea are supposed to help soothe a sore throat. And you know I’d never skip my mug of hot caffeinated beverage in the morning. My favorite way to prepare Sick Day Milk Tea is to steep one really strong bag of black tea (I use Tazo Awake) for 5 minutes in hot boiling water. Then, I stir in a tablespoon of sweetened condensed milk and a tablespoon of half-and-half for extra creaminess. Enjoy in a hot thermos and sip slowly.

*Apparently, Tazo Awake tea has recently been rebranded to be organic and is now lower in quality. That’s sad news to me (it’s been a while since I bought a box as I’m an occasional tea drinker, unless I have a cold), and I’ll have to do more research on a replacement.

Miso almond cookies at Takahachi Bakery

25 Murray Street, New York, NY 10007

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a cookie that was worth writing about, least of all on the way to a dentist appointment for a suspected cavity. You see, I have a nice little ritual where I stop by Takahachi Bakery, a lovely Japanese bakery, whenever I get my teeth cleaned because the offices are nearby. Now, you might think it’s contradictory to pat myself on the back for having good dental health by then consuming sugary sweets, but life is made beautiful by contradictions, just like this cookie combines the flavor profiles of savory miso with a sweet, soft, buttery, almond cookie. It goes perfectly with a cup of Genmaicha tea, which also has both sweet (grassy green tea) and savory (toasted rice) notes. Best of all, it’s Not Too Sweet. It’s so good, I’m now tempted to tweak my favorite Peanut Butter Miso Cookies (which I haven’t made in a few years) to feature almonds.

Mochi cake mix at Trader Joe’s

This one.

Sunday is Lunar New Year, which marks the Year of the Rabbit. I had grand plans to make my favorite, crispy-on-the-outside, runny and gooey on the inside mochi cake recipe but unfortunately coming down with a cold got in the way and I didn’t have time to buy sweet rice flour. I did, however, come upon the rare, fabled Mochi Cake Mix at Trader Joe’s when I went on a (very masked) run for soup ingredients, so I snapped up two boxes. Is mochi butter cake incredibly easy to make, so much so that using a cake mix seems a bit silly? Maybe. But there’s something fun about a box mix, and you could argue that brownies are just as easy to whip up. Plus, the mochi cake mix really is well done – I ended up with a cake that was moist and buttery, and sweet while being Not Too Sweet. Some online commenters suggested baking it up in muffin tins, to maximize crispy edges, which I did for half of the batch, but I actually much preferred baking it in a well-buttered, metal-edged loaf pan, because I’m all about the custardy insides. But you do you.

In good health and happy Year of the Rabbit,

Soph

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