Weekly Recipe: Dumpling Soup

Good Friday.

We are at the beginning of a four day weekend in celebration of Easter and had an egg hunt for the toddlers in my parents' group, followed by a pot luck dinner where everyone brought something to share. This recipe is not what I brought along (that was a trout dip, a lentil dip, a loaf of herb bread and some gingerbread Easter eggs), but rather a meal that I made earlier this week.

It's an easy recipe to modify based on what ingredients I have in the fridge or pantry. For this one, I started by soaking a handful of dried Chinese mushrooms in some boiling water for about half an hour. Then I chopped an onion, two garlic cloves and a piece of ginger and cooked them with a little peanut oil in a saucepan until the onion was soft.

 

I drained the mushrooms and added them to stock to make a couple of litres, then poured the stock into the onion. I added in 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and brought the liquid to the boil.

Then I threw in chopped vegetables (the mushrooms, cauliflower and asparagus)...

... and some frozen prawn dumplings. I boiled the whole until the dumplings were cooked (maybe 10 minutes).

At the last minute, I decided that there needed to be more substance, so I threw in some dried vermicelli noodles and continued boiling for a couple of minutes to soften them.

You should probably remove the ginger before serving, but I never do and some lucky person gets to bite into it (!).

Happy Easter!