As much as i love to cook, I never have time to plan weekday lunches. After a frazzled morning at the desk, trying to get just one more bit of work done, I am ravenous by 1 or 2pm. My lame attempts at breakfast (usually Wheatables and fruit gummies) do not suffice.

I storm out of the building in a mad search for anything edible on the street. Unfortunately, other than mediocre $10 sandwiches and faux-Mexican, there is nothing except Safeway and Whole Foods. So I go for supermarket soup. Soup is filling. Soup is warming. Soup is cheap (well, not at Whole Foods). But sooner or later, you get sick of Chunky Chicken Noodle and Spicy Southwestern Bean. I still craved a piping hot bowl of broth-and-protein in the early afternoon, but needed a change.

This week I decided to add a Chinese take-out touch to chicken noodle soup. And make a big batch on Sunday night. While I still like the hot and sour soup I posted two year ago, this one is much, much more filling. And if you are low on Asian pantry staples like canned bamboo shoots and lily buds, you can still make this. I went to the market and bought chicken breast, mushrooms, and scallions, et voilà. 

I worry a lot these days. Like everyone, I worry about how much longer this recession will last. I worry so many publications will fold that all freelancers will have to panhandle for survival. I worry nobody will pick up a real book anymore. The gloomy winter days aren't helping. Shanghai is so dreary I have not seen the sun in 3 weeks.

My eating habits are a good indication of my mood. When I'm cheery and light-hearted I'll fuss around with salads and labor-intenstive sweets. If I'm anxiety-ridden, comfort food is all I can stomach. 

So bring on the chicken noodle soup. Rather than the American version flavored with bay leaf and thyme, I decided to make a Sichuan-style broth with star anise, cinnamon, tangerine peel, and Sichuan pepper. (There will be a mild tingle from the peppercorn, to jazz things up.) The best part: you can shred leftover roast chicken, itself a cost-saver and recession favorite, and add it to the soup at the last minute. The simmering anise and cinnamon will make your kitchen smell good. And slurping the steamy chicken noodle soup will get you through these dark days.

Pumpkins and squashes are so inexpensive in China, even more than in the US, that I cook with them whenever possible. (At 3 to 5 kuai per medium pumpkin, what's not to love?) Calabaza and butternut are the varieties that appear most in my meals and snacks. But if I'm craving something with even more natural sweetness, I'll pick up some kabocha instead.

Kabocha squash, also called Japanese pumpkin (日本南瓜 riben nangua), has a knobbly green outer skin and yellowish flesh. It's sweeter than even butternut squashes; simple simmering will give you a light toothsome taste, while roasting for an hour makes the sugary juices seemingly burst from their pores. 

Today for lunch, I paired roasted kabocha with a very easy lentil soup with sautéed bok choy. I left the skin on (be sure to wash the outside thoroughly), and roasted the squash in thin slices. At first I just served up the slices on the side, but on my second helping I cut the slices even smaller and threw them in the bowl. Either way, the sugary squash was a nice compliment to the savory, paprika-tinged lentil soup.

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Other heart-warming soups recipes:

Red Lentil and Okra Soup

Winter Melon Soup with Shiitakes and Speck Ham

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in the South, eat okra.

As a Chinese-born, New England-bred chica, I first tried okra at the ripe old age of 21. I was aprehensive, having heard okra derided as a bitter, gooey freak-of-a-vegetable (mosty by non-Southerners). Then I tried the Creole okra gumbo and fried okra at Magnolia's in Cambridge, MA. What were these okra-haters thinking? These things are addictive!

(I came to the conclusion that the people who despise okra are the same who despise bitter melon. A microscopic bit of bitterness never killed anyone; just makes the flavor spectrum more interesting.) 

Granted, okra isn't just used in Southern Creole-inspired food. Indian, Middle Eastern, Caribbbean, and North African cuisines also incorporate okra in plenty of thick stews. As much as I like fried okra, gumbo and bhindi masala are hearty dishes that make the best use of okra's snappy texture and slightly bitter taste.

Last week I bought a bunch of beautiful okra pods from a Tampa farmer's market. The soup I ended up making for lunch is slightly Indian-influenced, with some crumbled blue tortilla chips thrown in for garnish.

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Wonton noodle soup is one of the few dishes set very high standards for, almost to the point of obsession. Because of cravings for an ideal bowl of wonton noodle soup (and seeing my relatives), I have paid way too much for same day plane tickets to Hong Kong. When I get wontons that are all or mostly pork, I feel cheated. And I rarely visit wonton noodle stands outside of Hong Kong and Guangzhou, for fear of getting inferior versions.

Yes, it's rather compulsive behavior. But the behavior applies to any sort of a purist, whether the love is sushi, borscht, cocktails, or xiaolongbao. We all have certain foods we put on a pedestal.

If you can't get to Hong Kong, the next best cure for wonton lust is recreating the darn thing at home. After tinkering in the kitchen for over a year and a half, I have updated an older post on this very topic. For me, an ideal wonton noodle soup must include the following: fragrant broth consisting of pork and seafood umami flavor, springy al dente egg noodles, and wontons containing at least 50% shrimp.

Rice may be a pivitol part of Cantonese food, but every Cantonese mother worth her hoisin sauce knows that no meal is complete without soup. I got this drilled into me from an early age: a home-cooked lunch or dinner must must must start with a tang, or else you might as well be eating barbarian (Western) food. (Oh, Chinese parents.) According to my mother, a good soup - whether it was chicken & ginseng, pork & lotus, or fish bone - opens the appetite and provides as much nutrients as the rest of the meal. (That, and the Cantonese are sticklers for dinner rituals.)

Her biggest concern before I set off for college many years ago was how the heck I could survive without her tang every night. "I'll be fine. They have food on campuses," I would say, rolling my eyes. And every time I came home to visit and exhibited anything that remotely suggested I was not 100% healthy, like coughing to clear my throat or looking pale in the winter due to lack of sun, she would shake her head knowingly. "It's the lack of tang." 

I meant for this to be my dinner appetizer, but I spooned so much into my bowl that it became a meal.

Hot and sour soup didn't appear in my childhood of Cantonese home dinners. It did, however, appear in my Chinese-American childhood, as a Sichuan/Northern Chinese dish that became bastardized for the greasy take-out joints of suburban America. I have had one too many versions that were so thick and rubbery I could stretch them with my hands like Silly Putty. Here is some advice to the aforementioned Chinese restaurants in the US: Cornstarch is never a main ingredient; just use sparingly.    

(From upper left: Wood ear, lily buds, fresh bamboo, shiitake mushrooms. Bowl: fresh firm tofu.)

In the US, hot and sour soup also tends to lack the lily buds, shiitake mushrooms, and bamboo shoots that make it a nutrient-rich, even somewhat refined, dish. (This is the Chinese version, not to be confused with Vietnamese, Filipino, or Thai hot and sour soups.) I also like to add wood ear and tofu for texture variation. Today I also used fresh instead of canned bamboo shoots, which I couldn't find when I went food shopping this morning. 

I'm interrupting my Shanghai posts to bring you this seaweed egg drop soup. This is one of those dishes I rarely ate at home growing up (for some reason my mother never made it) but would slurp with delight at restaurants. The simple combination of seaweed shreds and egg makes for great, light comfort food. And it's an easy way to load up on iron.

After a long absence (several months or years, I don't recall), seaweed and egg drop soup has made a sudden comeback in my life. It all started at Jia Jia Tang Bao, where I ordered it to go with soup dumplings because the only other soup choice was chicken and duck blood soup. Then I started seeing it, and having it, at various cafés in Beijing. Then I thought, why not make it at home?*

I like mine with a lot of seaweed, more than most restaurants normally use. A little extra iron, vitamin C, magnesium, and other vitamins can't hurt. (But you can always use less seaweed, like 1 ounce instead of 2 for every 3 cups of liquid.) Good homemade stock is also critical, since the resulting broth has very few other flavorings. To make this soup meatier and more substantial, you can also add minced pork or sliced shiitakes. But the basic version is one of the simplest Chinese soups you can make, and with very few ingredients.