First I heated up some olive oil in a soup pot and browned some boneless skinless chicken thighs (all ingredients, all organic, all the time). I used thigh meat because it's fattier than white meat, and fat equals flavor! Plus, it's good for you (the organic fat I eat is anyway). Once browned I removed them from the pot and threw in some sliced onions and minced garlic to soften and add flavor to the olive oil and rendered chicken fat. The kitchen smelled amazing! I gave that a few stirs, and then deglazed the pan by adding some water and scrapping all the yummy bits off the pan with a wooden spoon. By the way, when going caveman, go all the way and cook with filtered water (especially if you're cooking in New Jersey). Once deglazed, I put the chicken back in, and figured it would fall apart into wonderful bite sized chunks as it slow cooked in the broth (which it did). Then I added some great veggies I got at a local organic farmer near my sister. Sherilyn has never been inside, but I stopped in the other day and was amazed at how many great things they had, and at pretty reasonable prices. I hope she starts shopping there after I go back to California. Into the pot went chopped carrots, broccoli, orange cauliflower (told you they had a lot of great stuff), mushrooms, and the key ingredient bok choy, to give it that real Asian flavor! Finally, I added some chopped cilantro and some grated ginger (fresh ginger is spicy, but not too spicy for my lightweight hosts).
I filled the pot with more filtered water, just enough to cover everything, covered the pot with a lid, and let it simmer on low for 2 hours, giving it a stir every 20 minutes or so. While it cooked, I made the ramen noodles using zucchini. I was going to pack my knock-off Spirooli (see my past blog entitled "Caveman Spaghetti Bolognese"), but forgot it, so Sherilyn and I picked up a different knock-off at a local kitchen supply store. Only they didn't have my side loading knock-off, they had a top loading one. DO NOT GET THE TOP LOADING ONE! First of all, with my side loading one, you can use the whole zucchini at one time, but with the top loading one, you only have room for about 3 inches of zucchini at a time (get your minds out of the gutter, you filthy bastards). But the biggest difference is the side loading one only slices the "meat" of the zucchini, and leaves the seeds as a nice little tube you can throw away at the end. The top loading one gets it all mushed in with the "noodles," making them look soggy and, well, mushy (duh). I had to pick the gunky seeds out of the noodles by hand, and it was a royal pain in my caveman ass. Also, the top loading one cuts it into VERY thin strands, like angel hair, or vermicelli. My side loading one makes thick strands like spaghetti, which I prefer.
After 2 hours of simmering, I turned off the heat, and took some wild caught shrimp, that I bought deveined (I HATE deveining shrimp, and it's worth it to me to pay extra to buy them already cleaned), and pulled the tails and any extra shells off, and dropped them into the hot soup. The hot broth cooked them in three minutes. I put the caveman noodles in a soup bowl, ladled in some soup, topped it with some more fresh cilantro and freshly grated ginger, and added some sliced hot cherry peppers (only to mine, the peppers would have been too spicy for Sherilyn and Lorin). Take a look:
Looks damn good, doesn't it?! Sherilyn set the table ramen style with a spoon and chop sticks! Lorin wasn't home from work yet, and besides he wasn't going to eat until later anyway because he was playing tennis tonight, so we didn't wait. We couldn't stop ooh'ing and ahh'ing at how good it was! We tasted every single ingredient! The chicken and shrimp were amazing! She couldn't believe I had never made this before. First time out of the gate, and it was a success! We polished off a bowl each in the blink of an eye and hit that bad boy again! We started thinking what else it needed. Well, salt, obviously, but it was just an observation, we didn't need it, or miss it, we just noticed that most Asian soups had salt and this one didn't. We figured next time we'll add celery, which as I mentioned in past blogs, has a lot of salt in it naturally. Also, next time we'll add scallions, which would have put it over the top! In fact, I'm going to add celery and scallions to the leftovers, and it'll be like a whole new meal next time.
Then we came up with the idea to add some Chinese mustard to our bowls! All I did was add water to mustard powder and voila, Chinese mustard! It added a whole new dimension of deliciousness to the soup! Sherilyn said I had to blog about it right away so that readers on the west coast could make it for dinner themselves! Right about then Lorin came home, and saw how much we were enjoying the soup. Poor guy, he didn't want to play tennis on a full stomach, but I could tell he was going crazy with hunger at the way we kept talking about how much we were enjoying the meal. He couldn't resist, he stole a shrimp from the pot. Even picky Lorin was loving this soup. He asked to leave him a big pot of soup for him to warm up when he got home, so Sherilyn did, and I made him some more noodles to go with it. Sher and I both noticed that putting the zucchini noodles in the bowl, and not in the pot, was the perfect way to go. The hot broth cooked the noodles in the bowl, but not too much, and it kept it al dente!
Well folks, this was one of the better dishes I've made to date, and with winter coming, it's a perfect meal to try (several times). It's so simple, even a caveman can make it. Ugga-Bugga!!
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