Saturday, March 24, 2007

When others are craving chicken noodle

I get a hankering for fishball soup.
I was running a low fever this week, I think it was a sinus infection. Wednesday was the worst... achey, chills and hot sweats, sneezing etc. It was also a very busy day for Joe so I was left to make my own dinner (yeah, there was leftover pizza, stromboli, lentil soup, and homemade coleslaw in the frige, but I felt I deserved some soup.) So I dug into the depths of a freezer that's booby trapped with about 20 ice packs and maybe 100 frozen dumplings to find the last pack of fish cakes from my birthday shopping trip in Nashville. The contents, I found, were entirely new to me!

2 cotton-candy pink fishballs with a thin fried coating, which I found rather rubbery
1 giant square of very fluffy, spongey fish cake (bream?)It was like fish souffle. And it grew on me after I'd soaked it in my homemade dipping sauce.
2 tenpura patties-- a more meaty fish cake with little crunchy bits of veggie inside
2 tofu pouches, tied with some pale, crunchy vegetable. Cute, aren't they? The first one I ate was filled with mung bean noodles and veggies. The second surprised me with some very doughy gummy filling, probably a mix of tapioca and rice flour.

I cooked all of it in my fondue pot along with a heart of romaine, a handful of baby portabellas, a wedge of tomato, a few cauliflower florets and some frozen taro chunks.
To make dipping sauce:
2 T lite soy
2 T rice vinegar
1 T sugar
1-2 chopped green onions
1 clove chopped garlic

I've been wondering what it takes to make a fish ball. Anyone tried it?

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