It pains me to say this, as my dad - well, he loves soup. A lot. And I've had vigorous arguments with various friends over my distaste for the liquid meal. Also? Not a fan of miso. So, as you can imagine I was delighted to find out that Thursday's recipe was Soba Noodle Miso Soup (p. 103) with gomashio garnish (p.305). However, this challenge is about trying new things, so I went boldly onward to Nesters', the grocery store downstairs from my apartment to pick up the ingredients I needed.
Now, living right downtown in a relatively new neighbourhood always makes it challenging from an everyday shopping perspective. I have my pick of bars, tattoo shops, and hot restaurants, but sometimes when you just want to buy, you know, toothpaste. It's getting better, at least we have a grocery store (we didn't for the first few months I lived in Woodwards) and Nesters' tries to stock a diverse range of products. Sometimes, however, they let you down. And Thursday was one of those days. Yes, they had nori, no they didn't have soba noodles. Yes, they had miso, but no, they didn't have bok choy.
I know we're not supposed to make substitutions, but look. This week was nuts, and it was soup, for crying out loud. I was not going to trounce around downtown Vancouver looking for soba noodles and bok choy. So I decided to substitute for the rice stick noodles that I had leftover from a previous nights' entry, the Asian Noodle Salad, and used some leftover organic cabbage that I had in my fridge instead of bok choy. I was sure this was going to turn out horribly wrong:
It don't look half bad, eh? And guess what? It was actually delicious! Seriously! The gomashio was amazing (who knew toasted sesame seeds, salt and nori tasted so good?), and added a nuttiness to the soup that I loved. The cabbage was crunchy, there was enough noodle to give me something to gnaw on - it's a winner! Soup 1, Dani 0.