Recipe #2: Miso soup with rice for dodgy tummies

 Today’s recipe is a perfect lunch for when your stomach is a bit off, and it’s simple and easy to make, even with a broken ankle. Should that be your situation. Hypothetically.

Ingredients:

Directions:

Because we are down and out, what with our GI distress and possible additional lower extremity injury, let’s make things as easy as possible and use the rice cooker. Today we’re going to make some converted white rice. White rice is our choice for settling our dodgy tummies today. Let’s save the high fibre brown rice for another occasion/ailment, such as a cold or flu.

Let’s follow the directions on the package to make our perfect rice every time. 1 cup rice to 2 cups water in the rice cooker. Don’t forget to plug it in and turn it on! We’ve made those mistakes before, haven’t we?

When the rice is done, start making the miso soup—directly right in the bowl! It couldn’t be easier!

Spoon a spoonful of miso paste into your bowl and heat up some water (about 500ml) in a kettle but just below a full boil. Or wait until it cools slightly if it has boiled. Miso is delicate and alive, so we don’t want to shock it or kill it with boiling water!

Add a small amount of the hot water to the bowl and stir, blending the miso paste with the hot water completely.

Oops, I almost forgot the piece of dried kombu! Kombu is a dried seaweed, commonly used in Japanese cooking. My package is very old but still fine. Let’s add our 3-4cm piece now and let it swim in our hot miso broth, exuding healthy minerals and umami flavours as it softens.

We will now add some cooked rice to the mixture in the bowl. We’re only using half of the prepared rice, but you wait and see what we’re doing with the extra leftover rice later. No spoilers! Promptly refrigerate your leftover rice because we don’t want a b. cereus infection on top of everything else!

Let’s add the rest of the hot water to fill our bowl, stir, and enjoy our comforting soup. Eating the softened kombu piece is optional.

Note to those in more robust health: this soup is also excellent with added slices of cooked carrots, sliced green onions, cooked shelled edamame, shredded steamed cabbage or kale, or whatever cooked or raw vegetables you fancy.

I hope we all feel better soon!