Lisa’s Letters Home: Grilled Duck and Noodle Soup

My grandmother was Japanese-Canadian, which meant that our holiday dinner table had an unusual hybrid of things like roast turkey and sushi rolls. Although she was a tiny woman who didn’t eat very much, she always made a huge amount of food for any family gathering. If you didn’t leave with a trunk full of leftovers, there was something seriously wrong. She’d carefully tuck the food between layers of plastic wrap, packed in Red Rose tea boxes.

Everything that grandma made had garlic in it. One of my all-time favourite foods is her chicken noodle soup filled with egg noodles and, of course, freshly grated garlic, ginger, and a splash of shoyu (soy sauce). My grandpa always had his with a fried egg on top. Garlic-laden soup in a deep bowl with chopsticks on the side will always be one of my ultimate comfort foods and a cure-all.

We have a roast chicken nearly every week and the bones always go straight into the freezer for stock making purposes later on. I’ve recently discovered the joy of pressure cooker stock – magnificent, rich stock in an hour. When I’m very organised (which is about twice a year if I’ve had enough coffee beforehand), I make a big batch of stock and put it in freezer bags.

I’ve been trying to come up with quick dinner ideas that don’t involve ready meals (especially since yet another horse meat scandal has cropped up), and trying to keep our food as healthy as possible to make up for 3 weeks of non-stop eating and wine over Christmas. Inspired by grandma and my love of Asian food, I made a soup filled with vegetables and rice noodles, topped with a grilled duck breast. Somehow rice noodles seem less stodgy to me and more delicate than egg noodles, and go well with the duck. They are also incredibly quick, which is always a bonus.

I suppose this is just a tarted up version of chicken noodle soup, really. You could use grilled chicken in place of the duck and a bag of prepared stir fry vegetables would save even more time. I’m just a bit picky about the vegetables I want in my soup, so I add my own. With duck, I love earthy, dark leafy green vegetables. I use both dark and light soy sauce because they have quite different flavours (“light” refers to the type rather than low calorie.) If you only have dark, just use two teaspoons of that.