554.Vegetable Noodle soup

What is Indo Chinese?

    The 37th #FoodieMonday#bloghop theme is #Indo-Chinese. What is Indo-Chinese? Indo-Chinese dishes feature in most Indian restaurants that serve fast food, Indian cuisine and you will find it as street food too. Indo-Chinese is one of the most favourite cuisine for Indians. The Indo Chinese mania has spread as far as America, Europe, Australia, Africa, basically to all the the continents. Basically its Chinese food with Indian flavours and ingredients that are popularly available in India. It is nothing like the authentic Chinese food that uses bok choy, choi sum, watercress, chinese broccoli,chinese water spinach, chinese amaranth, napa cabbage, ji cai, tofu, Sichuan pepper. Indo-Chinese cuisine uses bell pepper, cabbage, corn, baby corn, carrots,cauliflower etc. Indo-Chinese cuisine uses sweet and sour sauce, oyster, sauce, soy sauce, black bean sauce, hoisin sauce, szechwan and manchurian sauce just to name a few.
  How was India introduced to this cuisine? Well according to Wikipedia, a small community of Chinese mainly from the Hakka region settled in Calcutta during the 19th Century. They started cooking with Indian spices and vegetables to appease the Indian population. Since then Indo- Chinese cuisine has evolved to spring dosa, chinese bhel, idlis with chinese flavours etc. Manchurian, spring rolls, Chow mein, Manchow soup, American chop suey, chilli chicken/paneer, fried rice, date pancakes are some of the more popular Indo-Chinese dishes. 
     For the Indo Chinese theme I chose to go the healthy way by preparing a 'chat pata' Vegetable noodle soup.Most Indo-Chinese food is not too friendly for our hips as most of it is fried or requires one uses a good amount of oil. So here's a healthy soup.I've used Soba noodles. Soba noodles are usually made from buckwheat or wheat flour and are thin compared to the udon noodles which are thick.

VEGETABLE NOODLE SOUP
Serves 4

6oz (approx 150g) soba noodles
4-5 cups water/vegetable stock
10-12 spinach leaves (palak)
2 medium carrots
½ bell pepper-any colour
¼ cup chopped spring onion
7-8 cauliflower florets, cut into bite size pieces
10 -12 mushrooms, cut into slices
1 medium onion, cut into slices
1 tsp garlic paste
1 tsp ginger paste
1-1¼ tsp salt
1-2 tsp chilli sauce
1 tsp vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce 
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp sesame oil
½ tsp coarse pepper powder
1 tsp roasted sesame seeds

1. Prepare all the vegetables. Peel the carrots, cut into half length wise and then cut into slices. Cut the bell pepper into large cubes.
2. Heat oil in a deep pan. Add sesame oil.
3. Add onion slices, ginger and garlic pastes and saute them for a few seconds.
4. Add all the vegetables except the spring onion and spinach.
5. Stir fry the vegetables for 1 minute on high heat.
6. Add water or vegetable stock and let it become hot.
7. As soon the water becomes hot and begins to boil, add the noodles and salt.
8. Take the pan off the heat.Add the spinach leaves. Cover the pan for 3 minutes.
9. Add chilli sauce, vinegar, soy sauce and pepper powder.
10. Spoon the soup into serving bowls. Sprinkle chopped onion and sesame seeds and serve.

Tips :

• Use vegetables of your choice.
• You can use normal noodles.
• If you don't have home made chilli sauce you can use ready made one.
• The vegetables and noodles in this soup are not overcooked. 

You may want to check out the following :

mushroom egg fried rice

momo soup

sesame honey chilli potatoes

chilli paneer

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