Mee Sua Soup with Dumplings (菠菜饺子汤面)

I needed a quick lunch fix for Edda and me.  Earlier, I made a batch of chicken chive dumplings and freeze it for emergency such as a quick lunch idea and also an alternative for Evy when I didn't cook enough for her school's lunch box.  I checked my pantry and I had one bundle of somen left, just enough for both Edda and myself.  An lunch idea was formed as I remembered the way my mom cooked the somen for me during my confinement.  If you liked to check out my mom version just click under confinement.  It's similar to this except I added the spinach, dumplings, homemade glutinous rice wine and a little this and that.

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp. sesame oil
• 1 inch piece of ginger, julienne
• 1 large free range brown egg
• 1 bowl filtered water
• Iodized salt to taste
• 1/2 tsp. chicken powder (optional)
• 1/2 tsp. sugar
• White pepper to taste
• 1 Tbsp. onion flakes
• 1 tsp. dried parsley or dried chives
• 1/4 cup homemade glutinous rice with wine (酒酿)
• 2 bunches of Chinese spinach or chai xin, cut off the root and washed
• 3-4 Chicken chive dumplings (homemade or store-bought)
• 1 bundle of mee sua/ somen

Method:

1.  In a small saucepan,  add water and let it boil.  When boiling, add in the frozen dumplings and let it cook.  Should be cooked in 5 minutes.  Dish out and set aside.

2.  Heat up your wok,  when heated, add in sesame oil and ginger.  Stir-fry until ginger is slightly brown, add in the egg.  Quickly scramble the egg with the ginger until cook.   Add in filtered water for the soup.  Let it boil.

3.  When boiling, add in onion flakes, dried parsley, glutinous rice wine and all the other seasonings.  Season to taste.  Then, add in the somen to cook, it cook fairly quickly.  You can cook the somen separately too if you prefer.  Then add in Chinese parsley at the last minute, just to quickly blanch it in the soup.  Warm up the dumplings in the soup.  Serve in a bowl.