Nick Coffer's Weekend Recipe

Restaurant style Japanese miso noodle soup

My favourite recipes are those which look great, taste amazing, and require little or no effort to make. This noodle soup meets all those criteria. It’s healthy, full of goodness and will bring a smile to your table during the darker months. The vegetables are fully interchangeable - feel free to use whatever you can get your hands on. The dish also still works without miso paste, even though it does add a lovely richness to the flavours.

Ingredients 1 litre good quality vegetable stock 1 tbsp miso paste 200g fine dried noodles or similar (I often cheat and just chuck in the precooked ones you find in the fresh aisle in supermarkets) 2 filets of salmon, skinned and sliced diagonally into three pieces 2 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped 1 thumb of ginger, peeled and grated Handful sugar snap peas Handful mushrooms finely sliced 1 small leek, finely sliced Vegetable oil Light soy sauce

Serves 2 people 1. Cook the noodles as per the packet instructions then drain and chill them. If you are using pre-cooked noodles, there’s no need to cook them again. 2. Place the noodles in the base of two large round serving bowls. 3. Boil up your vegetable stock and stir through the miso paste.

You want to keep this stock hot and ready to serve. 4. In a hot pan, drizzle in some vegetable oil and quickly fry the vegetables, garlic and ginger. Leave them with a good crunch, you don’t want to overcook them. 5. Add in a few drops of soy sauce, mix the vegetables one last time, and then share the vegetables between the two bowls, placing them on the noodles. 6. Pour a little more oil into the pan and fry off the salmon pieces. Give them a bit of colour but, again, don’t overcook them as they will continue to cook in the serving bowls. 7. Pop the salmon on top of the vegetables and divide up the vegetable stock into both bowls. 8. Leave the bowls sit for a minute, just for the boiling stock to heat through the noodles and serve, accompanied by chilli oil or chilli sauce, for a bit of extra optional kick.

BBC Three Counties Radio presenter and cook, Nick Coffer