This dish was inspired by a Hong Kong breakfast classic, being macaroni soup. Macaroni soup consists of a creamy chicken stock, macaroni noodles, and ham. It is a Cantonese breakfast staple, and I found it to be the perfect inspiration for a fun dish! For my take on a macaroni soup, I went with a creamy chicken veloute, which is a French sauce made with stock thickened with a roux(I used chicken fat in the roux, just to give the final product a more cream of chicken-like consistency and flavor). For the pasta, I made sopressini, which is a shape that is quite similar in to fortune cookies(I figured that this was appropriate in that fortune cookies are seemingly Asian but actually Californian, and that’s 100% me as well). I also, just to make this recipe extremely confusing, went with sopressata(Italian salami) for my ham element. I used the sopressata to make an XO sauce, a popular condiment from Hong Kong that brings a punch of umami from both ham and dried seafood, and candied some on top for some crunch as well. I dubbed this dish “Lazy mornings”, as it was a nod to this dish being inspired by breakfast.

For the chicken veloute:
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp chicken fat
a pinch of salt
2g kombu
1g grated ginger
1 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup heavy cream

In a pan, heat up the flour, chicken fat, and salt until golden brown. Add in the other ingredients while whisking until fully combined. Bring to a simmer, covered, on low heat, for 10 minutes. Pass through a sieve to remove any lumps and the solids. The sauce should be on the thinner sauce, as you just want it to gently blanket the base of the plate with.

For the sopressata XO sauce:
2 dried shrimp
1/4 cup chicken stock
2oz minced sopressata(Italian salami), diced
1 shallot, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 red chili, seeded and minced

In a pot, heat up the shrimp with the chicken stock until hydrated. Fish out the shrimp and mince into small pieces. Reserve both the stock and shrimp for later in this recipe. In a nonstick pan, render the sopressata until crispy on low heat. Remove the sopressata and sweat out the shallot, garlic, and chilies until fragrant, also on low heat. Once the shallots are translucent, into that your sopressata, minced shrimp, and the shrimp-infused chicken stock and simmer down until jam-like in consistency. You want this sauce to be less of an actual sauce and more of a condiment!

For the sopressini pasta:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp water
a pinch of salt

Mix your ingredients together to form a dough. Knead them together for 2 to 3 minutes until smooth and elastic. Rest your dough for 15 minutes, then roll out to the 2nd thinnest setting on a pasta roller, dusting the dough with flour between rolls so that the dough does not stick. Cut the dough into 2-inch by 2-inch squares. Take one corner of your pasta square, fold it against the corner directly across(you want to fold a square into a triangle!), and pinch those two corners together. Then take the two other corners and bring them together, pulling them away from the pinched corner(think the shape of a fortune cookie!). Boil the sopressini in heavily salted water until they begin to float, and then toss in a little bit of the veloute(no more than 2 tbsp for the entire batch of pasta) to just coat the pasta.

For the candied sopressata:
4oz sopressata
1 tspn chili flakes
2 tbsp sugar
a pinch of salt

Lay out the sopressata on a lined sheet tray. Grind together the other ingredients into a fine powder and sprinkle over the sopressata. Bake at 375 degrees F for 10 minutes. Allow the sopressata to cool down before using.

To plate:
Start with a thin layer of the veloute on the bottom of a shallow bowl. Place over that the sopressini. Dot around the pasta your XO sauce. Finish with the candied sopressata and microherbs or edible flowers if desired!