Soup for a Rainy Day: Chinese Chicken Noodle Soup with Sesame and Green Onions

So.
It wasn't Sunday.  While spending a week at the cottage, I decided to take my rather large and annoying folder of recipes scribbled on scrap paper and printed from the internet and write them down in my binder.  You could tell the scraps of paper that really needed to be put into a more permanent, less likely to fall all over the floor and make me curse, home - they were the pieces that were the most stained from use.  Unfortunately, this also became the time where I started going through all the recipes that I've never made yet have printed off for one reason or another.
Today's recipe is one of those.  I printed the January Soup Thread from the Cooking Light forums on January 7, 2003.  On page 22 of the 47 pages I printed, I found this gem from browneye.  Apparently it's from Bon Appetit, which I find odd because Bon Appetit recipes usually don't turn out for me.  Any of them.  It could be pour water in glass and it wouldn't come out right for me if the recipe is from there.  Ahem.  My issue not yours.  While sitting in a wicker chair on the deck, however, I thought, "that sounds good".  
Rain has been scarce here this summer.  In fact, it's been hot, sunny, and often disgustingly humid.  As a result, I haven't thought a whole lot about things like soup that should be reserved for rainy days and winter.  But the week after we got home, they threatened rain.  Lots of it.  Powerful storms. They didn't really materialize; we keep getting the periphery of the good stuff that would make me not lose plants in my garden.  But I did make soup, because I wanted to.
I present to you now Chinese Chicken Noodle Soup with Sesame and Green Onions:

Ingredients:
1 lb Boneless skinless chicken breast, cut crosswise into thin strips
3 Tbsp Soy Sauce
2 Tbsp dry Sherry
2 Tbsp Sesame Oil
3 Garlic Cloves, minced
3 TbspTahini
2 Tbsp fresh ginger, minced
1 Tbsp Sugar
1 Tbsp Seasoned Rice Vinegar
1-1/2 Tbsp Chili-Garlic Sauce
4 C Napa cabbage, chopped
6 Green onions, thinly sliced
8 C Low Salt Chicken Broth
14 oz. Chinese Noodles

Method:
1.  Stir chicken, soy sauce, sherry and 1 Tbsp sesame oil in medium bowl to blend.  Let stand 20 minutes or refrigerate up to 2 hrs.
2.  Whisk garlic, tahini, ginger, sugar, vinegar and chili sauce in small bowl.
3.  Heat remaining 1 Tbsp sesame oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat.  Add cabbage and green onions and saute until cabbage is tender, about 5 minutes.  Add broth and bring to a boil.
4.  Add chicken with marinade and tahini-garlic mixture.
5.  Reduce heat to low and simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 5 minutes.
6.  Cook noodles in large pot of boiling salted water until tender, about 5 minutes.  Drain and add to soup in pot.   

I have a confession to make.  I couldn't find Napa cabbage at the grocery store.  None.  And it's not like I haven't seen it or bought it there in the past.  Apparently there were a whole bunch of other people who wanted to make my soup and they cleaned out the store.  So, I went without.  We still got 8 servings out of this.  We would have been eating this soup forever if I had added 4 cups of the stuff.

So here's my bowl, day 1.  It was really nice.  The ginger added heat, and you couldn't tell that I'd used Frank's Red Hot sauce because I was out of chili-garlic sauce, and I wasn't buying a new container that I'd have to move so I could make this soup.  J didn't comment that the German soup noodles I used that were left over from my last chicken noodle soup experience were out of place either.

Meh.  It's not Chinese anymore.  It's multicultural.