Chinese Style Chicken Drumstick Soup, with Carrots Chinese Mushrooms and wolfberries

I normally make chicken soup with a whole Australian free range chicken but today, I finetuned the recipe to make soup only with chicken drumstick and it turned out surprisingly delicious.

Chicken Drumstick Soup with carrots, chinese mushrooms & wolfberries.

Over the years, I have only been cooking for 2 pax and found it so easy, so I honestly fail to understand the "excuses" that "its so hard to cook for 2 pax so I dont cook." theory. Think of all the benefits of cooking your own meals. No salt. No sugar. Only wholesome goodness...Not to mention all the minor tweaks to customise it to your taste. To me, its hands down win :)

So here's my easy to make chicken soup.

Portion: 2 pax.
Time to prep & cook: 1.5hrs

Ingredients
- 4 medium size drumsticks.
- 5 medium size presoaked Chinese Mushrooms
- 2 tbsp of rinsed wolf berries.
- 8 deseeded red dates.
- 5 slices of rinsed Chinese Yam. (optional)
- A small handful of lily bulbs in a tea pouch (optional)
- 1 large Australian fresh carrot, or 2 mid size.
- 2 dried presoaked small scallops. (normally I would presoak for 5-10mins prior so that its not that strong)
- 2 inch of smashed ginger without skin.

Cooking steps

1. Fill soup pot with 2 L of water. Bring to Boil.

2. Throw in sliced mushrooms, chinese yam, dried scallops, red dates, ginger into pot and bring to boil with medium heat for 20mins with lid close.

3. In a separate pot, boil water and cook drumstick for about 5 mins. Throw away the water.

4. Add the drumsticks into the soup pot to cook with other ingredients. Turn flame down to small.

5. Close lid and leave to simmer for an hour.

6. Add wolfberries, close lid, cook for another 15mins.

Done. Served with rice.

Tip: You can replace carrots with daikon (white radish).
1. However, I recently learnt that you should not mix daikon with red carrot as the Vit C in radish is destroyed by carrots. You should cook them separately.

2. Radish is considered cooling property vege, so not suitable for all people.. More importantly, one should NOT consume radish while taking medication esp antibiotics as it is said to neutralise the effects of the medication.

Chinese Style Black Bean Pork Rib Soup with wolfberries

Wanting to break out of my comfort zone, I decided to google the net and see what sort of "new" healthy chinese soup I could make for myself and my man, yet still easy enough without the complicated hassle. 

So....I tried making Black bean Pork rib soup for the first time and it actually turned out splendid, not to mention how easy it was...

Black Bean Pork Rib Soup, with wolfberries.

Featuring - Black Bean or Turtle bean.
Not the prettiest of the lot but it sure is cheap and choke full of goodness with benefits such as 
-  Digestive Tract Benefits
- Benefits for Blood Sugar Regulation (esp for diabetic Type 2 people I suppose)
- Cardiovascular Benefits
- impressive array of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory phytonutrients

Dont take my word for it, check out the details from link below.
(source: http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=2)

Ingredients 

- 150grams of whole black beans
- 300-400gram of soup pork ribs and pork shank combined
(I personally like pork shank so that its so soft and edible after the soup is done)
- Rinsed 8 deseeded red dates (Not suitable for diabetic people: Benefits : Read Link)
- Rinsed 2 tbsp (or more) of wolf berries
- Rinsed 5 slices of Chinese yam (optional. Benefits : Read Link )
- 2 inch smashed ginger without skin (Smashed allows the flavor to leak out faster)
- 2 presoaked small scallops. (presoaked for 10 mins to reduce the overwhelmingly strong taste)

Cooking Steps

1. Rinse the black beans. Remove the cracked ones, or those that looked just looked spoiled.

2. Boil a pot of water (depending on your pot size, guide is to use enough water to cover all beans. I figured 600ml or more will suffice. You wont need the water later so the actual amount doesnt matter. I would measure the amount in advance first after you have rinsed the beans. )

3. Once the water is boiling, add in black beans and boil for about 2 mins.
This step is to shorten the cooking time required later.

4. Soak the beans for at least another 1-2 hours. 
Soaking step is VERY important. Please do not skip this. You can always presoak the beans overnight if you are in rush for time.

5. After the soaked beans are ready, rinsed pork. Use hot boiling water and pour over bones and meat and leave it to soak for couple of mins. For me, its more for hygiene purpose to kill any surface germs. If you use lean meat then you wont get much scum.

6. In a separate pot, fill with 2L water and boil. Add in all the pork bones and meat and soaked black beans, ginger, red dates. Cover lid.

7.Stay on high heat for another 30mins. Remove any scum. Turn down heat to medium-low. Cook for another 50mins or until the rich flavor of the soup is attained.  
 (Tip: Do not stay on high heat or the bean will absorb the soup and u will be left with nothing)

8. Towards the last 50mins, add in wolfberries into soup.
Wolfberries cook quickly esp with closed lid, so give it 10-15mins will suffice.

Done. Served with rice.

Personally, I dont normally add salt to soup unless I really have to. So leave salt for final tasting up to the individual. It is important NOT to ADD salt during the cooking process as it will affect the bean.

Chinese Style Pan Fry Fish Fillet with Soy Sauce

I normally like my fish steamed but once in a while when I crave to have porridge
 (Not congee. Congee is the Cantonse style where rice is completely disintegrated but porridge is the type you still see the rice grain in full and you get the benefit of rice soup/water - which is good to stop tummy runs.)

Tried frying fish for the first time.
I think I overcooked mine, forgetting that mackeral is less fatty than salmon and thus 5 mins was excessive.... However, all in all, it was good and definitely something I would want to perfect to make it taste like mum's. Not quite there yet for mine. I will come back here after i refined the recipe.

Pan fry fish

Ingredients:

- Mackerel or any white fish fillet you like.
- Sliced 2 inch of ginger into thin slices for frying
- 1 stalk of spring onion for garnish
- Shaoxing wine - 1 capful
- 2 tbsp of dark soya sauce
- 2 tbsp of light soya sauce
- dash of sugar into the soya sauce combined
- dash of white pepper
- 1 tbsp of sesame oil

Cooking Steps:

1. Marinate fish fillet with shaoxing wine, salt (dash) for about 20mins.
(throw in thin slices of ginger if you have extra on the fish to marinate as well)
2. Heat oil in frying pan. When oil is ready, add in sliced ginger slices. Remove from pan once it starts to brown.
3. Add fish fillet to pan fry until it turns brown. Remove from pan.
4. The remaining combined soya sauces, throw to the pan and heat. Drizzle over the fish. Add garnish.

PS: From my experience, it prob takes about 2 mins on one side or less depending on your thickness.

Chinese Style Apple Pork Rib Soup

Tried a new pork soup recipe today. It's a super light refreshing soup that is a nice change from all the heavy flavour soup. I dont think I have "perfected" it the way I imagined yet but it's still ok.

Ingredients

- 300-400grams Soup pork bones (西施骨）and pork shank (the more you have, the sweeter the soup is and lesser time to boil)
- 2-3 red large ripe apples
- 6-8 deseeded red dates
- 1 white onion cut in slices
- 2 Honey dates
- 1-2 Carrots (optional)
- 2 inch ginger smashed (optional)

Cooking Steps

1. Rinse and deseed the apples. I left the skin on.
2. Rinse pork. You can choose to boil the raw bones until the scum is out and scope out, before starting your soup pork or you can rinse the pork with boiling water.
(If u bought the fresh pork from wet market or butcher, you can do the former but if you bought the meat from supermarket, I would just rinse with boiling water else I noticed my final soup is always very bland and less sweet if I cook the bones first time round)
3. Heat the water, 3/4 full and add the smashed ginger, pork bones and shank and honey dates.
4. High heat for half hour and turn to medium heat.
5. Cook for an hour and when the scum and "filth" appears, scoop and remove.
6. Add in the red apples and red dates. Cook for another 50mins on medium - medium low heat depending on the type of pot you use. I use the stainless WMF steel mid-size, so I stuck to just under medium heat.

Korean Style Beef Bulgogi with Green peppers and Enoki Mushroom

This is a classic Korean dish and it's so easy to make that a lazy person like me has file it under "Quick meal". Prep and cook time takes under 30mins.

Beef Bulgogi

Ingredients

-300-400gram of marbled shabu shabu beef. (I used the Australian sliced version)
- 1/2 stalk leek, sliced thinly at an angle
- 1/2 green pepper/ capsicum, sliced in long strips
- 1/2 onion, sliced lengthways
- 1 bunch of enoki
- 6 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1tsp grated ginger
- 1/4 cup soya sauce (adjust as u like according to the beef amount)
- 2tbsp sesame oil
- 2tbsp mirin
- 1tbsp fine sugar (the original recipe ask for 2tbsp but i cut it down)
+ seasame seeds, toasted for garnish at the end (optional)

Cooking steps

1. Marinate beef with sugar, soya sauce, sesame oil and mirin for about 15mins or so. Leave in fridge unless you have winter chill temp in your kitchen.

2. Add chopped garlic and grated ginger.

3. Heat frying pan with 1tbsp olive oil.

4. Stir fry capsicum, onions, enoki mushrooms with some minced garlic

5. When capsicum starts to soften (prob about after 5mins on high heat), add beef and leeks together into the vege mix. Important not to overcook your beef esp slice which only takes few mins to cook. Once it turn from red to brown, it's done.

Add marinated beef slice to the vege mix.

6. Once the beef is cooked, turn off flame and served with jasmine steamed rice.

Alternatively, you can make your own beef bulgogi sandwich by adding this to white bread.

Tip: if you are not using sliced beef, add some pureed fruit (apple/ pear), this will tenderise and add more sweetness to your meat.