Korean Chicken Soup

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chicken broth, chicken soup, cleaneating, cleaneats, easy recipes, garlic, healthy, Home Cooking, homecooked, Korean, korean chicken soup, Soup

I’ve previously mentioned in an earlier post on how to make clear chicken soup. This recipe is similar except that there’s a lot more garlic and scallions in it. It’s a healthy dish and an easy one to make too. All you need is a little time to draw out the chicken essence into the soup.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken (3 – 4 pounds) – some say that cornish hen works best but as I couldn’t find one, I used an antibiotic free adult chicken
• 10 – 12 garlic cloves
• 1 small piece ginger, sliced
• 1 medium onion, cut into halves
• 3 scallion stalks – white parts
• 1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns (optional)
• Codonopsis roots (very much optional!!! I only added this because I had it in hand but the traditional Korean chicken soup does not include any herbs – this excludes the famous Korean Ginseng Chicken soup which has young ginseng and red dates in it)
• 3 Red dates, pitted (again, very much optional)
• Extra chicken bones (optional)
• 10 cups of water
• 3 scallions – green parts, finely chopped to garnish
  salt and pepper to taste

Cooking Instruction:

1. The chicken has to be at room temperature before working with it. If you’ve kept it in the fridge, allow it to sit, covered of course, for half an hour at room temperature.
2. Cut off the wing tips and the tail end. If the chicken came with its head and feet intact, cut those off too. I’m unfortunately squeamish in this area.
3. Remove any excess skin, otherwise the soup will end up overly loaded with oil
4. Remove giblets from the chicken cavity.
5. Wash the chicken under running water and pat dry.
6. On high fire, prepare a pot of boiling water (pot has to be large enough to fit all the ingredients with room to spare so that the water doesn’t come splashing out as it boils)
7. Lower the chicken (and extra bones if you have any) into the boiling water and boil for 3-5 minutes before draining the water from the pot. This step helps to ensure further removal of impurities (blood, gunk, etc)
8. Add the garlic, onion, white parts of the scallions, ginger and peppercorns (and only if you have it, the roots and the dates) to the pot. Lastly add the water. The water level should be at least 2-3 inches above the chicken as it will reduce during the cooking process.
9. Bring everything to a boil over high heat and then reduce the heat to medium-low to simmer, covered for about 40 -50 minutes. During the cooking, skim off any foam that starts floating about on top. Otherwise you’ll have yourself some really murky looking soup!
10. Remove the chicken from the broth and place into serving bowl. If you’ve used extra bones, continue simmering for another 30 minutes. If I were just making regular chicken soup, I’d be simmering the lot for 1.5-2 hours. Doing that would compromise the chicken meat but it makes for extremely flavourful soup. As this recipe goes, the chicken should not be overcooked, yet we need the soup to be flavourful. This is where the extra bones come in handy – you can boil those without caring if they become tasteless in the end!
11. Add salt to the soup to taste.

To serve, you can serve the chicken and the soup in a large decorative soup bowl, garnished with the green scallions.

OR you can ladle some rice into a bowl, top with bite sized chicken bits and pour the soup in, topping everything off with the scallions.

I chose to eat mine with plain rice porridge and some kimchi. Seaweed would have been amazing too!

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Shaoxing Wine Ginger chicken

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chicken, Chinese, easy, easy meals, easy recipe, ginger, ginger wine chicken, healthy, Home Cooking, scallions, sesame oil, shaoxing wine, shaoxing wine ginger chicken, South East Asian, spring onions, white pepper, wine, wine chicken

This dish brings back a lot of memories from my Warwick days. For some reason I remember that the preparation process was long and tedious back then! It involves deboning chicken thighs/drumsticks and skinning and julienning ginger. At the present though, I no longer find it as long and dreary a process. Perhaps I could attribute it to… better knife skills? Or maybe just better knives, I don’t think my knife skills have improved at all since then!

This is a very warming, hearty dish and the sauce is lovely with freshly cooked white rice. It’s currently a favourite with the family and guests who happen to try it! It doesn’t take very long nor need many ingredients and makes a perfect addition to the dining table. I include pictures from two attempts at cooking this dish and I realized that I naturally throw the same ingredients into the pan, despite starting off with perhaps a couple less ingredients in one of the photos. That goes to show that agaration (the South East Asian technique of cooking by guesstimating) isn’t very far off from precision after all!Ingredients from trial number 1Ingredients from trial number 2.

But don’t worry, I’ve consolidated the ingredient list and summarized it as below:-

Ingredients (Serves 4)

• 2-3 stalks of Spring onions including the white bits with roots removed
• 3 inches of ginger, peeled and roughly julienned
• 4 Chicken thighs with skin on, deboned
• 3 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 3 tbsp clear chicken stock/broth
• 1 tbsp sesame oil

Chicken marinade

• Shaoxing wine 1 tbsp marinade
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 2-3 tbsp soy sauce
• white pepper
• 2 tsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tsp corn flour

Cooking Instructions

Upon deboning the chicken, remove the skin from two of the chicken thighs and discard. Keep the skin on for the remaining two chicken thighs. We want some chicken fat rendering in the gravy but not too much!

Trim off the excess fat and remove the tendons from the chicken. Tendons are tough to cut through and unpleasant to eat so be thorough in removing them whenever preparing chicken! Once that is done, cut the chicken meat into bite-sized, uniform pieces so they cook at the same speed. 

Place the chicken in a bowl and lightly mix in the chicken marinade with your hands. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes at room temperature.

In preparing the scallions/spring onions, cut them into thirds or 2 inch sections. You can take some of the green sections to slice thinly for garnishing as well.

Heat up some oil in a pan/wok on medium fire. When the oil is hot enough (i.e. if you drop a piece of ginger into the oil it starts to sizzle right away), slide the ginger into the oil gingerly (I’m so funny I know) and fry for a minute until the ginger starts to turn a little golden and the gingery aroma seeps out. The point of this step is to flavour the oil with ginger as well as prep the ginger so it’s at its best to mingle with the chicken.Add the chicken pieces and fry until half-cooked.

Then, flip the pieces over and add the chicken stock, sesame oil plus Shaoxing wine and cover to cook for a minute. We’re quick-braising/stewing the chicken with some moisture, not searing it to death. Remember, the chicken has to be swimming in a luscious pool of delicious gravy!Upon uncovering, add the spring onion sections into the pan/wok and stir fry for a little while more. Taste to check if it needs more white pepper or salt.

And it’s done!Not the fanciest of dishes but highly satisfying and easy on the stomach. Healthy too!

Check out the before and after picture of trial number 1. I used 10 thighs for that round of cooking!

Wiped clean. ❤

Truffle eggs with cheese

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black truffle, black truffles, bread, breakfast, brunch, cheese, easy, easy meals, easy recipe, Egg, eggs, Home Cooking, scrambled eggs, scrambled truffle eggs, truffle eggs

Just another quick picture post on some scrambled eggs I made while I was in London. Found some black truffle at Borough Market, so I shaved some over the eggs. I still think nothing beats the aroma of Alba winter white truffles!

A minute twist to ordinary scrambled eggs… add some truffle oil and mild cheddar cheese shavings to give boring ol scrambled eggs a little kick! Top with chopped chives and serve over slices of sourdough bread, pan toasted in butter. Recipe for the basic scrambled eggs here.

Lobster glass noodle soup with shaoxing wine.

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big head prawn, big head prawn noodle soup, Chinese, chinese lettuce, chinese soup, chinese soup noodles, coriander, dinner, easy meals, glass noodles, healthy, Home Cooking, huatiao, large prawns, lobster, lobster glass noodle, lobster glass noodle soup, lobster noodle, lobster noodle soup, lunch, Noodles, One bowl meal, prawns, seafood, sesame oil, shaoxing wine, Soup, South East Asian, stew, wine broth, wine soup

Here is the second half of the lobster (first half of which went to making the lobster pasta) and the easier recipe of the two. The original version called for fresh river prawns/big head prawns but since I had the lobster, I figured I could use that instead and add in some large prawns as a bonus. Since there is no recipe that I could refer to online I tried to recreate the taste the best I could remember. Turns out I’m actually quite satisfied with the results! Now without further ado, the recipe:-

Ingredients (4 pax)

• 1/2 lobster
• 6 large prawns (in my first attempt I used 3, but the attempt with 6 prawns tasted better)
• 1 inch ginger, sliced
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1 tbsp minced onion
• 1/2 cup Shaoxing wine (maybe a dash more if you like)
• 5 cups chicken stock
• Chinese lettuce (I used a quarter of a head), cut into bite sized pieces
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 150g Glass noodles
• Spring onions chopped into large three inch sections.
• Coriander for garnish
• Finely chopped spring onions for garnish
• salt

The array of ingredientsGlass noodlesLarge lobster.

So we shall start with the prawns. De-shell all the prawns and set the shells/heads aside. Do NOT throw them away! Then devein them and cut each prawn into three sections.Size of the prawn heads and my hand, just for comparison. Lots of flavour in those prawn heads! 

Cut the lobster into half. If the lobster is as spiny as this one, do use a towel and be very careful when handling it. A pair of strong kitchen scissors would be a great help here.

More pictures of the lobster… as you can probably tell, I’ve added pictures from a second lobster noodle attempt into the mix. The second lobster looked way fresher and more succulent with its firmer white flesh and golden globules.

When you’ve managed to cut the lobster into half lengthwise, chop the tail into three parts and dig out some of the flesh from the head (I forgot to do that here) and set that aside with the prawns. Leave the orange/golden stuff behind.

Heat up some oil in a large pot and fry the ginger, garlic and onions until the onions are translucent and the aroma of the ginger comes out. It helps to crush the ginger before or during this step.Add the prawn shells and fry until half cooked (almost that coral colour they become when they’re fully cooked) before adding the lobster head to the pot.Continue frying for a minute or so, adding a little oil if it gets too dry. Then add the shaoxing wine to soak up all that flavour that’s coming from the prawn shells and lobster head. I actually would have liked to add another half cup of shaoxing wine but I was worried my family may not like the taste so I stuck with half a cup, but go ahead and use that extra half a cup if you like. 

Add the stock and simmer for around 15 minutes before turning off the heat. Cover the pot with its respective lid and leave it for perhaps an hour.

Then, remove the prawn shells from the stock (if you had a strainer bag in the first place, use it to hold the prawn shells because it can be a chore to pick them out from the soup).

Toss in the lobster and prawn meat that was set aside earlier, along with the spring onion sections, lettuce and glass noodles. The reason why we cook the shells and the meat separately is so that we can extract the most flavour out of the seafood from the shells without overcooking the meat, which is only added at the end. If you were to cook the meat right at the start, you’re going to end up with some very hard, overcooked and dry chunks of prawn/lobster which is such a waste of good seafood.

Place the lid back on and bring the soup to a boil.

Add the sesame oil at the end and season with salt. Top with chopped spring onions and coriander. Easy peasy!

Japanese cheesecake / Japanese soufflé cheesecake – Improved version

Tags

bain marie, cream of tartar, desserts, flour, fluffy, healthy, healthy choice, healthy option, Home Cooking, japanese, Japanese cheesecake, japanese desserts, japanese souffle, japanese souffle cheesecake, light, light desserts, philadelphia cream cheese, scs butter, self-rising flour, souffle

I’ve always had a problem with my Japanese cheesecakes. They almost always sink. So I play around with the recipe each time I make it. You can see the old recipe here. Basically, I just tweaked the recipe a little, but the cooking instructions are the same.

Ingredients:

For the Japanese cheesecake

• 140g fine granulated sugar
• 6 egg whites
• 6 egg yolks
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
• 50g salted butter (I used the salted SCS butter, with the star logo on a silver foil wrapping)
• 250g cream cheese
• 100ml fresh milk
• 40g cake flour/self-rising flour
• 30g corn flour
• 1/4 tsp salt

This time around for some reason I could only whip the egg whites into ribbon stage. It should be whipped til soft peaks form. It still worked irregardless. When the egg whites have been folded in with the cream cheese mixture, slowwwwwly pour it into the centre of the cake tin to eliminate big bubbles.

Also, I used a Bain Marie… I wrapped the cake tin in aluminium foil and placed it in a tray filled with hot water. Cooking will be more even that way. Then bake at 160 degrees celsius for 1 hour 10 minutes before turning off the oven and leaving the oven door very slightly ajar. Leave the cake to cook for half an hour to an hour before removing from the oven.

Baking in a bain marie… I only filled up the tray halfway, didn’t want to put too much water!

Used self raising flour this time.

Finally done! So beautiful! I really need to get a smaller cake tin so as to get that beautifully high and majestic cake. 

See how smooth the texture is?❤ and its not collapsing!

Very happy with this attempt! Super smooth and light cake!

 

Rurouni kenshin seaweed art

Tags

anime bento, bento, character bentos, cheese, creative food, cute food, food art, himura kenshin, Home Cooking, Kyaraben, rurouni kenshin, samurai x, seaweed, seaweed art

Another seaweed art I did over the long weekend. I’ve been wanting to do a rurouni kenshin one for over a year now and finally have some free time to stay home and mess around with seaweed. Perfect time for rurouni kenshin as two of the movies are out this year!  

 First step? Again, draw the character of your choice, it should be either a line art or just black and white, not grey tones or anything cuz you can’t distinguish that in the seaweed.

2nd, I skipped this step because I plain forgot… trace out your character on a clean sheet of paper using ink, then block the black parts in. Since I forgot, I just used this as a topper and didn’t eat it (couldn’t bear to anyway!). OR you can combine the first and second step by just printing out the lineart/black and white image of your choice and just use that if you’re not particularly comfortable with drawing freehand.

 3. Next, prepare your tools! My brother and sister got me a new set of bento cutting tools (a great design cutter!) and pincers since my older set is in Singapore. Clip the drawing on top of the seaweed against the cutting board.

 4. Start cutting all the WHITE parts out! This is a particularly intricate piece and had many tiny details. I accidentally cut out some seaweed lines which could have been rectified by snipping small lines of seaweed, but of course by the end of it I just couldn’t be bothered anymore.

5. Cut the small white pieces first. If you cut out the large pieces, the seaweed will shift around and make it impossible to cut the tiny ones. Use pincers to remove the paper and seaweed as you go along.

 Phew! There’s the face done.

Once in a while, flip up the paper to have a look if your seaweed is being cut cleanly and properly.

And you’re done!

Transfer the seaweed careful and stick it on a slice or two of cheese. I might try a harder cheese next time so it is easier to handle, but this cheese is sticky and the seaweed sticks very well onto it.

 6. Cut the cheese and trim it around the seaweed.

 7. Add to your bento! Or in this case, tomato soup. One of the many ways to jazz up boring canned soup. 

Although some croutons wouldn’t hurt as well!

 It was so difficult to photograph as the light kept shining off it! I wish I had daylight to take a proper photo of it.

Bento assortment: Pandas and strange creatures galore!

Tags

bento, character bento, eggs, furikake, Home Cooking, japanese, Kyaraben, lunch, lunchbox, onigiri, panda onigiri, rice, sausages, seaweed

Never knew that bento-making could be made into a fun bonding session with friends 😉 At my age, bonding/get-togethers normally mean just meals or drinks so I was a little apprehensive at first. As it turned out, it was pretty entertaining!

We used several items, as I’ll list out below, to assemble our bentos. They may not be perfect but I think its the experience that counts ;D

This is just a short picture post as there aren’t any instructions… just do whatever you like and go crazy with your food!

Tools used:

• Cute and colourful picks
• Panda rice mold
• Seaweed cutters (panda shaped and various smileys)
• Small knife
• Small scissors
• Tweezers

Food used:

• Plain white cooked short grain rice
• cooked white short grain rice mixed with salmon furikake topping
• An assortment of fruits
• Shiso leaves
• Cheese slices
• Cocktail sausages
• Furikake
• Boiled eggs
• Wasabi peas
• Seaweed

So here’s my bento, the pandas, the failed hatched chick and cheese swirls:

Below are the bentos my two friends came up with.

I’m now all revved up to make cuter bentos soon! Its a nice change to seaweed art, but of course I won’t abandon that either. I’ve yet to make Rurouni kenshin bentos!

Kanto style Sukiyaki すき焼き, Japanese hotpot

Tags

bacon, black pig, cast iron pot, easy, grilled tofu, Home Cooking, hot plate, hotpot, japanese, kanto style sukiyaki, kanto sukiyaki, kurobuta, leeks, mizuna, nabe, nabemono, pork, pork shoulder, raw eggs, seared tofu, shirataki, streaky pork, sukiyaki, udon, yaki tofu, yaki-dofu

On a recent trip to Hokkaido, I finally got to try sukiyaki. It’s a pretty commonplace dish, one that I’ve never tried because most of the time sukiyaki tends to be a quintessential beef hotpot dish. I don’t eat beef so I could never have it. In Hokkaido however, I found a sukiyaki place that offers the pork option. After cooking the pork in the sauce and dipping it in raw egg, I fell immediately in love with sukiyaki.

Many cooking videos and recipes later I discovered that there are two main types of sukiyaki; kansai style sukiyaki and kanto style sukiyaki. Kansai style sukiyaki calls for the method of frying the meat in some rendered fat and sugar before adding the sauce and the rest of the ingredients to the pot. Kanto style is where the sauce, called warishita (割り下）, is prepared beforehand and everything is thrown in. This is what I am more familiar with. Normal chinese hotpot sessions normally have large boiling tubs of soup with various vegetables, fishballs and meat thrown in. I guess sukiyaki is a little more special as it seems to be geared towards good cuts of meat. It is also sweet and savory making the cooked meat perfect with a bowl of white rice.

I was initially worried about the idea of using raw egg back here in Malaysia. Salmonella and all. Then I discovered that pasteurized eggs are safe for raw consumption as they eliminate risk of Salmonella and Avian flu virus. Make sure you do your research before buying and consuming raw eggs in any circumstance! I bought mine from safeegg at Aeon:-

http://www.safegg.com.my/subContent/what_is_safegg.swf

Ingredients (feeds 6 people)

warishita (割り下）sauce

• 3/4 cup sake
• 3/4 cup mirin
• 3/4 cup sugar and 1-2 tbsps extra sugar in case you want it sweeter (*edit* I used less sugar and found it so much better, around 2/3 cup. I’d recommend 2/3 cup of sugar  rather than 3/4 cup as it is less cloying and enhances the taste of the ingredients better)
• 1.5 cups light soy sauce (I got the low sodium Kikkoman soy sauce, which is why I still had to add a little salt afterwards; it wasn’t salty enough ;p)
• 2 tsp salt
• 4.5 cups water

Other ingredients 

• 1.5 kg of sliced meat (I got some sliced pork belly, pork shoulder and even managed to get some kurobuta meat)
• 1 leek
• 4 stalks of spring onion
• 6 pasteurized eggs
• 1 carrot
• 1 large onion
• 1 pack firm tofu
• 1 pack enoji mushroom
• 10-12 fresh shiitake mushrooms
• 1 pack other mushrooms (whichever you like)
• Shungiku leaves – I couldn’t find these so I used mizuna. You can use any other preferred leafy vegetables
• 1/2 chinese cabbage
• Udon (I used 3 packets but since we also had rice we couldn’t finish all the udon. Cook as much as you think you need)

For sukiyaki it would be sufficient if you had a multi-purpose cooker placed in the center of the table so as to cook all the food as you eat. I do NOT think it is a good idea to throw in all the ingredients and cook it in the kitchen and brought over to the table. It pretty much defeats the purpose of sukiyaki and more often than not your ingredients will be overcooked and will lack the “freshly cooked” taste to it. I used a cast iron pot with sides high enough so that I can fit all the vegetables comfortably, as well as a hot plate.

Cooking Instructions

• Wash all the vegetables and mushrooms.
• Cut off the roots of the spring onions and cut the spring onions into 3 sections.
• Cut off the roots of the enoki mushrooms and separate them
• Cut off the stems of the shiitake mushrooms and create star shape patterns onto the cap of the mushrooms

It’s also a good idea to arrange the vegetables in large plates as you go along. Presentation is always important in Japanese cuisine!

• Slice the carrot thickly
• Slice onion
• Cut the chinese cabbage into bite sized pieces
• Pour a tablespoon of oil into a frying pan and fry/sear the surface of the tofu. What we are making here is yaki-dofu or grilled tofu. This is a good step-by-step on how to make it:http://japanese-kitchen.net/yaki-dofu-grilled-tofu/
• Once you’re done searing the tofu, cut it into bite sized pieces

Tadahhh! All that effort of cleaning and cutting those vegetables! Not to mention searing tofu. I accidentally broke off some of the edges T___T

• Prepare the udon according to instructions and set aside
• Drain the shirataki and set aside

Next, combine all the wareshita ingredients in the pot and simmer to dissolve sugar.

Prepare all the meat and have it on standby with the vegetables.

Start the sukiyaki feast!   

Place your pot on the hot plate and bring the sauce to a simmer. Cook the meat, dip into raw beaten egg and eat with fresh white rice. Throw the ingredients in according to your preference but I’d suggest putting in the leeks, onions and carrots first along with the meat as it lends more sweetness to the sauce. Not that it matters much, the sauce is already sweet enough, it’s just that these vegetables also take more time to cook. Enjoy!!

Deconstructed bibimbap bento

Tags

bento, bibimbap, breakfast, character bento, character bentos, cute, deconstructed, easy bento, food art, healthy, Home Cooking, Korean, Kyaraben, lunch, lunchbox, panda character bentos, vegetables

White truffle series 4: Garlic bread uni and salad

Tags

bread topped with uni, easy, garlic bread, garlic bread sea urchin, garlic bread topped with uni, garlic bread uni, Home Cooking, honey, honey lemon and mayo dressing, lemon, light, quick, sea urchin, truffle oil, truffle salad, uni, uni and truffle, white truffle, white truffle recipe, white truffles

This is another quick uni and white truffle combination that I love. Super easy to put together because you’re gonna be using ready-made garlic bread!

Just grab your favourite brand of garlic bread, pop it into the oven until its nice and hot and crispy on the outside and then top it off with a heaping mountain of golden orange sea urchin roe (make sure it is fresh uni). Finish it off with a sprinkling of chopped chives and fragrant slivers of white truffle. The garlic bread should have enough salt content, but you can add some fleur de sel on top if you wish.

Love ❤

And then there’s salad. I put together a salad of baby spinach leaves, radish, cherry tomatoes, a handful of dried blueberries, some ikura/salmon roe (personally I love ikura but you can leave this out if you think it’s weird), shaved parmigiano reggiano cheese and white truffle on the top. Dressed it lightly with my favourite dressing; a simple honey, lemon and mayo mixture. I can’t remember now if I added any truffle oil to this or not. Good time to try making this again when I get hold of some truffles!

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