Korean Chicken Soup

Tags

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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Lobster glass noodle soup with shaoxing wine.

Tags

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!

Tom Yum Goong

Tags

chilli padi, clear soup, fish sauce, galangal, kaffir leaves, lemongrass, lime, lime leaves, prawns, Soup, sour, South East Asian, spicy, thai, tom yum, tom yum goong, tomatoes

So I’ve always loved tom yum goong, but never tried making it myself. So when I saw a tom yum recipe on the high heel gourmet’s blog (http://highheelgourmet.com/2013/04/25/tom-yum-goong/) , I was really motivated to make it myself! Hers looks delicious and authentic.

I then made tom yum goong on two occasions following her recipe and found that its not only tasty but really healthy as well! Just look at the ingredients:-

Attempt 1: (No coconut milk used, smaller glass prawns and forgot to include the milk and prawns into the picture)Attempt no. 2: (With tiger prawns and coconut milk and a couple of shallots)

Ingredients (for two), adapted from: http://highheelgourmet.com/2013/04/25/tom-yum-goong/

4 full stalks of lemongrass (I used 5… or more depending on whether I wanted to finish em all)

5-6 Kaffir lime leaves

Galangal, peeled and sliced thinly, 4-5 pieces (for a 1.5 inch diameter knob of galangal), or 7-8 for a smaller knob – I think its a good idea to smash it a little, to release the flavour and smell

Shrimp or prawns with head and shell – I might have used 300g cuz there’s no such thing as too many prawns *Greedy*

1 can of Straw Mushrooms, these variety of mushrooms are the best kind for tom yum in my opinion

3-4 limes

Fish sauce  2 tablespoons

6 cups of liquid in total ; Water/soup stock/coconut milk with 1 cup in reserve. I used 1 young coconut which gave me 2 cups of coconut milk which I find essential as an ingredient in tom yum soup. Without coconut milk I feel like there’s something missing and it doesnt turn out as aromatic

Salt, as needed (Prob 2-3 tsps according to your taste)

Spring onions, cut about 1/4” long, 2 tablespoons

The green parts of the spring onion, 5-6 “leaves” for tying the bouquet garni if you don’t have a string designated for cooking

Cilantro, cut about 1/2” long, (saving the top leaves for garnish) 2 tablespoons

5-6 pods of chilli padi/birds eye chillies

Optional ingredients

Nam Phrik Pao  3-4 teaspoons (I didn’t use this, but perhaps I should have!)

Milk   1/2 cup (I used 3-4 tbsps when I thought the chilli was going to kill me from the level of spiciness…it helped to neutralize it a little)

Tomatoes  2-4 medium size, quartered (I used about 2)

Young coconut flesh (Unfortunately I ate mine so it never made it in to the soup)

Rock sugar  2-4 crystals (Just to eliminate the slightly unpalatable taste from the herbs, not enough to make the taste sweeter)

Cooking Instruction

1) For big prawns like the ones I’m using here, peel them, leaving the heads intact. De-vein the prawns and keep all the shells.

If you are using shrimp (smaller-sized prawns), pull the heads off alongside the shells and save them, also then deveining them. Set them aside.

2) Boil the 6 cups of liquid before adding the shrimp/prawn shells and shallots, and over the course of cooking, add water or stock as needed.

3) Meanwhile, boil another pot of water. This is where you’ll blanch your spring onion leaves so that it becomes malleable and you will be able to tie the bouquet garni with it. Blanch until soft then remove immediately.

4. Crush the lemongrass along the stalks and slice them lengthwise. Peel the galangal and slice it thinly. Tear the kaffir lime leaves towards the main stem, leaving the stem intact to keep them attached. Lay the blanched spring onions as below and place half the lemongrass on top, followed by kaffir leaves, galangal, more kaffir leaves and the rest of the lemongrass. Tie all of them into a bouquet garni so it doesn’t float all over in your soup.

When you’re done, cut the bundle down the middle (please make sure that both sides are equally secured by the spring onions) so it fits into your pot.

5) Place the bouquet garni into the pot and bring to a boil again, then lower the heat and let it simmer for another 10 minutes.

5) Season the soup. The high heel gourmet (a.k.a. Miranti) says that first we must get the salty aspect right. First, add the fish sauce, followed by some salt. When you’re happy with the saltiness, drop the rock sugar into the pot (Always handy to have some crushed ones ready at hand, its easier to apportion and cook). The rock sugar is meant to offset the bitter taste of the herbs. Then you taste the soup again to ascertain if more salt is needed.

6) Take out the shrimp shells and leave the bouquet garni.

7) Increase the heat to high again. Add the mushrooms, tomatoes, young coconut flesh if you have it, and the prawns/shrimp.

If you want your Tom Yum to be quite hot and spicy, you can add chilies right now, but if you want it somewhat spicy but not over the top, you add them later once its done boiling.

8) Let it come back to a boil, then turn off the heat right away. At this stage you can add the Nam Phrik Pao, crushed chilies, lime juice, and milk if you like.

9) Garnish with green onion, a slice of lime and cilantro.

It was yummy and really simple to make!

Much thanks to the high heel gourmet for her meticulous recipe and cooking instructions (though I’m afraid I might have deviated here and there and not done her much justice):

http://highheelgourmet.com/2013/04/25/tom-yum-goong/

Coming up soon: Tom Yum Goong

Tags

clear soup, fish sauce, galangal, healthy, kaffir leaves, lemongrass, prawns, Soup, sour, South East Asian, spicy, thai, tom yum, tom yum goong, tomato, tomyum

Adapted from High Heel Gourmet’s recipe. Hers is the real deal though 😉

http://highheelgourmet.com/2013/04/25/tom-yum-goong/

Truffles Part 6 – Zafferano inspired Clear soup with winter vegetables and pastry with truffles and foie gras

Tags

black truffle, chicken soup, clear broth, comfort food, easy, foie gras, pastry, Puff pastry, Soup, soup bowl, truffle, winter vegetables

I was cracking my head on what else I should do with the remainder of my truffles. I had way too much for myself! Then my sister described a dish that she really enjoyed at Zafferano. I’ve never been to Zafferano myself, but what she described sounded just perfect as it was not heavy and full of cream and fat (well, excluding the foie gras that is). I had been pigging out on heavy, calorie-laden food while making all these truffle dishes. Clear broth sounded amazing then.

Ingredients (per person)

1) Half a foie gras slice, cut into chunks (well you can add more if you like, but remember this is going to be boiled and not seared, thus it would make the soup really oily if you add too much)

2) chicken broth to fill up to slightly more than half of the soup bowl that you will be using

3) 1/4 of a courgette,sliced and quartered

4) 1/4 of a large carrot, sliced

5) 1/4 a large onion, sliced or 3 inches of a white radish, sliced and quartered

6) Truffle shavings

7) 1/4 of a 500g Jus-Rol Frozen Puff Pastry sheet, rolled out in a square shape and trim the ends with a sharp knife. It should be large enough to cover the soup bowl

Instructions

1) Add the vegetables and foie gras to the broth and simmer for about 5 minutes or until vegetables are sufficiently cooked to your liking.

2) Meanwhile preheat your oven temp. to 220ºC or the temperature that is stated on the cooking instructions for your ready made pastry.

3) Ladle out your soup into the bowl, I think it would be best if the soup was warm and not boiling hot because if it is the latter, the steam from the soup will cause the pastry puff sheet to sink down a lot more while baking. Mine totally sunk =(. Lastly add some sliced truffle into the soup. You could add the ends of the truffle, which is difficult to shave but too much of a waste to let go.

4) Place the pastry sheet over the soup bowl and make sure it is securely in place. Using a fork to make patterns (see picture below) helps to secure it in place. You can also go crazy with the patterns. 😉

5) Bake for 15-20 minutes until the puff pastry is all nicely puffed up and golden brown.

6) Told you my dough sank into the soup =(. With the middle bit sunken like that I had to save it somehow, so I draped a couple of sprigs of thyme and shaved the truffles on top

7) It was really good! The pastry and soup together is so comforting ~ Would totally make this again.

Truffles Part 5: Cream of Mushroom soup with creme fraiche and truffles

Tags

appetizer, black truffle, brown mushrooms, cream, cream of mushroom soup, creme fraiche, dinner, hand blender, mushroom, mushroom soup, Soup, starter, truffles, western, white truffle oil

I love mushroom soup. Even though I’ve been eating canned Campbell mushroom soup for most of my life, nothing beats freshly made cream of mushroom soup. I attempted it for the first time as part of my truffle menu and used portobello and those nice swiss brown mushrooms. Other recipes call for er… wilder varieties of mushroom but since its just me and my helper, I decided to just use mushrooms that I’m used to. The end result should be a creamy thick soup of mushrooms and enhanced just by some chopped parsley, truffle shavings and perhaps a drop or two of truffle oil.

Ingredients (Serves 4)

100g butter

500g mushrooms (I used 250g portobello and 250g swiss brown mushrooms)

350ml chicken stock

400ml water

100g cooking cream

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tbsp of creme fraiche per bowl of soup (you can adjust this if you like)

Fresh truffle shavings

1 tsp chopped English parsley per bowl

Salt and black pepper for seasoning

Instructions

1. Wash the mushrooms thoroughly and drain.

2. Slice the mushrooms to the same thickness (otherwise you’ll get inconsistencies in texture after blending)

3. Melt the butter in a sauce pan large enough to hold 2 litres of water. I used a wok as I’m more comfortable with it.

4. Fry the garlic and mushrooms together for 5 minutes. The mushrooms will release some liquid.

5. Add chicken stock and water and bring to the boil before turning down the heat. Cover with the lid and let it stew for about 30 minutes.

6. Add the cream and let it simmer for another 3-5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

7. Blitz the soup with a hand blender. Be careful when you do this as you don’t want the hot liquid to fly all over the kitchen and onto you! 

I transferred the mixture into a mixing jug for blitzing.

8. Blitz until your desired consistency. I like mine slightly chunky

9. Ladle into soup bowl and top with creme fraiche, truffle shavings, parsley and a little white truffle oil if you like.

Serve with bread! 

Kimchi Jiggae

Tags

dinner, egg tofu, healthy, kimchi, Korean, mains, pork, Soup, stew

A spicy sour soup, kimchi jiggae goes well with rice or can be eaten on its own

This is where my love for korean dramas and food ties in well. Every time I watch one of my many korean dramas, there’s always a scene where someone’s eating and having a good time with all that delicious looking korean food. Kimchi fried pancakes, kimchi soup, bulgogi, Korean barbeque and the list is endless. After watching so much of it, I crave the food featured in the shows even if I’ve never tried it.

One of my favourite Korean dishes is Kimchi jiggae, a sort of soup or stew made with kimchi. Kimchi is essentially a fermented vegetable, most commonly made from napfa cabbage, and is loaded with vitamins as well as a healthy bacteria called lactobacilli which helps your digestion system. It has long been known to be a “health food” thus said.

Unfortunately I like the taste of it much more than I like the health benefits so I eat lots of this fermented cabbage. I throw it into kimchi stews and add meat to it and it comes out deliciously spicy and sour with plenty of umami.

Kimchi jiggae ingredients: Onions and garlic, tofu, pork slices, spring onions, enoki mushrooms, kimchi, tomatoes and milk

Ingredients (Serves 3-4 pax)

1. 400g of kimchi
2. 1 packet of pressed tofu or you could substitute this with egg tofu, sliced into manageable pieces
3. 1/2 a large green onion, diced
4. 1 stalk spring onion, chopped
5. 3-4 cloves of garlic, sliced
6. A handful of enoki mushrooms, bottom chopped off and mushrooms cleaned
7. 1 tomato, quartered
8. A packet of your favorite slice of meat, could be that shabu shabu meat or chunks, whichever you prefer just make sure it is room temperature. I use sliced pork meant for shabu shabu.
9. 1/2 cup of full cream milk
10. 5-6 cups of chicken//beef stock or water (I use water, but to get a richer taste you could use stock), enough to cook the ingredients in
11. Chilli padi if you like your stew spicy

Cooking Instructions

1. Heat up a tablespoon of oil in a sauce pan to fry your garlic and onions
2. Once your onions are slightly translucent, add the tomatoes and stir fry
3. Add the kimchi, milk and stock/water to the pan and let this simmer for about 3-5 few minutes.
4. Slowly add your meat to the pot, then your mushrooms. If you opted for a chilli padi then add to the pot here. Let this simmer for 3-5 minutes.
5. Slide your tofu into the mix and let this cook for a couple of minutes more.
6. Scatter spring onions over the top and serve in its pot. If you have a nice stone/earthenware pot you could use that instead to make it all the more pleasing to the eye.
7. Eat with fluffy white rice or translucent rice noodles

You could add some noodles to this to make it a one pot meal or have it as a carb-less meal

Chicken Udon Noodle Soup

Tags

Chinese, healthy, Home Cooking, Noodles, One bowl meal, Soup

Chicken Soup made with whole chicken and spare ribs

This is one of the easiest dishes that you can prepare beforehand. It is basically just udon noodles and chicken soup. You can even cook a big pot of chicken soup and freeze it. If you ever feel a little peckish or in need of a hot bowl of noodles and soup, just pop some frozen soup into a saucepan and heat it up before adding to the noodles. Of course you can reach for your favourite instant noodles like Indomie, tomyum, instant ramen and the like. However if you are like me and have outgrown your fair share of instant noodles having OD-ed on them in college/university, you would come to appreciate the healthy, non-MSG broth. Just as with instant noodles, you can add whatever toppings you desire. My usual toppings tend to be fishballs and vegetables.

Ingredients

Soup (for 7-8 pax)

1. 1 Whole chicken
2. 3-4 Spare ribs chunks
3. 4-5 Cloves of peeled Garlic, smushed
4. Optional: 2 Medium Carrots, 1 Large Onion and some fresh Corn
5. 2-3 tbsp Soy sauce or to taste
6. 1/2 tbsp White pepper

Noodles

1. Udon noodles (You can buy these from supermarkets in packets)

Toppings/Condiments

1. 4 Fish balls per bowl
2. Vegetables, you could use spinach, pak choy, whatever you like
3. 2-3 Chilli padi pieces per person, sliced
4. Soy Sauce

Cooking Instructions

1. Rinse the chicken in running water and get rid of any remaining feathers. Clean out the cavity of the chicken and rinse with running water as well. 
2. Next, remove excess fat and skin of the chicken. You do not want all the extra chicken grease floating about on the surface of the soup. I like to remove the head of the chicken (I feel guilty and sick everytime I fish out the chicken head from the soup so I just remove it at the start) as well as the tail of the chicken as I find the smell/taste too strong. Kind of like… chicken bum =(
3. Lower the chicken and spare ribs into boiling hot water for about 5 minutes to get rid of the extra blood and fat. Throw out this water after 5 minutes and replenish the pot with fresh hot water. Make sure you have enough water to cover the whole chicken and have about 2 inches of water above the chicken.
4. At this point you can add the garlic. If you prefer your broth to be a little sweeter, throw in some chunks of carrot, onions and fresh corn. You may add sliced ginger as well if you like.
5. As the water boils, skim off the scum and fat from the surface of the soup. You can recognize it by the dirty looking froth that emerges after several minutes of cooking the soup. These would consist of fat and blood and if not removed, will cloud the soup. Continuously skimming off the scum as you cook will give you a clear, appetizing broth.
6. Keep the pot on medium-high heat for about 40 minutes, then turn off the gas and let it stand for another hour. Season with white pepper and light soy sauce.
7. Prepare the udon according to the packet instructions, make sure you do not cook the udon in the chicken broth itself as it imparts its flavour into the soup. Not yummy at all. Also ensure that udon is still chewy, don’t overcook it as it gets mushy.
8. Drain the water from your noodles and place in serving bowl.
9. Cook your fishballs and vegetables in the soup.
10. Ladle your soup, fishballs, vegetables and some chicken meat into the serving bowl over the noodles.
11. Serve with cut chilli padi and soy sauce.

Udon noodles and the vegetable of your choice

Udon soup in Chicken broth served with cut chilli padi and soy sauce