Old cucumber soup

Weather has been real hot and humid of late.  Taking showers can only cool me down temporarily!  Aircon is my best friend now!

So, I am finally showing signs of recovery and am able to get back to simple cooking. Yeah!! Back to work in the kitchen and I made a pot of old cucumber soup which is something good to have now in this weather.

To enjoy flavourful, thick and sweet soup, apart from the ingredients, time duration is very important, of cuz unless you have a pressure cooker (which I do not own one).

Here I present you my humble old cucumber soup recipe :P

Old Cucumber soup recipe

1 old cucumber (medium sized)

2 tbsp dried scallops, rinsed

1 carrot, skinned and cut half (optional, but I like that it helps with making the soup naturally sweet)
12 to 15 red dates, pitted and rinsed (I was told that soup cooked with red date seeds unremoved makes the soup heaty. Not sure if it is true but since it isn't too tough to deseed it, I do it anyway.)
1 dried cuttlefish, rinsed briefly
About 200g of pork ribs (remove fatty parts, rinsed well)
2 litres of water
A pinch of salt (to further bring out the flavour of the soup)

1. Rinse the whole old cucumber under water and scrub it clean. Cut half, remove seeds and cut into smaller pieces.
2. Put old cucumber pieces, dried scallops, carrot, red dates, dried cuttlefish into the pot of water and turn on medium heat.

3. Bring a separate small pot of water to boil, put in pork ribs pieces and blanch it for about 1 minute to remove oil and scum. Pour away hot water and rinse blanched pork ribs under tap water and put pork ribs into the soup pot.

Blanching the pork ribs prior to adding them to the soup pot helps remove scum and oil. Soup will be clearer and less oily.

Adding in the blanched and rinsed pork ribs.

4. When it comes to a boil for about 5 minutes, turn down fire and let it simmer for about 1.5 to 2 hours.
5. Add salt only when serving, otherwise turn off fire after the simmer. Bring soup back to boil, add salt to taste and serve thereafter.

After the hours of simmer.

My bowl of thick and flavourful old cucumber soup :)