Home-made Chicken Essence

Sorry for my disappearance act! As much as I would like to keep up with my blog posts, I am unable to - first trimester had been a tiring period for me.  And yes, I moving on to my next stage in life - being a mummy to a little one (soon!).

Now that I am up and feeling a little more energetic, I bought a black chicken from the wet market and made myself some pure home-made black chicken essence to nourish myself and my LO!  This chicken essence is said to strengthen Mummy's body making her less lethargic.  Nothing beats home-made at this point - I cannot bear the thought of downing those dozens of store bought chicken essence because of the preservatives!

This home-made chicken essence is easy to make and is so yummy.  Just the use of a whole black chicken and some red dates, you are ready to make yourself this nourishing soup.  Easy huh?

You may choose to use kampong chicken if you cannot get black chicken.  Otherwise use black chicken as they are packed with more nutrients.

Home-made Chicken Essence

1 whole black chicken (You can ask the poultry seller to remove the chicken skin and chop into smaller parts for you)

4 big red dates, pitted and rinsed

1. Clean all chopped chicken parts, clean internal parts and wash off blood, scrap off transparent membrane from chicken skin with a knife. Clean and dry with kitchen towel.  Using either a chopper or pestle, pound the meat and bone of the chicken parts to break up and loosen the meat and bone a little so that chicken essence can be "forced out" more easily.

2. Place half of the pounded chicken parts into your double boiler, place red dates on meat and top with remaining chicken parts.

Look at the liquid gold collected at the bottom after 3.5 hours of double-boiling.

The hours put in on double-boiling and I got half bowl of this pure sweet and yummy chicken essence with no salt added! Drank up within minutes. Worth it :)

3. Place into your double-boiler and let it do its job for at least 3 hours.  Throughout the 3 hours, essence will drip down from the tiny openings into the bigger holder.  Enjoy!

Double-boiled Ginseng Chicken Soup

Finally found some time after so long to double-boil some herbal soup for our dinner on a weekend night.  Double-boiling soup is not difficult task, it is the time that you need set aside to be able to get a pot of nice and rich tasting double-boiled soup.  At least 2.5 to 3 hours of dedication and you will be rewarded :)

This time I bought one pre-packed Chinese herbal mix from the supermarket, grabbed a whole chicken thigh and off I went to make the soup. The good thing about double-boiling soup is that meat added will be soft and tender tasting still, even after hours of cooking. We wiped off the chicken thigh meat and soup in no time!

Double-boiled Ginseng Chicken Soup
300g to 350g whole chicken thigh
1.5l of water
Ginseng roots 人参
Honey dates 蜜枣
Red dates, pitted (optional) 红枣
Lotus seeds 湘莲
Liquorice 甘草
Indian bread 茯苓
Wolfberry 枸杞
Chuanxiong rhizome 川芎
Chinese angelica root 当归

1. Fill a big aluminium pot with enough water and bring to a rolling boil.
2. While waiting for the big pot of water to boil, remove fats and blood from chicken thigh. Snip off some chicken skins with underlying fats. Just leave some skin on. Rinse and clean meat and set in a dish. Pour hot water over chicken thigh to remove scums and excess oil.
3. Rinse all herbs.
4. Put 1.5l of water to boil in water boiler.

5. When big pot of water has come to a rolling boil, place in ceramic pot. Use a tong and place scalded chicken thigh into ceramic pot, place in rinsed herbs and finally pour in boiled water, place on ceramic pot lid and then main pot lid.
6. Bring big pot water to boil before turning down fire and let soup be at a gentle simmer for 2.5 to 3 hours. Remove as much oil from soup as possible.
7. Add salt to taste and serve immediately.

Benefits of Ginseng chicken soup
Improves stamina, complexion as well as rejuvenate the body.

Chinese Yam & Lotus Roots Soup

If you love soups like me, you have to cook this soup because this soup bears all the good and nutritious ingredients.  I did not have to add in salt towards the end because it was already sweet and wholesome enough.

Allowing at least 2 hours or more to slow cook my soups and then be rewarded with a pot of rich, sweet soup. 

I usually eat the ingredients added into my homecooked soups and so pairing it over a bowl of rice is more than good enough for me.

Return of the haze makes it an awful feel to stay out. So grab your ingredients and cook at home! Load yourswlf with more fluid during this hazy period ya.

Chinese Yam & Lotus Roots Soup

2 litre of water
400 lotus roots (remove soil, wash & scrub clean if not removing
skin or remove skin with peeler and cut 1cm thick)
250g pork ribs
Chinese yam (Huai shan), cut into bite sizes (I used 1 that was about 15cm long, did not weigh it)
A handful of red dates (pitted)
A handful of yuzu
2 to 3 dried figs
1 honey date (optional)

1. Place lotus roots, red dates, yuzu, honey date and dried figs into pot and add in 2l of water. Bring to boil.
2. In a small pot, blanch pork ribs in boiling water for about 2 minutes to remove scum and oil.  Drain and wash pork ribs in clean water and add into the main pot.

3. Let simmer for 2 hours.  Add in chinese yam and let it simmer for 30min. Serve.

Sharp leaves Spinach Pork Ribs Soup

I miss cooking soup because they are just so simple, and the benefits we get from consuming soup are too many to be mentioned.

Hubby and I do not eat lavishly. Simple meals work better for us. So, one soup one dish is more than enough for us 2. Good for me too hehe! I need not rack brain to cook up a feast.

Short posts nowadays. With the new job coming, I hope I will get time to blog still!

Be right back!

Sharp leaves Spinach Pork Ribs Soup

280g pork rib or lean pork

2 dried scallops (big) or a handful of small dried scallops, rinsed

2 dried fig, rinsed

1 honey date

1 medium sized carrot, peeled and cut into 3 big chunks

1 bunch of sharp leaves spinach, picked and washed

Salt to taste

1.Rinse pork ribs or lean meat. Blanch in a pot of boiling water to remove scums and oil. Rinse well and leave aside.

2. Put all ingredients (except spinach and salt) into boiling water.  Bring to a boil. Simmer over low heat for 1 hour. 

3. When ready to consume, bring soup base to boil, add in spinach, add salt to taste.  Serve.

Lotus Roots and Sweet Corn with Dark Red Kidney Beans

After a break from the blogsphere and a short vacation in Bangkok to celebrate my birthday, I am back again to this hot hot country.

To prevent hydration during this super hot and humid period, pls rem to have more fluid intake!!! Soups help to add on to your fluid intake so cook them :)

This is a healthy soup. With the addition of dark red kidney beans, it enriches the soup further.  Leaving you with the recipe :)

Lotus Roots & Sweet Corn with Dark Red Kidney Beans
Serves 3 to 4

1 segment of lotus root, cleaned and sliced

1 pc chicken breast 

1 sweet corn, de-skinned and cut into smaller pcs

100g of dark red kidney beans

8 to 10 red dates, pitted and rinsed 

3 dried figs, rinsed

2 honey dates

2 litre of water

salt to taste

1. Remove chicken breast skin and all excess fats and blood residues. Wash and drain.

2. Put 2l water to main pot and bring to boil.

3. Meanwhile, bring a separate small pot of water to boil, put in chicken breast and blanch it for another 1 minute to remove oil and scum. Briefly rinse blanched chicken breast meat under running water and place  it into the boiling main pot. Add in all other ingredients (except sweet corns if you want to eat them) into main pot and leave to boil on high heat for about 20 minutes. 

4. Bring down to low heat and let simmer for 2 hours. 

5. Just before serving, bring soup to boil, add in sweet corns and let cook for 5min or till done and then add in salt to taste. Serve.

Double-boiled Pumpkin & Dried Oyster Soup 南瓜耗鼓炖汤

Work has been mad busy of late with so much more on my plate with the reorganisation and all. I had, several times almost chose the out option. Somehow life here is really taxing and stressful. Not a conducive country to live in. Life should not be just about work ya? I tend to think lots more about life nowadays. And so people says one gets wiser when older? Hahaha!

Soup heals the soul, doesn't it? Well, at least for me. With this period of stressful moments in office, I try to make it up to our bodies and health by making more soups. No other food comforts me as much as soups do! Easy to cook, yummy to consume. Slurp!

Double-boiled Pumpkin & Dried Oyster Soup
Recipe by Eric Teo of Eric Teo's Simply Soup Book

200g pumpkin, trimmed and cut into cubes
8 pcs dried oysters, soaked to remove sand
8 pcs red dates, pitted
1/2 chicken, skinned and cut into 8 pcs (I used a pc of boneless chicken breast meat instead)
1.5l water
salt

1. Rinse and peel pumpkin. Remove core from pumpkin and cut into cubes.
2. Scald skinned chicken in boiling water and put into a soup pot.

3. Put all ingredients into soup pot and add in water.

4. Steam for 2 hours. Season with salt.

I am submitting this post to Cook-Your-Books #21 hosted by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours

Ginseng Bak Kut Teh 人参肉骨茶

Weather is still quite good now with the strong cooling wind blowing. Gotta enjoy these breezy days before the hot humid period comes back up again!

Making use of this nice weather, I cooked a pot of bak kut teh for dinner. Yums! A little spicy peppery feel but not too much and easy on my weak tummy. Got 1 meal settled :)

If you have bak kut teh soup leftover, do not dump it. Put the balance into a smaller pot, reboil it and leave it to cool, before leaving in the fridge. Actually I just left it out on my stove, bring to boil the next day, threw in 2 bundles of mee sua into the boiling soup. Let the mee sua cook till done and there you are, your homecooked bak kut teh mee sua! I love that the soup had a richer and more flavourful taste after being left overnight!

1 week plus countdown to the Chinese Lunar New Year! Lots of good food to enjoy soon! Time to be gather with your loved ones, be jolly and celebrate!

Be back soon!



Ginseng Bak Kut Teh
Recipe found on the overleaf of Pearling Brand instant Ginseng Bak Kut Teh spices pack

600g pork ribs (I used prime pork ribs)
6 bowls of water (I used 1.8l)
5 pcs garlics or more if you like (I crushed it slightly with the back of a knife)
1 packet of Ginseng Bak Kut Teh Spices
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
Salt to taste

1. Put water in main soup pot, add in garlics, bak kut teh spices pack and dark soy sauce and bring to boil.

2. While waiting for main soup pot to boil, fill a small pot with some water (enough to cover pork ribs) and bring to boil. Add in prime pork ribs and let it blanch for about 5 min. Pour away water and rinse pork ribs under running water, drain and set aside.

3. When main soup pot has come to a rolling boil, add in prime pork ribs. Cover and let simmer for 40 min. (I let it simmer for 1.5 hour and set the soup pot into my thermal pot holder.)
4. When ready to consume, bring soup to boil once more, add salt to taste and serve with rice and dark soy sauce with cut red chillies.

Notes:
You may add other ingredients into the soup, e.g. dried chinese mushrooms, buttom mushrooms, vege, pig stomach, pig liver, kidney, chicken, beef and mutton.

Hairy Gourd Soup

Am feeling under the weather due to some viral infection of the nose and throat which has been so common lately. Festive season is round the corner, gotta get well soon! So much to do, and not much time left before CNY approaches! 

This is gonna be a short post of a soup recipe which I would like to document it down. This soup is simple to make and is good for young and old due to its neutral nature. 

Hope everyone stays healthy and happy!

Hairygourd Soup

1 medium hairygourd
About 5 red dates, pitted
3 to 5 pieces of medium or big sized dried scallops
about 250g of pork ribs
1 carrot, deskin and cut into bite sizes
1 dried cuttlefish
2 litre of water
salt, to taste

1. De-skin hairygourd, half and de-seed, cut into smaller pieces.
2. Put water in main soup pot and bring to boil.
3. Blanch pork in a separate small pot of boiling water - ro remove dirts, excess oil and scums. Rinsed blanched pork under running water.
4. Place pork ribs and all other ingredients (except salt) into soup pot and bring to boil on high heat.

5. 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.

Prawn Noodles with Prime Ribs

My mum is a great cook and cooks wonderful laksa and prawn mee. She is my inspiration when it comes to cooking. Always yearn to be a great cook like my mum and here I am, on this journey. I'm lovin' it!

Tried cooking prawn mee for the first time ever. Not a bad try but could improve further. Nevertheless I am gonna document this down and do better the next round :) Gonna be some time later before I cook this again since prawn mee soups are laden with cholesterol that we all ought to be aware of!

Prawn Noodles with Prime Ribs

(Serves 2)

2 servings of yellow noodles or vermicelli
300g prime pork ribs

300g to 350g tiger prawn shells (heads and tails) - I collected this over few weeks because we don't eat prawns that often

12 tiger prawns or more (deshelled and deveined)

fishcakes, as desired

4 tbsp oil 

8-10 pc garlic (minced)

1 tbsp dried shrimps (minced)

1 tbsp of dark soy sauce
1 tbsp of rock sugar or brown sugar
Pepper, to taste
Salt, to taste

3 tbsp fried onions (2 for saute-ing, and 1 for garnishing -optional)

2.5l of water
4-5 red chili (chopped) - optional

chilli powder - optional

1 small bunch of beansprouts or kangkung - optional

1. Put a small pot of water to boil for blanching prime ribs to rid scums and excess oil. Drain and set aside.

2. Boil 2litres to 2.5litres water - for soup base.

3. Heat oil on high heat in a large pot or wok. Add in washed and cleans prawn shells and saute till fragrant as well as colour cha ges to orange.

4. Add in minced garlic, dried shrimps and sugar and stir fry till fragrant. Stir in fried onions.

5. Add in the boiling water into pot/ wok with prawn shells and mix well. Add in dark soy sauce and pepper. Stir well.

6. Add in prime ribs and mix well. Let boil on high heat for 5min and then lower heat to simmer for 1.5 hour and turn off heat. When ready to serve, let soup come to boil on high heat, use a strainer to remove prawn shells and place in prawns with a strainer to blanch them. Remove and set aside. Do the same with the fish cakes. Sliced the fishcakes thinly after blanch. Thereafter taste soup and add salt to taste, if required.

7. Blanch noodles in a small pot and place in serving bowl. Blanch washed bean sprouts in same pot and place over noodles.

8. Place blanched prawns and sliced fishcakes into bowl. Ladle prawn soup and prime ribs over noodles. Garnish with fried onions and chilli powder if preferred. Serve.

Papaya Soup with Dried Figs

I cannot stress how much I love soup, can I? I am always on the lookout for yummy soup recipes. Was flipping through one of my recipe book and saw this soup that looked healthy and good enough to give it a try.

Have you drank Papaya soup with dried fig before? This is a refreshing soup that nourishes the lungs and relieves phlegm, great for the humid weather here in Singapore where we get bad nose and throat so often. Okay, maybe that's just me. I get nose and throat inflammation quite often!

You gotta buy unripe papaya to make this soup. I love eating papaya, the fruit itself, but was not too sure if I could accept it when cooked in soup. I had doubts about whether the papaya will cause the soup to have that strong milky papaya smell, but fortunately no, the smell of papaya wasn't too overbearing. The soup will get to appear on my dining table again :)

Gonna keep this post short and sweet this time. Be back soon :)

 This post is linked to Cook-Your-Books #19 @ kitchen flavours

Papaya Soup with Dried Figs
Recipe by Patsie Cheong (Recipe book title - One Day One Dish | 365 Selected Home-Cooked Recipes)

Ingredients A
7 pieces dried fig (cut into pieces)
1/4 piece tangerine peel
2 tbp sweet almond
2 tbsp bitter almond

Ingredients B
500g spare rib
400g unripe papaya (peeled and remove seeds)

Seasoning
Sea salt

1. Put 3 1/2 litres of water in a pot and bring to a boil.
2. Add in Ingredients A. When it boils, turn to low heat and cook for 1 hour.
3. Add in Ingredients B to cook for 3 hours, stir in sea salt. Serve hot. (I blanched the pork ribs in a separate pot of boiling water to remove excess oil before adding it into main soup pot.)

Simple Lean Pork Soup with Huai Shan and Qi Zi

A simple and healthy soup recipe I came across in Chef Eric Teo's soup recipe book.  I used the double boiling method for this using my thermal pot and got 2 yummy pot of healthy soup for dinner. Quantities of ingredients were kinda halved to cater to 2 pax.

According to Chef Eric's recipe, this soup is supposed to cure chronic eye problems caused by asthemia, like blurry vision and for eyes that get tired easily.

Simple Lean Pork Soup with Huai Shan and Qi Zi
Recipe By Chef Eric Teo - Simply Soup recipe book (汤滋味)

50g huai shan (I used 10 pieces, 5 in each deep stew pot)
20g qi zi (2 tbsp, 1 tbsp in each deep stew pot)
500g lean pork, rinsed and cut into pieces (I used 300g pork ribs instead)
2.5 litres water (I just filled my stew pot to the brim)
Salt
I added 2 dried figs

Note: My individual stew pot size is just enough for 1 pax.

1. Rinse huai shan and qi zi, set aside.
2. Add 2.5 litres of water and all ingredients in a soup pot. Boil over high heat for 15 minutes. Switch to medium heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Season with salt.

(I placed a steam rack in my thermal pot, placed in 2 of my stew pots. Blanch the washed pork ribs in a small pot of boiling water, rinsed briefly with water and divide the ribs into the 2 stew pots. Place in dried figs, huai shan and qi zi, top with boiling water to brim.

Pour boiling water into thermal pot, put on thermal pot lid and put on high heat for 15 minutes. Turn off heat and place thermal pot into thermal pot holder. When ready to drink, put pot back to heat up and season with salt. Serve.)