Soup Stock

Braised Chicken Feet Noodles

Braised Chicken Feet Noodles

This is our all time favourite. Braised Chicken Feet noodles aka 鸡脚面. I kind of got tired of the long queues at our favourite chicken feet noodle stall nearby our place. The queue has been unusually ridiculous. I waited for 45 minutes the other day. Terrible.

So I decided to make my own braised chicken feet noodles ala ho sim lang style. My challenge was to make it such that the chicken feet still retains the gelatinous strains and the chewiness of the meat but yet tender and full of flavour.

I don’t quite like the ones at the Chicken Feet noodle shop because they usually deep fry the chicken feet first before braising. That method kind of makes the feet puffy and wrinkly. I prefer them cooked my way.

Truth be told it was quite a tedious process, but totally worth it. The preparation for the chicken feet took almost a whole day to prepare. The noodles was the easy part.

Recipe

Ingredients

10 pieces of Chicken Feet (usually the wet market uncle would already pack them in packs of 10, very convenient)
5 pieces of Dried Shitake Mushrooms
3 thin slices of Ginger
3 cloves of Garlic
3 stalks of Spring Onions
1 piece of Star Anise
2 tbsp of Oyster Sauce
1 tbsp of Light Soya Sauce
2 tbsp of Dark Soya Sauce
1/4 cup of Shao Xing Hua Tiao Jiu
Sprinkle of White Pepper
1 tsp of Castor Sugar
Tomato Ketchup
Shin Ramen Noodles (Korean instant noodles)
Olive Oil
Water reserved from the soaking of mushrooms

Method

1. Soak the shitake mushrooms in half a bowl of hot water. After they are soaked, slice the mushrooms into halves. Reserve the water for later.

2. In a pot, boil the chicken feet until the water becomes oily. Reserve the stock for frying vegetables (eg. Mani Cai with Egg). Reserve the chicken feet for later.

3. In a claypot, add 2 tbsp of Olive oil, turn heat to medium, add ginger slices, crushed garlic (not minced), spring onions halves (about 4 cm lengths) and star anise. Saute until fragrant. Fragrant here means all the smells of the ingredients become one. Remember to leave some finely chopped spring onions for garnishing.

4. Next add the soaked mushroom halves and stir fry with the rest of the ingredients for a while before adding the chicken feet into the pot to stir fry as well. Do this for a few minutes. Add sugar and white pepper. Continue to mix.

5. While the ingredients are frying, prepare the seasoning mix of sauces in a small bowl. Once ready, pour the seasoning sauce into the pot and give it a good stir. Add the reserved mushroom water into the pot until all the chicken feet are covered.

6. Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down to a simmer with lid on. Continue to cook for at least an hour. After that turn the heat off and leave it in the pot to soak up the marinate. Boil with lid on again and leave it to marinate overnight.

7. After more than 12 hours in the pot, the longer the better and in my case, almost 24 hours later, I turned up the heat for one last time before assembling my braised chicken feet noodles for breakfast.

8. In a separate pot, cook the Korean instant noodles. You can use whatever noodles you want. I like the Korean noodles because they are quite filling and easy to cook. Once cooked, plate it. Add a little dollup of ketchup and mix with sauce from the braised chicken feet.

9. Give the noodles a good mix, assemble the chicken feet and mushrooms and a generous sprinkle of chopped spring onions. Serve hot.

Bon Appetit!

Fish Soup

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Fish Soup

My wife and I went to Putien restaurant for lunch the other day and we ordered their Fish Soup, simply because we love soup. It was then that I noticed that they had a very interesting take on the soup. They used a Yellow Croaker for the broth, which resulted in a light and mildly flavoured fish soup. Personally I thought it was so-so only.

It was oily, gingery but delicious, just that the fish flavour could be a little stronger and the fish itself could be a little tastier. My lightning fast taste-buds quickly deciphered the soup and memorized the ingredients list and reverse engineered the entire cooking process in my mind. So I decided to cook my version of that fish soup, but using my favourite Garoupa fish head. Sure nice one.

I stir fried the ginger slices and a few cloves of garlic. Then fried the fish head without any seasoning or salt. Just in the same oil. In another pot, I was boiling a natural chicken stock. Kind of got tired of the pre-made chicken stocko as I felt it was too salty. Added a few essential ingredients like wolfberries, Chinese scallops and dried oysters. Done.

The final product was a perfect fish soup. The flesh of the Red Garoupa was flavourful and tender, better in taste than the flesh of the Yellow Croaker.

Recipe

Ingredients

2 carcass of Chicken Bones (for making stock)
1 whole Red Garoupa fish head (small)
10 thin slices of Ginger
5 cloves of Garlic
Handful of Wolfberries
5 number of Chinese Scallops
3 number of Dried Oysters
Olive Oil
Sea Salt

Optional

10 slices of Yam (pre-packed yam will do)
4 pieces of Tau Pok (aka dried bean curd puffs)

Method

1. Boil the chicken stock using the chicken bones. Skim off the fat and dried blood as you boil. Soak the scallops and oysters in hot water for about 10 minutes.

2. Fry the ginger slices in the oil until it starts to brown a little. Then take it out. Now fry the garlic whole (not minced) and then take it out when it browns.

3. Next fry up the fish in the same oil. Add a little more oil if need be. Once the fish starts to brown a little add the pre-fried ingredients of ginger and garlic back into the wok. Add the soaked scallops, soaked oysters and also the wolfberries.

4. Now you can ladle the natural chicken stock into the wok and continue to cook the fish soup over a slow simmer. Do this for about 10-15 minutes. Seafood cooks rather quickly especially fish. It is kind of like having steam boat. Add salt to taste.

5. If you want to add tau pok and yam slices, you may do so, and it will be perfect. But if not, it will still taste great!

Bon Appetit!

Simple Black Chicken Soup

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Simple Black Chicken Soup

The wifey broke my sleep and woke me up to the new dawn. She mumbled some words to which I had to say a “har?”. Maybe my brain is slow at processing slur words. So I asked her again, and it was then that I realized that she wanted me to cook one of my fabulous soups *shines fingernails*.

Alright, that shouldn’t be a problem, I thought to myself, making soups in the wee hours of the morning has now become my specialty. The only hurdle between me and making soup these days is probably the waking up part. It has been been a challenge since I got rid of that ridiculous cock-crowing ringtone which apparently irritated the entire population in my cluster; it also irritated my wife as well. So the ringtone had to go. Now in its place is this very zen and space-like ringtone named neon.

It’s not the John Mayer kind of neon with his signature slap and pluck style of guitar playing. But it was more like a vibrating double-stringed instrument sounding more like a cricket’s mating call. Very alien. Unfortunately it was also quite soft and good for if you wanted to continue to sleep.

“I already placed the black chicken in the sink.” came the voice in my semi-state of galactical subconsciousness. It was as if the voice transcended space and time to speak to me. “wake up lah.” My wife slapped my shoulder. Just as quickly my subconscious mind returned to full consciousness albeit my eyes still glued-closed due to excessive secretion of the tear duct (heaty?).

I peered into my mobile phone and it was just nice, one minute before neon; one minute before the new dawn. Now my quest can begin.

So to make black chicken soup the quick and dirty way, you really need a packet of dun ji tang herbs from the supermarket. This is the proven method of making the delicious soup. But the problem now is I am all out of the herbs! Jialat!

I really need to quickly summon my creative culinary powers in order to make sense of this newfound dilemma. Thankfully I always keep a stash of my favorite generic condiments somewhere, always ready to be deployed in any crisis of a lack of dun ji tang herbs.

Recipe

Ingredients

2 bottles of Brand’s Essence of Chicken
5 pieces of Japanese dried scallops
5 pieces of dried red dates
25 pieces of wolfberry seeds

Method

1. Par boil the chicken pieces to get rid of the scum.

2. Add in new water (not newater) and begin boiling. Add the chicken essence. Dump the condiments into the pot and close the lid.

3. After boiling for 10 minutes, place the pot into the thermal cooker and walk away. Serve at night when you return from work.

Bon Appetit!

Black Bean, Radish and Pork Ribs Soup

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Black Bean, Radish and Pork Ribs Soup

Day two of the new dawn. Still no twilight vampires or werewolves. I got up early to make my soup of the day. The very Chinese Black Bean, Radish and Pork Ribs Soup. This should be good. I can already imagine how it would and should taste like by tonight. The tenderising effect of the thermal cooker is not to be discounted. I mean what goes on within the pot is just simply amazing. The pork ribs will be tender, the vegetables soft and everyone just so delicious.

I usually don’t salt my soup when cooking them, just so as not to complicate the natural flavours of the ingredients. There must always be clarity in whatever soup we do. So when the soup is ready to be consumed, I must be able to tell the ingredients apart upon tasting, most importantly I must be able to enjoy my soup. Salt tends to confuse our tastebuds. That said, I usually add a pinch of sea salt just before serving for that little bit of taste. Like her friend garlic, salt can only be servant to the dish, but never a master – that’s only if you aren’t making salt-baked chicken.

So I decided that I would try out my own rendition of this classic soup. I tried searching for a video on YouTube using the keywords “black beans and pork ribs” – but to no avail. It seems that Asian cooks aren’t so keen on taking videos of their cooking as compared to some really awful videos of cooking processes. Those are not cooking demonstrations IMHO – they are more like sanctifying rituals of epic proportions. One moment is do this, set apart that, next is remove this, reserve that. I mean, how is anyone going to learn how to cook anything if the ingredient list is so technical and most of them sound as if we have to climb a mountain to pluck it.

Practicality and simplicity should be what cooking is all about. Soups should be simple three to four ingredients – that’s it!

Anyway, before I get carried away, my version of the black bean soup is nothing short of simple. Try it!

Recipe

Ingredients

250 grams Black Beans
250 grams Pork Ribs
1 large White Radish
4 Dried Scallops

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Method

1. Par boil the pork ribs to remove scum. Slice radish into quarts and dump them into the pot. Then dump all the black beans into the pot as well. Drop 3-4 dried scallops to flavour the soup.

2. Fill the pot with water until all ingredients are covered. Turn on high heat for about 15 minutes. Once the soup is boiling and bubbling, turn off the fire and place the pot in the thermal cooker.

Note:

If you are unsure of how the thermal cooker looks like, I have a photo appended.

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Bon Appetit!