Chinese Mustard Soup

12 April 2009

 I love Chinese mustard, though it comes with this tiny tinge bitter taste...吃得苦中苦方为人上人....哈哈......

 

 

Ingredients (4 pax share):

- 350 to 400grams pork ribs
(Rather than throwing the entire piece of ribs into the soup, I like to cut the meat away from the ribs and chopped into smaller pieces before I throw both in so that I can feed my girl straight away :p).
- Fishballs (cut into half if you are giving to children to avoid them choking on fishballs)
- 1 mid-size chinese mustard (can get from any supermarket or wet market easily), chopped into bite-size.
- Salt and pepper to taste
- water

How to cook:

- Cook 1 pot (average sized pot) of water
- When the water is about half-boiled, add in the pork ribs.
- Before adding the pork ribs, rinse them with hot water twice. Remove the water when it turns milky. (This is to remove the porky 'smell'.)*
- When it boils, turn to lower heat and let it boil for another 15 mins.
- When it boils, add the chinese mustard and fishballs.

- Stir the ingredients to make sure that they are well covered with the water and leave it to boil at medium heat.

- Turn off the heat when it boils,  add in the salt and pepper for taste.

- The soup is ready to be served.

ABC Soup

We started dinner catering about 3 months ago, one week after I returned to work. Eversince we had home catered food, Trenyce doesnt get much chance to have nice home cooked soup. Hence, I decided to cook at least once every weekend. No major cooking just simple dishes. Even if I have no time to cook any meals over the weekends, I will try to boil some soup for her.

**Food picture unavailable** 
[Unfortunately Slide.com had ceased operation on 6 March 2012 and I didnt manage to transfer the pics in time of which some are lost permanently as I didnt have a spare copy.] 
Ingredients (4 pax share):

- 350 to 400grams pork ribs
(Rather than throwing the entire piece of ribs into the soup, I like to cut the meat away from the ribs and chopped into smaller pieces before I throw both in so that I can feed my girl straight away :p).
- 1 large carrot, cut into cubes
- 3 potatoes of medium size, chopped into cubes
- 2 maize, each chopped into approx 4-5 pieces
- half a can button mushrooms, each mushroom cut into half
- 2 sticks lemon grass, 'hammered' the end so that the fragnant can come out easily
- 1 big onion, sliced
- Salt to taste
- water

How to cook:

- Cook 1 pot (average sized pot) of water
- When the water is about half-boiled, add in the pork ribs, maize, lemon grass and onion.
- Before adding the pork ribs, rinse them with hot water twice. Remove the water when it turns milky. (This is to remove the pork 'smell'.)*
- When it boils, add in rest of ingredients; potatoes, carrot and button mushrooms and turn to smaller fire.
- Stir the ingredients to make sure that they are well covered with the water and leave it to boil slowly.
- About half an hour later, add in the salt and turn off the fire. The soup is ready to be served.

PS: The lemon grass is optional. It is to improve the fragnant of the soup as well as aids in our digestion systems. It is well known for relieving 'air' in our body system. You can also add in tomatoes:)

Btw, this makes a wonderful confinement dish too!

Confinement Recipe: Huiji Fish and Papaya Soup

Confinement soup made easy!
Excerpt from The Straits Times (Singapore)
August 8, 2007 Wednesday

'This dish is easy to prepare, low in calories and high in nutritional value. I do not need to stew Chinese herbs for hours. Instead, I add 30 to 60ml of Huiji Waist Tonic to my soup at the end. And it does not contain alcohol, which makes me feel safe as I was breast-feeding,' Ms Leong said.

Following recipe brought to you by Huiji Waist Tonic

Ingredients (serves 4):

- 700g green papaya (unripe/semi-ripe)
- 300g fish (for example snakehead, carp, seabream, pomfret)
- 12 red dates
- 2 pieces dang shen
- 5g yuzhu
- 6 slices ginger
- 30-60ml Huiji Waist Tonic
- Fish bones

How to cook:

- Put fish bones, ginger, dang shen, red dates and yuzhu in water and boil for half an hour.
- Add papaya. When it softens, add fish and simmer till fish is cooked.
- Add 30-60ml of Huiji Waist Tonic.
- Serve immediately while still piping hot. It is ideal for breastfeeding mums as it helps lactation.

Apple Soup

This post backdated to 22nd Feb 2007.

I got a new recipe from my auntie recently while on my CNY visit to her place - Apple Soup. My little girl dislikes fruits eversince she recovers from an almost-2 weeks long illness. She refuses any fruits, even fruits that she has had tasted before she also rejected them all together. This is a real headache ah!

I am trying this new recipe from my auntie. I just cooked the soup and left it for hubby to feed her tmr as I got to "kai gong" (start work) tmr already. I tasted some and its yummy. I hope Trenyce will like it and slowly get back to eating apples at least...then slowly I can introduce other fruits to her. *cross my fingers*

Okay, here's the ingredients for 4 adults' share:

- about 300g spare ribs (with some meat, as those you bought from NTUC or other supermarket have packages that sell just the bones alone for cooking soup)
- 2 Fuji apples (of average size) cut into small mini cubes
- 1 red carrot (of average size) also cut into cubes
- some button mushrooms (big ones about 5-8, can add more if you like to have more mushrooms)
- some red dates (of average size, about 8-12, can add maybe 2-4 pieces more if you like it to be sweeter)
- some wolfberries (one small handful)

How to cook:

- Boil the water together with red dates and wolfberries
- When water is half boil, add in the spare ribs (remember to rinse the ribs with hot water twice before going into the soup so as to remove the pork smell)
- When the water boils again, add in the apples and carrots.
- When it boils again, let it simmer over the small fire for about 15mins.
- And finally add a pinch of salt (add according to your preference, usually 1 teaspoon will be enough)