Stone Soup sans Stone (aka Beef Stew).

Background.
one of the most popular children's stories is perhaps that of the stone soup. lest you've never heard of it (and just where have you been?), a hobo chances upon a village and convinces its people that he has magic stone capable of making the best soup ever. the only problem is that his magic stone required the help of some garnishing, which he didn't have.

impressed and eager to savour the wonders of that magic stone, each village household contributed something from their kitchen. from celery, to potatoes, to meat, every item was added to the pot as an exchange for a portion of that magically tasty soup. with that many ingredients added to the pot (with the stone in it), the soup naturally turned out amazingly delicious.

Wikipedia would have you believe that the moral of the story lies in the virtues of co-operation, but i like to see this as simply good marketing. at most, it's an ingenuity for cooking leftover ingredients. this story has inspired so many people that it has come to a point where some people are actually taking the recipe as illustrated in the story quite seriously...

anyway, a fortnight ago when i was desperately trying to rid my then soon-to-be-rotting vegetables and expired scotch fillets, i thought i'd give this Stone Soup--sans stone and storyline recipe--idea a try, and it actually was quite lovely.

i realise that this recipe might sound a lot like a beef stew.

ack.

beef stew. d's stone soup. po-tah-to. po-teh-to.

Ingredients.
2 pieces, beef steak (i'm using t-bones for their marrows)
2, carrot
3-4, potato
2, mustroom (i'm using cups)
2, tomato
2 sticks, celery
1, onion
3-4 cloves, garlic
2-3, red chilli (depending on how spicy you like the soup)
1, lemon
2 stalks, spring onion/ scallion
1 bunch, parsley (abt 5 stems worth)
1 tbsp, black pepper
4 tbsp, butter (optional; see Step 2)
1 cup, flour (optional; see Step 2)
2 tbsp, red wine (optional; see step 3)
4 tbsp, honey (optional; see step 3)


(missing in picture: onion, garlic, spring onion)

Serves.
4-5

Step 1: Chopping, Slicing and Dicing!
chop, slice, dice the steaks and vegetables, then have all of them thrown into a pot. add enough water to drown all the ingredients and start your fire. i recommend a small to medium flame, on which you allow the soup to cook very, very slowly.



when the soup comes to a boil, add the pepper and lemon juice in and allow everything to simmer till it reduces to about 4/5 to 3/4 of the original amount. stir intermittently.

after at least half an hour, you can taste the soup and see if you're happy with the results so far. if you are, *ta-da*, you're done and can skip the next two steps.

Step 2: Thickening the Soup.
if you'd prefer a slightly thicker soup (stew-like), you'd have to thicken the mix.

first, melt the butter in a bowl, and stir in the flour slowly until you've got all the flour mixed with the butter. coating the flour with butter prevents the flour from clumping up when you add it into the soup.

slowly stir the buttered flour into the simmering soup, and let everything boil for another 5 to 10 minutes, or until the soup thickens.

(taste it, and if you're happy so far, skip the next step.)

Step 3: Adding Extra Unimportant Clear-Before-They-Expire Things.
i'm simply adding what's left of my red wine and honey into the soup, then let simmer for another five minutes.


(see additional notes below on use of slow crockery pot cooker.)

Final Serve.
the versatile stone soup can be enjoyed as a main (accompanied by bread or steamed rice), or as an appetiser or a side.

i like mine with rice!



everyone should try to make hir version of the stone soup out of the odds and ends lying in your kitchen. as my friend, fiq, likes to say: just throw them all in and hope for the best!

;)



Additional Notes.
1. Use of Crock Pot. i'm leaving everything in a slow crockery cooker overnight. additionally, slow cooking it allows the meat to get really very tender. you needn't go to such a drastic measure, because direct heat works just fine. just be sure to be slightly patient to allow the soup to boil in due time.

2. Recooking. the remainder can be reboiled whenever you decide to have some. the more you boil, the thicker and tastier it gets really.

3. Not Stew-like. i used .5 cup of flour instead of the recommend 1 cup as described above. this is just a personal preference of not wanting the soup to end up stew-like.

Pork Rib & Lotus Root Soup.

it's now ascertained that moving house is nothing if not a bitch. after what seems like forever, i've finally got myself more or less settled into the new place in the city. plus, i bought me some new kitchenware to celebrate the move; am now a proud owner of (among other things) a handheld food processor and the loveliest TEFAL wok! not to mention i'm absolutely in love with the new kitchen, pity the dishwasher doesn't really work.

anyway, back to today's dish!

personal history.
this is one of my favourite recipes, something passed down to me from my grandmother. it's arguably one of the few dishes of hers that i enjoy over-eating since i was a kid.

in general, the dish is quite a common sight in chinese families. however, what i've learnt from many of my friends is that most of their families and in fact hawkers leave the soup in its 'natural' flavour. my grandmother swears by a bit of rock sugar, and for that i think she rawks!

Ingredients.
500g, pork ribs (much of the flavour comes from the bones)
200g, lotus root (washed and sliced)
1.5 cup, dried red dates
1.5-2 cup, raw peanuts
1.5 cup, chinese lycium
1 cup, rock sugar
a few cups, hot water (enough to drown all the ingredients)



Additional Notes On Ingredients
1) my grandmother says that fresh young lotus roots give the best taste; i'm resorting to freeze-pack ones from the local asian grocer's because i can't find lotus roots around here.

2) sometimes my grandmother adds dried longan as well. if you're a fan of the taste of longan, halve the amount of dates and replace that half with longan.

Special Crockery
i'm using an electric crockery pot for this dish because it takes time for all the ingredients to break down. give it at least twelve hours in the crock pot, although i normally go for twenty-four.

Serves
3-4

Step 1-and-only-1: Toss it all in!
too simple! drop the porb ribs to the bottom of the pot, then followed by the rest of the ingredients, try to leave the roots for last. pour the hot water into the pot, cover and let it cook on high for at least twelve hours. when it's ready, the aroma of the soup will naturally fill the room.



when it's done cooking, you'd see that the soup and most of its ingredients turns a dark umber. the peanuts and dates normally continue to float in the soup.

Final Serve.
the dish is best served alongside some steamed rice. because there's meat in the soup, there's really not much of a need for additional sides to go with.



More Notes
if you're not a fan of rock sugar, you might want to taste the soup before adding any rock sugar to the mixture. this is best done at the half-way mark (i.e. twelve hours, in my case), so that you give the sugar some time to infuse with the other ingredients, and vice versa. alternatively, you can omit the rock sugar altogether because the lycium, dates and longan are all by right natural sweeteners.

Hainanese Chicken Rice.

(hainanese pronunciation in italics: Hai Nam Ko'ei Pu'wee.)

to my Ah Mah (though it should be Ah Por) back in Singapore, and my Ah Kong's carefree spirit in Tien Swee.

this particular dish comes with a certain history that is extremely close to my heart. for the uninitiated, i come from a pure hainanese family in which my grandparents (both paternal and maternal) were immigrants from the sunny island of Hainan--they moved from one tropical island to another mid-20th century. while i'd like to claim to know the perfect recipe for the chicken rice attributed to my heritage, it might come as a surprise that the popular variety that everyone's familiar with is not exactly the way it's prepared in hainan. this was observed in a trip i made with my father and grandma to Hainan, in order to return my grandfather's ashes to his home village.

the recipe is famed to have originated from the city of Wenchang (Boon Sio Kwai), which happens to be the city closest to my father's home village, (literally translated) New Village (Tien Swee), just about half-an-hour drive away. the funny thing is that over there, this dish--at its most esteemed and only on very special occasions--is often prepared with a young rooster instead of a hen. the meat is supposedly tastier but chewy. hainanese families in singapore who sell the dish are often from either similar neighbouring villages or Wenchang itself. in fact, many of such immigrant families ended up settling in Purvis and its neighbouring streets, where they started eatery businesses; that's the reason you have so many chicken rice stalls on a single street. other than chicken rice, hainanese families were also involved in other food businesses like coffeeshops and western food stalls.

when i was young, i remember my grandparents being very particular about the proprietors of chicken rice stalls. till this day, my grandma makes it a point to know if the vendors behind these "Hainese Chicken Rice" stalls in the neighbourhood were indeed hainanese, although my favourite stall happens to be run by a hokkien family. having been a boat-chef in his earlier days, my grandfather retired to become the house-chef in my family. chicken rice was more or less a staple for sundays. as a big fan of the dish, i would help my grandfather set up the chopping board and stool, in eager anticipation for him to chop the meat up. as he hammered away with the chopper, i would be squatting by him like a hungry vulture, feeding on the bits and pieces that slipped off his blade.

like many other dishes (e.g. Peking Roast Duck) that move beyond their place of origin, the popular version of hainanese chicken rice is largely a local update of the original recipe. what i'm sharing today is, therefore, a hybrid of what my family has shared with me, and what i've learnt about the popular version you get from eateries.

Ingredients.
(the chicken)
1 whole chicken (Small)
6 clove, garlic
2 inch, ginger
1 carrot
4 bunch, spring onion/ scallion (which i'm missing)
1-2 tbsp, salt
1 tbsp, chicken stock
4 tbsp, sesame oil



(the rice)
3 cup, rice (i like thai jasmine)
1 onion
4 clove, garlic
broth from the chicken



(chilli sauce)
5 red chilli (i like to add 3-4 chilli padis)
2 clove, garlic
3 bunch, coriander
1 tbsp, sesame oil
4 tbsp, fresh lime juice
broth from the chicken

(optional vegetable)
2-4 bunch, choy sum or bak choy.

Serves.
3-4

Step 1: Prepare the chicken, base and rice.
chop the carrots and the ginger, bruise the garlics and tie the scallions into a knot. throw all those into a sizeable pot filled with enough water to drown the chicken. add the chicken stock and bring to boil.

meanwhile, rub salt all over the chicken.

chop the onion and garlic for the rice. wash the rice, and let it set in water for about half an hour, then drain the water away.

Step 2: Cooking the chicken.
when the base comes to a boil, lower the chicken in, breast-down. put a lid on your pot, lower the flame and let it cook for about 15-20 minutes, and then flip it over for another 15-20 minutes.



immediately after, bring the chicken out and drown in a ice-cold water for a few seconds. this arrests the cooking so that your meat doesn't overcook. quickly take that out, and spread sesame oil all over the chicken before the skin turns a shade of dark.

chop the chicken up into appropriate sizes.

(p/s: in this attempt, i've chopped the chicken up so that i can fit it into the biggest available crockery.)

Step 3: Cooking the rice.
scoop the layer of oil from the broth and pour it into a wok over a medium flame. when the wok is hot, throw the garlic and onions in and stir till it starts to brown a little. pour the rice in and fry the rice until it too turns a shade of translucent brown. transfer all that into your ricecooker, and pour as much broth as it normally takes for you to steam rice with water. set to cook.

Step 4: Chilli sauce!
mince the chilli, garlic and coriander up. pour the sesame, 2 tbsp of broth and the lime juice into the mixture.

Step 5: Vegetable soup.
chop the vegetables up, throw them into the soup and bring the soup to a boil.

Final Serve.
traditionally, one of the dips is a garlic one made up mainly of minced garlic mixed with some broth. the hainanese still use that dip more than they do chilli, but i've gotten used to eating my dips extra hot.

i love broth from cooking this dish. you can always depend on it to provide a fabulous base for your green vegetables.



also traditionally, my grandma would roll the rice into hand-sized balls. i believe this came from making it easier to hold the rice for lunch out in the plantation fields. i didn't roll them this time, but below's an example of what i did some time ago.

effortless ABC Soup for the busy student

Right.

I'm supposed to be writing a paper right now, and i didn't have the time to take any pictures of tonight's meal, so we're going to have to use a little bit of our ... IMAGINATION.

this meal is by no means imaginary, it is rather economical and very delicious when you have no time or variety of ingredients to cook for 4 people.

and you serve it as is.
no fuss, no frills, minimal washing up.
one pot, one person's problem.

so here goes, a recipe for what some people call: ABC SOUP

--------------------------------------------
Ingredients (serves 4)

4 carrots (regular sized)
4 potatoes (medium sized)
4 onions (medium sized)
1/3 chicken cube
1 slab of lean pork (wholly optional add only if u want some meat. can be substituted by any other meat really. just be aware of how to prepare the meat beforehand.)
salt & pepper to taste

step 1
peel and wash the A-carrot, B-potatoes and C-onions.

step 2
cut everything into bite-sized chunks and dump into the pot.

(Optional step)
cut up pork into bite sized cubes and marinate with soy sauce for about 10 minutes. then throw it in the pot with everything else.

step 3
fill the pot with water to reach about 2 litres of water (or a little more if u want more soup), throw in the 1/3 chicken cube and let the pot cook till al the ingredients cook through and the soup becomes infused by the sweetness of the now tender carrots, onions and potatoes. add salt and pepper to taste.

-----------------------------------------

this dish should take about 30 minutes to cook itself. just rememeber to check on it on occasion, so your kitchen doesn't burn down by accident.

safety first :) we actually had to run out of the building for 10 minutes beacuse of a badly timed firedrill. you can always turn your cooker off and come back to it later. its so simple a recipe that even that works.

so, with our IMAGINATION,

visualise a piping hot pot of tender vegetables in a sweet and savoury broth with succulent chunks of meat ...

best served with steamed rice and chilli padi in soysauce dip.




and thats ABC soup.

back to paper writing! try it!