Chicken Soup with White Fungus and Cashew Nuts

The weather for the past one week was humid and hot. I was just graving for a bowl of nutritious, comforting and 'cooling' soup for dinner. This soup is especially good to expel heat in your body and phlegm in your lungs. I enjoy eating plain rice with certain types of soup though not all and this is one of them that I like. My husband and I enjoyed the soup and we had it for our supper. The kids did not know how to consume the white fungus but they had 2 big bowls yesterday. I was hurried to take the picture and forgot to skim off the fat. Nonetheless, I skimmed it off before serving. The cashew nuts are very soft and pleasant to eat while the lotus seeds may leave behind a after-taste bitterness due to the stem in the centre of the seed. The bitterness is mild and it didn't bother us much. It didn't affect the taste of the soup though.

Chicken Soup with White Fungus and Cashew Nuts

Ingredients

1 bird of chicken (About 650g)
2 handful of white fungus
1/2 cup of raw cashew nuts
1/2 cup of dried lotus seeds
2 slices of ginger
About 10 cups of water

Salt n pepper to taste

Method

1. Soak white fungus for at least 1 hour in water (room temperature). Remove the hard part and break them into small pieces.

2. Soak the raw cashew nuts and dried lotus seeds for half hour and changing water a few times in between.

3. Put all the ingredient in a big pot except salt and pepper and bring it to a hard boil.

4. Skim off scum on the surface.

5. Slow down the fire and let it simmer for 2 hours

6. Skim off more scum and fat. Add salt to taste and pepper if you wish.


Notes:

1. Remove the skin of chicken to reduce fat if you wish.

2. Soaking fungus in hot water will cause it to turn soggy and slimy instead of chewy.

3. Buy white fungus that is not totally white but yellowish in colour as the white ones are due to bleaching.

4. The amount of water used must at least able to cover the whole chicken as a guide.

5. If you wish to have more texture for the white fungus, you may add them in after 1 hour of simmering and continue to boil it in slow fire for another 1 hour.

6. If you are familiar with some basic ingredients of Chinese herbs, you should know that this soup is quite versatile and good for lungs. You may add some of the herbs like red dates,  wolfgang berries, 'Yu Zhu' (Solomon's Seal Rhizome), honey dates, dried longans and even apples or pears. To boost up the effect for phlegm remedy, you can add 'Chuan Bei' (Fritillaria Bulb) too in minimum dosage. I just want to keep this soup as clear and simple as it is.

Winter Melon Soup

A simple, easy and quick to prepare soup that is nutritious and cooling in this tropical country. I cooked this soup and had it together with the 'Rice Cooker' Chicken Rice. The traditional version of the rice is supposedly cooked in claypot using charcoal and it usually will cause our body to be 'heaty' after consuming it. Winter melon soup is the best accompanying soup to go along with it in my opinion. Though my version of supposedly Claypot Chicken Rice is cooked using rice cooker and therefore has no issue of 'heatiness' to the body, I would love to have my 'Rice Cooker' Chicken Rice' with this soup due to the hot weather here.

Ingredients

800g winter melon, skin removed and chopped in chunks

1 carrot cut into cubes

1/2 cup dried anchovies

1 pc of chicken thigh

About 8 cups of water

1/2 cup cubed minced pork/chicken, marinate with little light soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper and cornflour

2 slices of ham, cut square

3-5 slices of ginger

1 Chinese spoon of Wolfgang berries

Method

 

1. Wash and drain the anchovies. Add anchovies, chicken thigh and water in the pot and cook in slow fire for about half and hour.

2. Drain the stock to remove the anchovies and chicken thigh.

3. Heat up the stock and add winter melon and ginger. Let it come to a boil for about 10 and add in the carrot, ham and minced meat. Continue to let it cook for another 5 minutes. 

4. Add in salt and Wolfgang berries. Switch off fire.

Note:

1. You may use more chicken thighs to brew the stock and omit anchovies or for the easiest way out if you have really no time, just use chicken bouillon granules.

Macaroni Chicken Soup

 

If you were to google in the web on macaroni chicken soup, you probably would find ton of interesting recipes from Western to Asian styles. The images are captivating and each one looked so delicious and has its uniqueness just for this simple dish. I took a closer look at most of the images and visited some of the sites that I thought the recipes would be closed to what I was searching for. Unfortunately, I could not find one that pleased me. What am I looking for??

I think I need to share with you a little more on how this dish was served in my family when I was young that I didn't like back then and how I fell in love with it now. This dish was only prepared whenever someone fell ill in my family. So you could probably imagine how plain this dish was going to be prepared; served with simple non-oily stock like anchovies broth, pak choi and perhaps ham or sliced pork. I remembered I would never enjoy eating it no matter how tasty it was but I am still thankful for my mum's effort very much!

When I looked through the macaroni soup recipes that I could find in the websites especially those cooked in Asian styles, many called for chicken broth as the soup base and a variety of vegetables like pak choi, carrots and/or peas and some use ham, fish balls and/or sausages, shredded chicken for the meats. Some even added Chinese Angelica Root (Dang Gui). Frankly it doesn't taste bad but not an excellent one still I would say. Somehow or rather all the recipes that I stumbled on didn't hit me at all. This wasn't only because of how this dish brought back 'unpleasant' childhood memories but mainly because I tasted an absolutely delicious bowl of simple clear chicken broth macaroni in the Church I attended every Sunday later on in Singapore.

This Macaroni Chicken Soup was flavourful with tasty clear chicken broth, fragrant with a little hint of ginger, Chinese parsley, and fried onions. Simply served it with some chopped red chillies, light soy sauce and toasted bread crumbs. Omit all the 'intimidating' ingredients like vegetables or meats for health reasons or whatsoever just for this time as to preserve the original flavour of the chicken essence and I bet that you will not regret of doing so :).

You could probably cook chicken rice for lunch and use the broth to prepare a light dinner meal just for this dish like what I did. I will share with you the recipe for chicken rice in my upcoming post...

Ingredients:
1 bird of chicken (About 800g)
Salt to wash chicken
3-5 thick slices of old ginger
Water just enough to cover the chicken

1 packet of macaroni
Water to boil the macaroni
Salt

Chinese parsley (Coarsely chopped)
Red chillies (Seed removed and julienned)
Store-bought fried onions
Bread crumb (Cut white bread into small cubes and toast in the toaster or oven until crunchy)
Chicken bouillon granules
Salt to taste
Dash of pepper and light soy sauce when serve
 
Method

1. Boil water, throw in some salt and cook the macaroni until al-dente and set aside.

2. Rub the cavity and the outer part of the chicken with salt. Rinse and wash.

3. Prepare a pot of cold water. Put the cleaned chicken in the cold water and switch on the fire at very low temperature. Make sure that the water is hot but not boiling throughout. Let the chicken sit in the hot water for about an hour to an hour and a half and cook it using indirect heat.

4. Remove chicken and rinse with cold water and set aside.

5. Chop the chicken neck off debone the breast. Pound the bones in a pestle to optimise the chicken flavour while keeping the thighs for your chicken rice. If you are not cooking chicken rice together with this dish, you may debone the whole chicken and pound all the chicken bones and throw the crushed bones back to the pot of soup. Shred the chicken meat to your liking and set aside.

6. Chop off the roots of the Chinese parsley and throw them into the pot while keeping the leaves for garnishing. Brew the soup for another half an hour or so.

7. Add salt and chicken bouillon granules to taste.

8. Remove fat from the soup.

9. Put some cooked macaroni in a bowl. Using a sieve, scoop some soup into the bowl to warm up the macaroni then drain away the soup back to the main pot.

10. Using a sieve again scoop some soup to the bowl of macaroni. Serve with shredded chicken, fried onions, chopped parsley, julienned red chillies and bread crumbs (optional) with dash of pepper and light soy sauce.

 

(Despicable Me 2 was in the theatre last month and it was my kids' favourite show. I thought this picture was too cute not to be posted and shared...

I thought Minions only love bananas?! heee) 

 

Note :

1. Just to share with you a silly experience I had when I was toasting small cubes bread. Stay near to your toaster and watch it closely as it got toasted and BURNT too fast without you knowing. My kitchen almost caught fire few years back because of this.


 

Phelgm Remedy

I stumbled upon Audrey's website when I was searching for chinese remedy to clear the stubborn phlegm that my daughter had due to her prolong cough. Since she turned two she falls ill frequently due to upper respiratory tract infections. She is sick at least once a month. I boiled this once for the whole family and I think it is not appropriate for me to comment whether it is effective or not since drinking herbal remedy like this for once is unlikely able to show significant result.

Boiled 1.5 litre of water with 30 pcs of red or dark red grapes and 5 pieces Liquorice roots for about one hour. For the detailed recipe you may visit the site that I mentioned above.

What should I call these soups?

My two kids and I are coughing. The kids started coughing about 3 weeks ago and still coughing a little here and there now. They passed the bugs to me and I really hope that the chain of spread will stop there. Unfortunately, we passed it to our closed friends and the whole family was down! I felt so so bad and regreted to have stayed over their place that weekend. We are recuperating and I do really hope that the kids and adults for both families will get well very soon.

Due to the illness, I search through the recipe books that I have and I found these two great soups recipes that are traditionally believed to be able to stop coughing and expelling phlegm.

Soup No 1

The recipe called it 'Eight Treasures soup' and called for lean meet. I customised the soup as I prefer to have desert rather than savoury soup. In another hand, I would really wish to use up the balance of some ingredients that I have and of course without compromising the health properties of the ingredients and the nutritional values of this sweet soup that I am going to make. I can't really tell how much of each ingredients that I used as I estimated the volume. But this is the rough guide that I can share with you.

I would like to call this soup Ten Treasures! This soup can be served as cold or warm desert. Enjoy!

Ten Treasures Sweet Soup
Ingredients
3 tbsp Sweet Almonds
Slightly less than 3 tbsp Bitter Almonds
6 Dried Figs
10 Dried Longans
2 tbsp Dried Lily Bulbs
2 tbsp Lotus Seeds
5 Honey Dates
2 Dried Chinese Pear
2 White Fungus
Half medium size Papaya (deseed)
Some rock sugar

Method

1. Soak white fungus at least for 2 hours and changing the water a few times in between. Break the fungus into small pieces and remove the central hard stem of the fungus.

2. Soak and rinse all ingredients (except papaya and honey dates).

3. Put all the ingredients in a big pot (about 2.5 litre of water)

4. Boil the soup in high heat for 15 minutes and then turn the fire to slow heat and continue to boil for another 2 hours.

Notes:

1. You may use fresh Chinese Pears

2. Buy those white fungus that are not so 'white' but yellowish a little as the latter is believed to have used less whitening agent.

3. Always used Bitter Almonds slight less that the Sweet ones.

Soup No 2

The second soup called for less ingredients and infact this soup is good for baby for who are coughing or having a lot of phlegm.

Ingredients
400g radish
5 red dates
3 slices of old ginger
Honey or rock sugar

Method
1. Soak and wash the red dates. Remove the seeds.

2. Use a small pot and fill it with 800ml of water. Bring the water to boil and add all ingredients except honey or rock sugar.

3. Boil for 15 or 20 minutes.

4. Add honey and it is ready to serve. If you are giving it to baby under one year old replace the honey with rock sugar.

Note:

1. Do not overboil as the soup may turn spicy hot due to the ginger slices and may not be suitable for young baby and toddlers.