The Soup Queen

Fruits, especially local fruits like bananas, papayas, dragon fruits (my favourite is the deep ruby red variety) are cheap and plentiful in Banting. That's where I was last week. I went home to visit my parents for a few days and decided to teach my mom a new dessert recipe. I bought an unripe papaya at the Banting Sunday market. My mom chided me saying that it's not palatable. I told her I was going to cook it, instead of waiting for it to ripen. The fruit vendor was smart enough to tell my mom that she knew what I was going to do with the unripe fruit. Hmmm! After I made it, mom took some over to our longtime neighbour, Mrs Chan. Mom told me the unripe papaya tasted a lot like sweet potato after it's been simmered. So here's a green papaya and snow fungus dessert recipe you can try: 1 unripe papaya (a bit green with blushes of orange, signs of going to ripen), cut into bite size chunks 8-10 dried red dates a few pieces of snow fungus, soaked and cut up into smaller p...

I haven't gone missing though I've been quite busy. I was in and out of Penang and doing stuff I wouldn't normally do. You can see what I was busy about if you read this - which is over at my regular blog. Anyway, I am back in Penang already. And super excited because I bought myself a new recipe book on Chinese soups (Cooking with Chinese Herbs: New Edition with 20 Additiional Recipes) by Terry Tan for RM60, a book which I'd been eyeing greedily this year. *grinning like a Cheshire cat* I am glad I waited because I won a book voucher from Popular Bookstore recently and I used that voucher to redeem this book. Did this yesterday when I was on a book browsing spree at Popular Midlands (they're having a book sale of up to 20%). I said spree because I spent close to RM200 buying books and magazines. Now Terry Tan is not a new author. I'd seen his books before and one of his recipe books was published in 1983! Now that's what I call a long time cook and author....

Just got back from one week in Kuching. It was warm over there which is unusual as I always expect rain in Borneo. When it rains in Kuching, it pours. I go back to Kuching for 1 reason - to visit my parents-in-law. So I take it as a break from work. But the thing that gets me truly antsy is that we just have dial-up internet access in his parents' home. Which is horrible. After years on broadband, getting to dial-up is torture. I don't cook when I get to my mom-in-law's. She likes cooking and she has a particular way of cooking to accommodate my father-in-law. I tried once but my efforts were rebuffed. So the SoupQueen gets a total break from the kitchen when she's in Kuching. Anyway, enough of gossip stuff. In the spirit of Sarawak, I am going to teach you how to cook 'kachama' or 'kachangma'. It's a wild grass or herb that's used famously in Sarawak for mothers who are in confinement / just given birth. This dish helps get rid of wind. ...

I bought some fresh cordyceps from the Lip Sin market just last Friday and asked the vegetable lady how to cook it. I remember clearly the last time I cooked this fresh cordyceps - I went to the Chinese herbalist and got a packet of prepacked herbs to add to the fresh cordyceps. It made a lovely soup. This time though I wanted to try something else. My vegetable lady told me that it's also good to boil fresh cordyceps with medlar seeds/wolfberry seeds and honey dates. And I, being the adventurous sort, never say no to a new soup recipe . Yum! Luckily I had some honey dates in my fridge as well as some leftover medlar seeds . (It's good to stock up on herbs - buy a little of everything and store in jars in the fridge. On any good day, I have dang gui, red dates, honey dates, tao ren, medlar seeds and dried longan which I can use to make anything from soup to sweet dessert! It's my stockpile of Chinese herbs... which is very important, well to me anyway!) I also...

Clockwise from top: dried longan, dried lotus seeds and American ginseng slices I was wondering what kind of soup to cook this week when I saw a box of American Ginseng in the fridge. It had been sitting there for almost 2 months now. Usually I will use pre-packed herbs for soups but this time around, none were to be found. So American Ginseng it is. American Ginseng, unlike its cousin, Korean Ginseng, is the best kind of ginseng to brew and drink as it is not cooling nor heaty. Korean Ginseng is very heaty - it is a tonic after all. My 90 year old Grandmother consumes Korean Ginseng to give her strength and warm up her limbs. At the same time, the Korean Ginseng is helping turn her grey hair black - I am not kidding. I saw her with partially black hair and wondered why. Did she dye her hair? My cousin then remarked that her health (and hair) started to improve eversince she started taking Korean ginseng. But if you are of the heaty type (which means you have a heated blood system), do...

I'm bowled over by everyone's comments! I never knew so many people were reading this blog. Starting from this post, I will feature more regular recipes apart from soup recipes. Today, let me share with you a simple chicken recipe. I love eating bitter gourd but not my husband. So if I thinly slice bitter gourd and fry it with egg (as an omelette), the bitterness still lingers. Using the braising method, I find that bitter gourd is more palatable and easier to eat. Its taste is more mild. Bitter gourd is a good vegetable for removing heatiness in the body (which is accumulated if you stay up late or have eaten too much meat or have taken one too many alcoholic drinks). This is a recipe which serves 4 persons well. When I cook this, I cook more so that I can freeze the rest for dinner. It has a touch of gravy so it goes great with rice. Braised Chicken with Bitter gourd 2 chicken thighs, chopped into bite-size OR 6 pairs of chicken wings - drummets included 1 whole bitter gourd,...

Just a quick one: you can now bookmark this blog at www.SoupQueen.net If you type in SoupQueen.net, you will reach this blog of mine on Blogspot. I know many of you probably have bookmarked this site at Blogspot, but a shorter domain name is always preferable. I know how confusing it is to have a long URL! As I run a web design business, I always aim to walk the talk whenever I can. Of course I wanted to get the SoupQueen.com domain but that's already taken up! So what can a soup queen do but buy the next available one, even though it's a .net I know you come to SoupQueen for soup recipes. I'm a big experimenter in the kitchen and always look out for ways to cook tasty, simple and nutritious meals even if it's only for me and my husband. I'm not the type to resort to instant Cintan or Mamee noodles. No way. Cooking for me is also a way to spend time with myself. I can talk to myself while I'm stir-frying vegetables or chopping garlic. It helps me unwind and rela...

OK, OK, I keep going to Than Hsiang Temple for vegetarian meals BUT I also go to check out what vegetarian soups they have. I mean, that's like killing 2 birds with one stone right? On one end, I get to be healthy (by focusing less on meat and more on tofu and greens). On the other, I get some ideas for my vegetarian soup series. Hmmm, what could be better than that? I always thought that soups made purely with vegetables tasted bland. For the longest time, I thought meat/chicken gave soup such robust tastes. They still do but they also can be oily (skim the oil off before you serve) and for non-meat eaters, a definite put-off if they want a vegetarian version. I deduced that any soup made with carrot as its core ingredient will be light, clear and delightfully tasty (I opt out of using 'sweet' but that's how we Cantonese describe a light and tasty soup - it's "sweet". The meaning for "sweet" is very distinct from the "sweet" one gets f...

Here's a super simple recipe to reduce heatiness and prevent colds. I got this recipe from a Taiwanese TV programme today - yes, so it's fresh! This dessert soup is not suitable for people with gastric ulcers or weak stomachs as it contains hawthorn, which can be too acidic. If you are serving this to the elderly folk, you can reduce the amount of hawthorn too. Chrysanthemum Dessert Soup 25 gm honeysuckle or jin yin hua 5 gm licorice 25 gm dried chrysanthemum flowers 15 gm hawthorn 6 bowls of water Place water and all ingredients into pot of water. Simmer closed for 15 minutes on low heat. Serve warm, sweetened with honey. * Honey is also a good remedy for constipation. Drink honey if you are constipated.

I'm a big fan of watercress because it makes for a delightfully delicious soup. Watercress is big on nutrients too but usually I make the carnivore version - watercress soup with chicken or with pork. This time though I tried a vegetarian version of watercress soup. I was inspired to cook this soup as I've been visiting Than Hsiang Temple almost weekly now for my vegetarian lunch (one of my resolutions this year is to eat less meat and more veg - not that I am a big meat-eater. I just want to do my part for the environment). I salute those who are vegetarian because it's not easy, well for me at least. I still love fish too much! So yeah, I made a pot of watercress soup today. And it's suitable for vegetarians. You need only 3 ingredients: 1 bunch of fresh watercress (pluck leaves and wash. Do not throw away the hard stems. This will go into the soup too. It'll be too wasteful to throw out the stems when they can add flavour to the soup.You don't have to eat the...

This is my lifesaver soup! Doesn't need any boiling and doesn't need anything except some fresh kelp. I believe that soup should nourish the soul and tummy but like all busy bees these days, I sometimes don't have time to simmer soup for 2 hours. I need to zip in and out and watching the stove can be tedious. But never fear. If I can make this 3-minute soup, so can you. It's called Miso. ;-) My favourite instant soup. It is also great if you are feeling blue and not up for cooking but just want something to keep one's tummy warm. You can buy miso paste in single-serve packs or you can buy one whole carton of it (around 400 gm). Miso paste is basically fermented soya bean paste ("tau cheong") which we Chinese use often in cooking. I buy my miso paste at Jusco supermarket, RM4.50 for 10 packets of single-serve miso. Some miso paste have shreds of seaweed or kelp. Some come with bits of mussels. Of course since I don't read Japanese, I look at the graphic...

I made this soup today because I haven't tried this type of melon before (I mean I have not cooked it before). My mom-in-law always makes this soup whenever we are back in Kuching. It's called Shark Fin Melon or Spaghetti Squash (Cucurbita Ficifolia) because once cooked, the melon really resembles shreds of sharksfin! I confirmed this with the lady who sells vegetables at the Lip Sin market. In Hokkien, it is called Shark Fin Melon. I bought half a melon because I plan to make a pot of soup for 2 meals. The melon is distinguished by its smooth light green and pale green skin. Almost like a watermelon skin. (See how the whole melon looks like from this blog: http://eatzybitzy.blogspot.com/2005/06/sharkfins-in-melon.html ) The melon needs to be peeled and cut into chunks. The part which I didn't really relish was removing the seeds! There's a lot of seeds in this melon, even a chunk has about 4-5 seeds. You can be lazy and skip this part (that's what my vege woman sai...

I know this is not a soup BUT it does taste so good and takes less than 30 minutes to prepare. It has a bit of a gravy that goes well with plain rice. White radish is a versatile root vegetable. You probably have eaten radish in its other forms in Japanese or Korean cuisine. In Korean food, you probably have eaten radish as a spicy kimchi. In Japanese cuisine, you would have been familiar with "daikon" used in Japanese stews or even as a white shredded pile of mush you usually add to the dipping sauce for tempura. But a word of caution, if you have taken herbal soups such as ginseng a few hours before, you should NOT take anything (soup or otherwise) that is cooked with white radish. White radish detoxes the body of all the goodness that you have just eaten. I once heard that if you have food poisoning, taking white radish is good as it helps flushes out the unwanted from your body. Anyway, white radish is a vegetable you should eat if you want a clear complexion. Perhaps tha...

Discovered how to make a new soup this time during my travel back to my husband's hometown of Kuching, Sarawak. He used to tell me that his favourite soups were seaweed soups. I always thought seaweed was seaweed until I tried kelp. It's not that I have not heard of kelp before. I had a bad experience a few years back when I tried cooking soup with kelp. It turned out rubbery and to this day, I call it my Tyre Soup because it looked like rubber! Also, it could be that the kelp was "old" and tough. So this time around, mom-in-law cooked kelp soup and it tasted very much different from mine. In fact, the kelp wasn't rubbery at all. It was soft but still had a bite to it. Kelp is called 'hai dai' in Chinese or 'kombu' in Japanese. Like most seaweeds, this is a nutrient-packed ingredient . In Kuching, it is sold in dried strips. It is cheap too at RM1.90 per packet. Remember that a little kelp goes a long way as it expands during cooking. We made the m...

This is a recipe for a stomach and spleen tonic called Black Date Tea. In Chinese culture, we have 2 types of dates. Large, black dates and small, red dates. This one uses the big dates called Da Zao. Black Date Tea 20 black dates Rock sugar to taste 4 bowls of water Simmer all ingredients for 20 minutes until water has reduced by half. Drink warm. Black dates are also called Nan Zao (Southern Dates) although both red and black dates apparently come from the same plant. While red dates are usually used as a harmoniser for soups, the black date helps tonify the stomach and spleen. Read and find out more about dates from http://www.innvista.com/health/herbs/jujube.htm

I got this recipe from somewhere but I cannot remember where but it was given as Maryann's recipe. So Maryann, thanks to you, I am sharing this soup recipe with everyone here. It's good for breastfeeding moms as papaya seems to increase lactation. Maryann’s Papaya Soup Ingredients 4 skinless chicken thighs 1 unripe hard papaya (about 400g) 4 shallots (sliced) 4 cloves garlic (sliced) 10 white peppercorns 1 piece of ginger (about 5cm long) 2 ½ litres of boiling water ½ Tbsp oil Salt to taste 1 Tbsp chopped Chinese parsley or spring onion (optional) Method 1. Clean and cut each chicken thighs into two. 2. Peel the papaya, take out the seeds and cut the fruit into big chunks. 3. Do not cut the ginger, but pound it slightly. 4. Heat the pot with oil, add ginger, fry for 3 minutes. Add shallots and garlic, fry for another minute, then add the chicken pieces and fry for 3 minutes. Add the boiling water. 5. Add the papaya and whole white peppercorns to the soup and boil it over low he...

The best part about blogging about soups is that I attract a lot of similar minded people and we become friends and then we start exchanging soup recipes and before you know it, we're diehard soup-lovers and soup recipe exchangers! Maybe SoupQueen should start a Soup Club! Any takers? Anyway, last week, I got a wonderful email from Grace Poon who lives in Australia. She was so kind to send me a soup recipe - a kidney tonic soup - to share with everyone here. It's taken from www.asiaone.com.sg (I believe it's always honest to credit back the source) and it's a soup for those suffering from backaches. According to the article accompanying the soup recipe, lower back pain is a result of not having enough Qi in the kidney and liver. Lower back pain could also result from stagnation of Qi in the blood. The kidney tonic soup suggested contains a main ingredient of Eucommia Bark or Duzhong. Duzhong, I read in a TCM book, is actually the name of the man who ate the herb and go...

Winter melon gives a sweetness to soups and can be a lovely warming soup on a cold night. The oysters lend the soup a delicate smokey taste too. Overall this is a soup which goes down well with many people. According to Acupuncture.com, winter melon clears heat, detoxifies, quenches thirst, relieves irritability, dispels dampness and is particularly effective in regulating blood sugar . Try this soup! Winter melon Soup With Chicken Feet 1 wedge of medium sized winter melon ("tung kwa") 5 dried oysters, soaked 1 whole chicken thigh (remove skin) 3 pairs chicken feet (chop off claws) 3 red dates (pitted) Salt to taste Chop the chicken thigh into bite-sized pieces. Chop chicken feet into 2 sections. Scald chicken thighs and chicken feet. Bring water to a boil. Put in all the ingredients into the pot. Boil furiously for 10 minutes and then cover pot to allow it to simmer for 2 hours. Season to taste with salt and sugar. This is how winter melon looks like - in case you want to ...

I was clearing off some old files of mine when I found this recipe! I have not tried it yet but I think it should be a delicious soup, as chicken and kei chi/medlar seeds/wolfberries lend a sweetness to the soup. Plus garlic too - I am a big user of garlic and I think this magic bulb does wonders to anything, be it soup or stew. If you do try it, let me know how it tastes like. This is a quick soup which can be ready in 30 minutes. Chicken Garlic Kei Chi Soup Ingredient 2 chicken thighs (400g) 100g garlic (peeled) 25g kei chi (wolfberries) 1 tsp salt 1 tsp soya sauce 1/2 tsp white pepper 1 Tbsp oil 1.2 litres boiling water 1 Tbsp chopped Chinese parsley Method 1. Remove excess fat from the chicken thighs, wash and pat dry with kitchen paper. Cut each thigh into four pieces. 2. Heat the wok with the oil, add garlic, stir-fry for a minute and add chicken and white pepper. Continue to stir-fry for 3 minutes. 3. Lastly add boiling water, kei chi, salt and soya sauce, cover and boil on medi...

I got this link from a reader of this blog. And what a great link it was... it was linked to a soup recipe and of course a book by someone called Grace Young. Grace's book is called "The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen: Classic Family Recipes for Celebration and Healing". I hope to find this book at my local Borders Bookstore one of these days. It reads like one of those books I simply want in my TCM book collection! Here's a recipe called Dried Fig, Apple and Almond Soup taken from Grace's book. There's more information about this soup/tonic from the Global Gourmet website , a link given by a reader, TC! Dried Fig, Apple and Almond Soup by Grace Young According to Grace, this soup helps cure a persistent cough. I always think that it's better to take a tonic than to take cough medicine. A tonic tastes so much better too! 1/4 cup Chinese almonds (nom hung) 4 to 5 Chinese almonds (buck hung) 3 medium red Delicious apples, unpeeled 8 ounces pork loin, well tr...