Easy and tasty Chicken Macaroni Soup

Was inspired by cooking this from my church food volunteers who prepares breakfast for all the helpers for that week. When I tasted it, I just knew I had to cook it because its so comforting, especially during a cold and rainy day.

Hope you will enjoy this dish as much as I do..

Ingredients
- all 3 types of carrot (orange, white and green- 1 each.) Picture below just in case you are not sure what I am talking about. The normal orange carrot probably needs no introduction.

- 1 whole chicken
- 1 big onion - diced
- spring onions (optional, garnish)
- fried shallots (optional, garnish)
- 2 slices of ginger
- few pieces of garlic
- macaroni

Steps
1) Diced up all the carrots into small squares
2) Add water to the pot. Have a pot big enough to have the whole chicken in. Add enough water to cover the chicken.
3) Throw in everything- onions, all the carrots, ginger and garlic and boil
4) Once the water is boiling hot, put the whole chicken in
5) Let it cook and boil
6) After about 20-30 mins, check the chicken to see if cook. Once its ok, I would bring it out and when cool down, I would shred the chicken meat and debone it and throw the bones back into the soup to continue boiling.
7) Boil until the veggies are soft enough and you add salt, soya sauce to taste. Most of the time, I don't add as its tasty and sweet on its own already.
8) Cook the macaroni separately in another pot
9) To serve, just add the cooked macaroni, topped with chicken meat and pour the soup with veggies over.
10) Can garnish with spring onions, fried shallots and slices of chilli padi if you like

Simple, nutritious and good for the soul!

Chinese Wolfberry Leaves (Kou Kee) Anchovies and Minced Pork Soup

This is one of the soup I would crave for once in a while. However, it is not often you find the kou kee leaves. So if I happen to see it, usually, I would grab it!

Decided to cook this soup today when I glanced at my window and saw an imminent thunderstorm approaching as dark clouds loom the sky.

It's a very easy and nutritious soup to cook for the whole family! However, some ingredients may not be the normal stuff you find in this kind of soup. I tweaked it according to what I have at home and how I wish to use it to compliment my dinner dishes.

Ingredients
- Dried Anchovies
- Salted Egg
- Dried Chinese Wolfberries
- Chinese Wolfberries Leaves (Kou Kee Choy)
- Minced Pork soak with a bit of water, soya sauce, white pepper, sesame oil, fish sauce, salt (to loosed up the pork so that its all disintegrated)
- Shitake Mushrooms

Steps
1) Boil the dried anchovies in a pot of water
2) Add the Chinese Wolfberries in after a while
3) Add the Shitake Mushrooms. (Reason why I added this is not only because I have it in my fridge but because I feel its a good balance to offset the saltiness of the soup from the anchovies)
4) Separate the salted egg yolk with the egg white. Cook the egg yolk and break it up into the soup.
5) Then pour the egg white over the soup while its still boiling
6) Put the leaves in
7) Finally, pour the minced pork in
8) Off the fire so that the leaves and pork do not overcook
9) Taste it before serving

I did not add the usual egg in as I will be cooking fried egg for dinner. So I didn't want dinner to have so many eggs. So I just added a salted egg in for this dish. But of course, you can also throw in a beaten egg just before you off the fire. And if you like century eggs, you can consider adding this so it will become a triple egg dish but a soup version.

Anyway, enjoy!

Malaysian Yee Mee Noodles Soup

I would like to dedicate this dish to my Indonesian helper who went over to Malaysia to work in Restaurants. She has learnt this dish there and shared it with me. She commented that this dish is one of the popular dishes there.

Ingredients

For Soup Base
- Soya Bean
- Dried Ikan Bilis
- Garlic (Peel the skin, leave it whole)
- White pepper (whole)
- turnip
- big onion
- wong bok (few pieces)

For Noodles
- dried yee mee
- fish cake
- fish balls
- Chye Sim
- Pork (slices, marinate with light soya sauce and white pepper)
- egg

Steps
1) On the wok/frying pan, with very low fire, fry the soya bean, dried ikan bilis, garlic, white pepper first without oil. Fry for about 25 mins, when the ikan bilis seems to become lighter.

 

 

2) After that, transfer them into a stock bag. Add a big onion, few pieces of wong bok, some turnip into the bag as well.

 

 

 

3) Put about 2 litres of water in the pot and boil it. Place the soup bag into it. Boil till the flavour all comes out.

 

* This soup base can be used for wanton noodles, mee or bee hoon soup as well.

4) When you want to serve the yee mee, you place the noodles into the soup to cook it, add chye sim, sliced fish cake, fish ball and sliced pork too. Take note of the various timings to cook them so as not to overcook the meat or veggies.

 

 

5) Crack the egg into the serving bowl. Place the noodles and ingredients on top of the egg. Make sure the soup is boiling hot then you finally transfer into the bowl so that the egg can be cooked. Alternatively, you can cook the egg in the pot of soup first if you like.

6) Finally, garnish with spring onions, Chinese celery and white pepper.



Enjoy!


A very sweet and tasty noodles soup for the whole family, including the children!

 

 

Grandma's Corn Chowder

Was thinking of a title for this post and thought  just "Corn Chowder" would be boring so instead, I added the word "Grandma" to it and it kinds of authenticate the whole recipe and makes it more enticing to cook it, doesn't it? So frankly speaking, it is not my grandma's recipe as I have never tasted her cooking or seen her step into the kitchen when she was still around..

Anyway, this is a very easy recipe to try it out especially if you children love corn.

Enjoy!

Ingredients for 4-6 people
- bacon (1/2 cup, strips)
- 3 potatoes (peeled, chopped)
- onion (chopped)
- 3 cans of cream style corn
- 2 cans of whole kernel corn
- milk (1/2 cup)
- water
- salt and pepper

Steps
1) Fry the bacon till crispy. Set aside.
2) Saute onions in leftover bacon oil. Add potatoes and water to simmer until potatoes are tender.
3) Stir in the milk, corn, salt and pepper to taste. Stir frequently until heated through and mixed thoroughly.
4) Finally, garnish it with your bacon and parsley (if you have)!

How easy can this be?

Buttermilk Broccoli Soup

Just a couple of weeks ago, my regular Hypermarket which I visit for grocery shopping had an offer for broccoli. So I bought two whole ones and finally decided to make a soup out of it since its the easiest to make use of them without getting sick of eating broccoli.

And because I had leftover buttermilk from my fried chicken, I also decided to incorporate it into this dish.

It tasted so good and I would definitely cook this soup again as its easy and tasty!

Ingredients
- butter (3 TB)
- 1 onion (chopped)
- 4 celery stalks (chopped)
- chicken stock (3 cups)
- 2 whole broccoli (cut into small pieces so that it will cook faster)
- 2 cups of milk/buttermilk
- Salt and pepper to taste

Steps
1) Put the butter into the soup pot and start adding in the onions. Fry till fragrant and translucent.
2) Then throw in the celery and toss them around until tender

3) Add broccoli and the stock. Cover them completely with the stock/water. Let it cook and simmer for about 20 minutes. Add a pinch of salt.

4) Use a stick blender to blend everything in the pot. If not, you just need to transfer the soup into the blender.

5) See if you like the thickness of the soup. Surprisingly, when I checked mine, it was already quite ok. Not as watery as I thought it might be. So I did not add flour to my soup at all.

6) Add buttermilk to the pot only at the last minute of boiling before serving. The buttermilk thickens it up a little. Add salt and pepper to taste. If you prefer a thicker version of the soup, you can just add flour to your milk before pouring it in.

Very easy to make! Enjoy! Perfect with homemade garlic bread!

Egg Noodles with Chicken Miso Soup

I discovered this simple, delicious dish when eating in church as the food ministry workers prepared food for those who serves in church every Sunday. When I ate this, I knew that I had to re-create it again because it was so good!

So I tried it twice so far at home and the whole family loves eating it, including the children!

Ingredients:
- Chicken Bones for soup (or just use prepacked Chicken Stock)
- 1 carrot (sliced/diced)
- 1 onion (optional)
- 1/2 cabbage (optional)
- egg noodles (bought this from Giant Hypermart in Tampines. Its so good and cheap-highly recommended by the church worker who cooked this dish! I had to ask him about the noodles as I haven't seen such thin and flat noodles before-scroll down for the finished version of the thin noodles)

- about 1 Tb of miso paste 

- tofu

- golden needle (enoki) mushrooms 

- cabbage

- chicken breasts or thighs

- spring onions for garnish

Basically, you just choose whatever you like to eat in your soup noodles. But I added all these because that's what I ate in church the first time I tried this dish. After that, you can start tweaking to your own liking. The important thing is the soup stock which is just chicken soup (I prefer to use chicken bones) and miso paste.

The bean flavour from the miso paste simply brings out the sweetness and taste of the soup. Love it!

1) Cook chicken bones and carrots in a pot of water over stove to make the chicken stock. Onions and cabbage are optional ingredients just to make the soup sweeter. 

2) Add the chicken meat and the rest of the ingredients in the pot to boil and bring out the flavour

3) Add the miso paste to taste

4) Once you are satisfied with the taste, you can switch off the fire

5) Cook the noodles separately in another pot with boiling water and set aside in serving bowls. You can also throw the noodles in the soup together to cook but I prefer not to do that as it may overcook the noodles.

6) Finally, garnish with spring onions (optional)

7) I also love to eat this with a touch of soya sauce with chilli padi for spice.

My suggestion is to keep this dish as clean and simple as you can get. So don't overdo it with the ingredients as you really don't have to add much for this dish to taste good. Miso paste works wonder just by itself! The first time I made it, I overdone it with the ingredients.

This dish was taken the first time I ate it in church (using the recommended egg noodles in picture above):

This was the picture of my first attempt in cooking the dish (I did not use the egg noodles recommended. Mine was a fatter version of the noodles which I didn't enjoy as much as the thinnest of the noodles made the dish light and more palatable. So get the right noodles if you can! The thick noodles just makes the dish clumsy and more filling)

It's really a simple meal for a nice weekend lunch for the family or especially on a cold, rainy day! It really warms the heart and soul eating this egg noodles with chicken soup!

Hope you will enjoy eating this as much as my family did!