The Food Site

Other than rice, my son absolutely loves to drink soup. In fact, he’d rather drink soup than milk! I’ve been working late into the night a lot these days (blogging and some freelance writing work) so a nice bowl of nutritious chicken soup is really good to rejuvenate my tired body.

This is a recipe for nutritious and highly healthy clear chicken soup:

Chicken and Ginseng Soup

Chicken Soup For the Tired Body

(with ginseng / pao sam and Dom)

Ingredients

Half chicken, cleaned and skin removed (so that soup will not be so oily)

6 – 7 pieces of pao sam (a type of ginseng)

4 – 5 tbsp Dom

1 tbsp salt

1 tbsp kei chi (wolfberries)

5 dried red dates

1 litre water

Instructions

1. Prepare your chicken and place in a zipper bag.

2. Take out a bottle of Dom to use it as seasoning for the chicken and the soup

3. Pour about 2 - 3 tbsp of Dom into the chicken in the bag and sorta mix the chicken well

4. Seal the bag and let the chicken season for several hours or overnight in the fridge

5. Soak and drain the wolfberries and red dates

6. Heat up a pot of water till boiling.

7. Get your chicken, Dom and pao sam ready

8. First, add the wolfberries and red dates to the boiling water

9. Dump in the chicken

10. Then, add in these:

This is the pao sam / ginseng I use for the soup

Here is a closer look at the pao sam

It is wise not to use too many as this is a powerful herb and eating too much of it may cause effects such as fever. Just use four to five pieces, it is good enough.

Then add in the Dom Benedictine, about three to five spoonfuls

The amount of this is actually dependent on you. Also remember to add the salt to this soup.

Cover and then let it simmer over low heat for about 45 minutes

It is usually cooked by 30 minutes but if you want better flavour or taste, you can let it simmer longer. After that, you will get this..

Clear chicken soup for the tired body

This soup, in Chinese terms, is pretty heaty for the body so only cook this during cool weather. I also used more Dom as I like the extra sweet flavour it gave the soup. Also, this is not suitable if you have a cold or flu as it may make your sorethroat even worse!

You can use a slowcooker to cook this. Just put water in the pot, add the ingredients and let the slowcooker do it’s magic.

I love prawns, especially fresh ones and regardless of whether it is sea water prawns or freshwater prawns, I simply love eating prawns!

I know, I know, it is not healthy to be eating prawns all the time due to the high cholesterol content but hey, it is not everyday that I eat prawns, okay? It isn’t exactly cheap nowadays, anyway. So, when I got about 10 free prawns, this is what I did with it:

Sweet and sour prawns and cuttlefish

Yep, I so happen to have some fresh cuttlefish so I throw that in with the prawns and made myself a plateful of stir-fried sweet and sour seafood!

Sweet and sour seafood

It is pretty easy to cook and takes me about 10 minutes to prepare and 5 minutes to get it cooked! Easy-peasy. Here’s the recipe:

Sweet and Sour Prawns and Cuttlefish Recipe

or

Sweet and Sour Seafood Recipe

Sweet and sour prawns and cuttlefish

Ingredients

Prawns, about 10 to 15

Cuttlefish, palmsize or about 100g

2 medium tomatoes, quartered

half clove garlic, peeled and diced

fresh ginger, about thumbsize, skinned and sliced thinly

Ketchup, 4 tbsp

Chili sauce, 4 tbsp

Pepper to taste

Salt to taste

Cooking oil

Instructions

1. Heat up the cooking oil in a wok (don’t know why but I always like to use the wok for stir-frying stuffs, it somehow tastes better).

2. Sautee the garlic till fragrant and then add the ginger. Sautee till fragrant.

3. Add the prawns and stir fry till it is half cooked and then add the cuttlefish. Remember to turn the heat down to medium low.

4. Add the tomatoes and sauces, stir to mix it around. The cuttlefish cooks very fast so don’t overcook it or else you’d end up with rubbery cuttlefish!

5. Add a dash of pepper and only add salt if you think it is not salty enough. Usually I don’t add salt because the ketchup gave it enough saltiness.

6. Immediately remove from heat and serve hot. Goes well with fluffy white rice or you can even eat it on its own.

You can enjoy this sweet and sour prawns and cuttlefish with rice

If you noticed, I used cherry tomatoes when I cooked this. That’s because I ran out of tomatoes so I ended up using around 6 to 8 tiny cherry tomatoes but the flavour is just as good!