Hannah has better food while at her nanny’s place. Her nanny is a Cantonese and as many of us know, this dialect group is particular about their soup. Every meal must have a soup dish.
I just got a recipe from the nanny for a watercress soup which she offered me when I picked Hannah up from work last Friday. Wow, it was the best watercress soup I have ever tasted! The nanny told me that the recipe was passed down from her parents. BTW, she’d always cook a big pot of soup every morning and use some as stock base for Hannah’s porridge.
I was eager to try out the recipe at home and so bought all the necessary ingredients at NTUC this morning. The easy thing about doing soup is that it is usually not labour-intensive. Hence, I was able to multi-task; I cooked Hannah’s and our dinner at the same time. Below is the recipe for those who are interested.
Ingredients:
Watercress – 1 packet (soak in salt water and rinse – this would help to remove slugs & worms)
Pork ribs – 200 g (I used loin ribs)
Pork soft bones – 200-300 g (the bulk of it is lean meat, cut into bite-size cubes)
carrot – 1 large, peeled and chopped into big chunks
red dates – 10 pitted ones (soak and rinse)
honey dates – 1 (soak and rinse)
dried figs – 5
nan xing bei xing – 1 tbsp
water – 1.2 L
salt – a dash
light soy sauce – according to taste, 1 or 2 tsps
Method:
1) Boil 1.2 L of water in a medium-sized pot.
2) In the meanwhile, blanch the pork ribs and soft bones in boiling water for a few seconds. Pour the liquid away to remove the scum and smell. If necessary, rinse with water to wash away the scum.
3) Once the pot of water comes to a rolling boil, add all the ingredients except for the salt and soy sauce. Let the water boil again for 10-15 minutes. Uncover the pot all this while.
4) Cover the pot and bring the soup to a mere simmer by lowering the gas to the minimum. You should only see very little or hardly any bubbling in the soup. Simmer for 1 hour.
5) Add a dash of salt and light soy sauce and stir well just before serving.
6) Serve with steamed rice . If desired, prepare a small dish of freshly cut chilli padi and finely chopped garlic in premium light soy sauce for dipping the pork meat.
I’m finally trying to go back to home-cooking since Hannah was born a year ago! :)
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