Cauliflower Soup

My kid's love soup, have tried making pumpkin soup, broccoli soup for them.  So this time round I tried making Cauliflower Soup.  What I like about this soup is that it doesn' need to use flour to thicken up but uses potatoes instead.  The kids gobble up the soup and Hubby says it tasted a little rough, not as smooth as the normal soup I made (I think it's the potatoes).

Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients & Directions 

• 
  
  2 tablespoons butter
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 large potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 2 (14.5 ounce) cans chicken broth
• 1 head cauliflower, chopped
• 1 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg (omitted this)
• 1 tablespoon dry sherry (omitted this)
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley (omitted this)

1. In a large pot over medium heat, melt butter. Stir in onion and garlic and cook until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in potatoes and carrots and cook 5 minutes more. Pour in chicken broth and bring to a boil. Stir in cauliflower, cover, reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are tender, 10 to 20 minutes. Remove from heat.
2. Puree in batches in a blender or food processor, or in the pot using an immersion blender. Return to low heat and stir in milk, salt, pepper, nutmeg and sherry. Heat through. Serve garnished with parsley.

Cream Corn & Melon Soup

Saw this recipe during one of the variety show where the host made cream corn soup and it looks really yummy.  So I decided to make my own version, to add some more nutrients to the soup, I added melon.  The soup turns out yummy and the kids actually likes it. Here's the recipes:

Cream Corn and Melon Soup

Ingredients & Directions

• 1 corn (cut into chunks)
• 1 carrot (cut into cubes)
• 1/2 canned of cream corn
• 1 chicken breast
• 300g lean pork
• 1 egg
• 1 piece of winter melon (Cut into small cubes)
• salt to taste

1. Scale chicken breast and pork.  Put both in a pot of water and bring to boil.
2. Add corn and cook for 30 minutes.
3. Add carrot and winter melon and cook for 15 minutes.
4. Add canned cream corn and cook for 5 to 10 minutes.
5. Switch off the fire and add beaten egg slowly, use your ladle to swirl around the pot as you add the egg.  Add salt to taste. Served Hot

Make Your Own Soup: Cabbage Soup

This is essentially a cabbage and tomato soup but I added in my own ingredient for my own liking.
Cabbage & Tomato Soup

• 1 quarter cabbage, wash and chopped into chunks
• 2 or 3 tomatoes, wash and chopped into quarters
• 1 corn, peel, wash and cut into chunks
• 1 piece of ginger
  
• 1 chicken breast with bones
• 5 Fish Balls (optional, I added it because my boy likes fish balls)
• 1/2 can of button mushrooms (optional), cut into half

1. Boil and scale the chicken.
2. Boil water and put in the chicken, corn, tomatoes, mushrooms and ginger. Bring to boil and simmer for about 1/2 hour.
3. Put in the rest of the ingredients and simmer for another 15 minutes. Soup is ready to serve.

Health Benefit: I'm not too sure the exact nutritional value of this soup but I think Cabbage is an excellent source of manganese, calcium and potassium. It is a very good source of iron, phosphorous, magnesium. It is also a very good source of fiber, folate and omega-3 fatty acids. Further, sodium, zinc and copper are found in good amounts in cabbage. Click here to read more about the nutritional value of cabbage.

Make Your Own Soup: Si Shen Soup

This is a chinese herb soup that I boil for the family quite often. I normally asked the uncle from the Chinese Medicine Hall to packet $2 of Si Sen Soup and they will understand what I want. I can't really name all the herbs that is inside, but essentially, this is what it will look like:


Si Sen Soup

• Si Sen Herbs
• 1 piece of Lean Pork ($3)
• 1/2 a Chicken Breast with bone
• 8 cups of water
• 2 tbs of Wolf Berries (Gou Ji Zi)
• 8 red dates (optional) or 10 dried longans (optional)
  
• Raw Chinese Yam (Shan Yao) - about 2 to 3 inches (optional)

1. Scale the pork and chicken. Wash the herbs in hot water.
2. Put all ingredients in a pot and pour the water. Bring water to boil and then lower heat and simmer covered for 4 hours or more. Keep a look out for the water as it might overflow if your pot is too small.
   
3. Soup is ready to serve.

Health Benefit: Not too sure about the exact health benefit but it's generally taken to help improve appetite, improve strength and calm nerve. So it's very good for children who has poor appetite, especially after sickness.

Tips: I normally cook this soup in a slow cooker so I don't need to worry about water overflow. I just throw all the ingredient in the pot early in the morning, pour in water and then just switch on the slow cooker on "High" and let the cooker simmer and it will be ready to drink by dinner time.

Make Your Own Soup: Mum-in- Law's Soup

Ok, this soup has quite a number of ingredients and it tasted really nice, but I'm not too sure who is the lead actress in the soup, so called this Mum-in-law's soup since it's a recipe suggested by my mum-in-law.

Mum-in-law's Soup

• 2 carrots
• 1 lotus root (about 5 inches long)
  
• 1/2 cup of raw cashew nuts
• 1 corn
• a few pieces of dried abalone (optional)
  
• One piece of lean meat (about $3)
• 8 cups of water (need to adjust the water accordingly, if you like it more diluted, add more water)
• Fresh Chinese Yam ("Shan Yao")- about 2 to 3 inches
  

1. Scale the lean meat to get rid of the blood stain. Wash dried abalone in hot water.
   
2. Soak raw cashew nuts in hot water for 15 to 20 minutes.
3. Wash, peel and cut the carrots, lotus root, corn and chinese yam, cut them into big chunks.
4. Put all the ingredients into a pot and pour water. Bring water to boil and lower heat, simmer for about 2 hours and the soup is ready to drink.
   

Make your Own Soup: Carrot Soup

SMALL FAN is getting more and more picky with food, he always says he don't want rice but he wants Koko Crunch, Sweets, Ice-cream, MacDonald etc... Luckily, he seems to be ok with drinking soup. He used to love creamy soup, but nowsaday, he likes clear soup and will refuse to taste any soup that looks like there is some residue on it. So, have been trying to cook good soup for him to drink, so if he did not eat rice etc, at least there is some good soup to keep him healthy.

Lucky for me, I have 2 really good "shi fu" (my mum and in-law) who can cook great soup, so I will try to learn from them. What is interesting about this 2 "shi fu" is their style of cooking. As I grew up in a teochew family, my mum tends to cook clear soup for us every day. These soup normally took like 1 to 2 hours to cook, my mum's theory is that if you cook too long, the soup became very heaty (not too sure about this theory though). So mum's soup tends to have a cooling properties and she uses a lot of vegetables. For my mum-in-law, as she is a cantonese, they believe in "Ao Tang" that is stew and cook the soup until the vitamins all go into the soup, so she will boil the soup for like hours until you can't see the bottom of the soup. So, her soup tends to be more of a heaty properties and she uses a lot of chinese herbs. So, for me, I will combine both style of cooking. Some times if I feel that SMALL FAN is getting heaty from eating all the koko crunch, I will cook the teochew style soup, while on other days when I feel like giving our body a boost with herbs, I will cook the cantonese style. So, this part of my blog is dedicated to my soup recipes. Along the way, i will also include some western soup so Enjoy!

Here's the very first recipe:

Carrot Soup
Ingredient & Instructions (this soup serve about a family of 2 adults and 2 kids)

* Lean Pork (about $5)
* 1 White Carrot (or 2 organic white carrots)
* 2 Orange Carrots
* 1 stock of celery
* a small piece of ginger
* 2 to 3 pieces of dried abalone (scale with hot water)
* 5 to 6 red dates - optional (scale with hot water to get rid of any dust particles)
* 8 cups of water (need to adjust the water accordingly, if you like it more diluted, add more water)

1. Scale the pork in hot boiling water to get rid of the blood stain. Cut carrots and celery into large chunk, slice the ginger.
2. Boil some water, then blanch the white carrots to get rid of the bitter taste.
3. Put a little oil and stir fry the ginger, then throw in the meat. Then pour in water and the rest of the vegetables, the dried abalone and red dates. Bring soup to a boil, then lower the heat and cook for another hour and the soup is ready to drink. Add seasoning to taste. Normally I do not put any seasoning as the dried abalone is already salty enough.

Health benefit: ok, according to the mini cookbook in my family(a chinese mini cookbook), this soup is good for bulding your gastric and help in digestion. Carrot has the propoerty of helping to stop cough, reduce heatiness and eliminate toxic.

Note: for those of you who are not sure what is this dried abalone, below is a picture of how it looked, you can get it at most chinese medicine shop or those market shop that sell dried goods.