Fish Maw Soup

Today the in laws came over for lunch ... and since one of them didn't particularly like herbal stuff, I couldn't quite just boil water and throw in a pack of the ready-to-cook herbs.

I went to hunt for my "nourishing soups" recipe book and I figured out my best bet was to get the bamboo fungus since I had the rest of the ingredients.

Ended up, CS didn't seem to stock that so I bought fish maw instead.

My base soup stock was very idiot proof - just made sure it was rich enough so whatever else I throw in will made it taste better.

The soup was enough to feed 9 adults and 3 kids ...

Ingredients

1. 500g lean pork

2. 300g of pork bones (I used bones from my spare ribs - the meat was cut off for another dish)

3. 1 chicken breast (remove skin)

4. a big handful of dried scallops (mine was the broken pieces, so I guess 6 pieces of whole medium sized dried scallops) soaked in a cup of water (for about 2 hours) after a quick rinse. Throw the water into the pot with the dried scallops.

5. 1 medium size wong bok or chinese cabbage, sliced.

6. 2 packs of fishballs (you can use meatballs if you want to)

7. 2 packs of dried fish maw. Soaked in hot water for about 15 minutes, and then squeeze dry. Rinse and squeeze dry again. Cut into small to medium pieces.

I actually cook the soup base the night before, using the pork, bones, chicken and dried scallops. I used my vacuum pot so that saved quite a fair bit of gas for me :P.

In the morning, the ingredients 5 to 7 were added in and then cooked a further 2 hours. My vacuum pot were too small to hold all the ingredients so I had to change to a bigger stock pot.

I also threw in the "brine" that contained an abalone which we used for the "yusheng". I think i forgot one ingredient, which is ginger. I think if I had added a small slice of ginger, it would have tasted better. But overall the soup is good enough for me, sweet without having to add sugar, and flavourful enough without having to add salt (typically when I make soup, I don't add salt, and to do this, I usually add enough ingredients to give the required salty taste).

Sorry, no pictures :P

Also, just wanted to add a small note about "yusheng". I had bought the "SingLong" ready to go pack from CS, plus the ready shredded carrots, radish and cucumbers. I omitted the perserved onions (wasn't too keen on it) and bought extra "bo chui" or crackers. I also had to add oil, since it was not provided in the pack. The "extra" ingredients would be of course, the fish, but I used abalone since I didn't like raw salmon and it would be an hassle just to make a trip to buy sashimi grade salmon (I could used smoke salmon but no thank you!). I wanted to add pomelo too, but they didn't have the "ready" peeled pomelo for sale so I cheated - I added canned mandarin oranges instead and it really made a difference to it. Then again, I love canned mandarin oranges and I would be more than willing to fork out $4 to buy a small cup of japan-made mandarin orange jelly (which was a staple during my last trip to japan - the brand had a cute picture of a cat on it!). I added the juice of 1 lemon and well, it was probably one of the most yummy yusheng I had!

Next year, I will be adding canned mandarin oranges!