Teczcape-An Escape to Food

We are heading towards soup season here, as temperature starts to drop. So it's soup dish today-Winter Melon Soup.


Abeit the word "winter", winter melon is actually not a winter squash. Named winter melon because of the "sugar" concentrated on the outer green skin that resembles frost, thus the term "winter".

Winter melon is perishable when already cut and sold in wedges; compared to hairy melon/fuzzy squash typically sold whole and can keep for up to 2 weeks in the fridge. You can also use hairy melon/fuzzy for this soup if you prefer, depending on what's available in your local market.

When cooked in soups, winter melon is typically added in bigger chunks or smaller cubes. I have even "pulverized" it before but not to this extent that you cannot even see them.


Winter melon is mildly sweet and when the "puree" is added to the chicken soup at the last leg of cooking, it balances the chicken soup to perfection; more importantly, retain as much nutrients (e.g. Vitamin C) as possible. The winter melon "puree" also acts as a natural thickener to the soup - slightly thick, not as thick like a "cream-based" soup.

Lunar New Year kept simple by enjoying home-prepped veggies and soup with store-bought dumplings.

Lucky (Huat) Veggies - a variety of eight veggies for health and luck.


Eight, 8 regarded as the luckiest number in Chinese culture. In Mandarin, eight is pronounced as 'Ba' sounds like 'Fa', a word which means make a fortune, symbolic of prosperity.

Garlic: In Mandarin, garlic 蒜 sounds alike "count" 算 . Instead of focusing on just counting money, we should count all our blessings.

It's end of March but some days are still chilly and cold in the high 50s. Such weather calls for soups - not stew-like winter soup but something warm yet light and soothing like this spring weather Fish and Cabbage Egg-Drop Soup.


This Fish and Cabbage Egg-Drop Soup is loaded with carrots, Napa cabbage and fresh mushrooms then finished off with egg-drop/wash, lots of fresh cilantro and final touch of fragrant sesame oil - a all-in-one side-dish soup, perfect either on its own or paired with steamed rice.

Instead of making tomato egg-drop soup (similar to Bitter Melon Egg Drop Soup, Chive Egg-Drop Soup) in which the egg is gently stirred into the soup towards the end of cooking, to create pretty, soft and silky egg swirls and ribbons;  I switched the sequence a little - first, by frying tomatoes with egg (Tomato Scrambled Eggs recipe), then adding the tomato scrambled eggs to a vegetables-based broth, making the soup of today - Tomato Egg Soup.


The sweet tomatoes impart natural umani flavors to this soup and it is absolutely delicious. Soup season is here! A comforting and satisfying one-dish noodle soup is definitely a keeper in the cooler months ahead.

Amaranth. Is it a grain, seed or vegetable? While amaranth has been cultivated as a grain that is a good source of trace minerals and vitamins, the amaranth leaf vegetable is equally nutritious, particularly high in iron content. I hardly buy them till I saw the young tender Red Strip Leaf Amaranth (large green leaves with red stripes in the center) at the farmers market.


At the same time, after watching a cooking segment about how amaranth and gojiberries support healthy vision (or for myopic like myself - to slow down vision deterioration), I was inspired to go searching for amaranth leaf vegetable so that I can try cooking it at home. In the cooking segment, the chef made a clear soup of amaranth vegetable in homemade chicken stock. However, I am adapting it to a clear soup of amaranth vegetable and fresh tiny (Japanese) anchovy.

Soy-bean broth or stock is quite versatile and I absolutely enjoy it as a light-tasting broth for green vegetables e.g. Chinese Broccoli Soup.


For this soup (adapted from Chinese Broccoli Soup), some carrots were boiled in the broth till cooked, then baby kale and some leftover pan-fried tofu were added.


Baby kale is supposed to be milder-tasting and less bitter compared to kale. To be used in this soup, I added the baby kale only after the heat from the pot was turned off; then add the baby kale, cover the pot and allow the remaining heat to cook the baby kale.

This recipe is similar to Seaweed, Fresh Shiitake Mushrooms and Spinach Soup, however made simpler this time (without spinach) with wakame seaweed and two kinds of mushrooms - fresh shiitake mushrooms and bunashimeiji beech mushrooms.

To save time, fresh mushrooms are added directly to a simmering pot of soup. However, if you have a little more time on hand, mushrooms are more fragrant (making the soup more flavorful) when lightly sauteed before they are added to the soup.

Have you heard the Chinese saying: "fall/autumn's daikon is comparable to ginseng" 秋天萝卜是人参? It might be referring to the peak harvest of daikon during the cool season (in fall and winter months) that makes it a good source of Vitamin A, C, fiber, lignin, phosphorus - thus most nutritious and beneficial.

Perhaps, there is also this Chinese food therapy belief that when you consume more health-beneficial daikon during fall/autumn or subsequent winter, you rid the body of toxins accumulated during the often hot and dry summer months which might have tire the body. When you get rid of these toxins, the energy/"qi" in the body can be quickly replenished.


Lamb/goat is also considered warm and nourishing especially when consumed in winter. How about combining lamb and daikon in a Chinese-style soup? The combination of lamb and daikon is not uncommon as it is known to replenish and nourish the body during the cold winter months.

Mild and harmless-looking, this is not your usual noodle soup. The kick of Thai red chili and Chinese black vinegar can just wake up your senses anytime of the day. So never judge a book by its cover.


Not the Szechuan hot (spicy) and sour soup that you may order off the menu of a Chinese restaurant; however, the spice and sourness is as close as it gets.

It was the first and last time I bought cordyceps. Rather, Mom bought them...for me.

Gosh. So super duper exorbitantly expensive! I was not aware of the cordyceps "market situation".

It was the last time as I will not be consuming it regularly for its claimed benefits (even if what good it does to the body is indeed true).

Often the classic cordyceps chicken soup is doubled-boiled with chicken, cordyceps, sometimes with red dates and gojiberries. However, I did it quite differently - without dates and gojiberries.

This is another one-dish meal which saves me the trouble of cooking the noodle ("carbs") accompaniment. With homemade wontons (shared and given by my "wonton expert" friend), all I had to do was to cook a big pot of chicken soup with potatoes, carrots, tomatoes.
.

A big pot of chicken soup is "double-duty" (1) make stock/broth that can be used for cooking other dishes; and (2) prepare the actual meal.
.

Thin strips of ham over macaroni soup - do you find this combo. of ingredients weird?  Ham and macaroni soup, a Western-style dish typically served as breakfast in Hong Kong, and often found in Hong Kong-style tea cafes 茶餐厅.


My hb who always enjoys home-cooked chicken macaroni soup strangely finds the combination (of plain macaroni in saltish broth topped with a few thin strips of ham) weird. However, it was surprising that  when I cooked a similar breakfast dish at home one day, he finished it all in no time!

He gave in to hunger pangs, it must be. Or maybe that fried egg and some green vegetables did the "wholesome" trick. But I should give myself some credit. This CAN be quite a warm comforting breakfast especially in the winter mornings.

This Pork Miso Soup 味增猪骨汤 is new to me, as it is my first attempt cooking this soup and tasting it for the first time. So hearty and delicious.

Leaning towards Chinese-style cooking, the soup base is made from pork bones, onions and ginger.


Remember that the miso should not be allowed to boil during cooking. So if you are cooking this soup in advance and serving it later, just re-heat the soup then add the miso to the soup before serving.

From the perspective of traditional Chinese food therpay, Chinese red dates (jujubes) - 红枣 （hong zao) and dried longans - 桂圆 (gui yuan) are categorized as "heaty" yang elements and can be consumed to neutralize "cold" or yin elements, especially if one has a relatively "cold" internal body system. By imparting heat to the internal body, it improves blood circulation and thus is believed to have an effect on relaxation.

Both the dried forms of Chinese red dates and longans are naturally sweet. They are natural sweeteners and complements savoriness really well e.g. Silkie Black Chicken Soup - a nourishing winter tonic soup. Even if it is not winter, Chinese red dates and dried longans can be especially beneficial for women due to the relatively higher iron content.

Simply boil some ginger, red dates and dried longans in water then consume or sip as hot tea.

Photo top: red dates (jujubes); bottom: dried longans

One of the best ways to enjoy these precious organic heirloom tomatoes is using them, fresh and raw, in salads.

But it was a cold winter day and salads were not the best way to go.

I want a piping hot soup on this blustery day. A Rice Noodles Soup might just be it.


This noodle soup is very similar to the Shirataki Noodle Soup I have cooked before. Both delicious but I definitely prefer using fresh rice noodles.

It might not be scientifically proven but whenever possible, I try to cook seaweed soup especially after a long-haul flight (=exposure to cosmic radiation) to prevent radiation poisoning of the thyroid. When the body is saturated with natural iodine from seaweed, it more readily removes radioactive iodine taken in from the atmosphere and environment.

High in protein, low in fats, seaweed is said to contain almost 10x more calcium by weight then milk. Seaweed is also known to contain components that lower blood pressure, prevent arteriosclerosis, and combat tumors. The most common varieties of seaweed are kombu, wakame and nori.

This soup is quick and easy to make. If you are one of those that stocks up frozen spinach, pantry-friendly nori seaweed, the next step (optional) is to get some fresh shiitake mushrooms, onions, garlic and ginger and you are close to making this soup.

With homemade chicken stock (or even vegetable broth/stock), it was definitely easier to cook anything - at least, I did not have to wait too long for flavors to develop in a slow mellow-simmer soup or stew. This quickie Fresh Shiitake Mushroom Flat Rice Noodle Soup was put together in less than 30 minutes. Make it lunch or dinner!


For a quick-cooking soup like this, fresh mushrooms is usually my preference compared to the dried version.  The fresh variety has lighter flavors compared to the intense dried shiitake mushrooms which is often a better use in braised or stewed dishes, or typically in longer-duration cooking to develop the deep savory flavors from dried mushrooms.

Which do you use more often - fresh or dried shiitake mushrooms ?


It is not easy to find fresh shiitake mushrooms that are locally grown in the US and even if available, they do not come cheap (about $3 for about six to at most eight pieces of fresh shiitake mushrooms).

Soups made from homemade chicken stock/broth are definitely the "IN" thing around my kitchen. I can be quite an extremist - it is either water or homemade chicken stock to constitute the soup base, nothing in between such as canned or packaged chicken stock. Personally, canned or packaged chicken stock just taste too artificial in terms of flavor. I WOULD RATHER USE WATER, and flavor it along while I cook the soup.


I hardly cook Teochew-Style Flat Rice Noodles (Kway Teow) Soup 潮州粿條 unless I am able to get fresh rice noodles from the Asian supermarket in my weekly groceries.

So today, with homemade chicken stock and fresh flat rice noodes, this Teochew-Style Flat Rice Noodles (Kway Teow) Soup reminisce the Teochew Kway Teow Soup that is usually found in the hawker/street food stalls in Singapore.

This California-US version of Teochew Kway Teow Soup has been simplified to suit the availability of ingredients that can be easily found here. The most distinct difference is the absence of Teochew fishballs and instead, you find pan-fried tofu.

The reason for tofu is simply for the added proteins, nothing else. To bump up some flavors, the extra-firm tofu were pan-fried (pan-frying the tofu imparts smokiness and more taste to the soup).

Then everything else falls almost to the norm: rice noodles, minced/ground organic chicken, pork and shrimps. Finally, we have the rice noodles served in a delicate fragrant soup (homemade chicken stock with chicken, pork, shrimp flavors), generously garnished with green onions and served alongside some green vegetables.

The first time I tried Burdock Root or Gobo (牛蒡) was a salad in a Japanese restaurant in Taiwan. The Gobo was sliced so razor-thin and fine (thinner than matchsticks!) and the salad was really refreshing good as appetizer.

Though I usually see Burdock Root/Gobo in the Asian supermarkets here in California, I never have the urge to buy and cook it.


Until I saw the Burdock Root Soup from Little Corner of Mine and Food-4tots, I decided that maybe I can try making a soup, a vegetarian soup. In Chinese food therapy, burdock root helps to reduce heat in the body. Thus it is beneficial in the warming temperature trend, spring to summer.


Personally I do not like the texture of burdock root as it was rather fibrous. Perhaps the quality of burdock root was sub-par in this supermarket or I did not cook it long enough.


One distinctive characteristic that I wish to highlight is the smell of ginseng when boiling the burdock root in this soup. Burdock root or Gobo is regarded as "Oriental Ginseng" for a reason - not only the smell but the nutrients and benefits too.