Breadstew

What do you do when you have alot of bread left over?? The most common dishes which utilise stale breads are bread and butter puddings, fruit charlottes, crutons and breadcrumbs....the loaf I wanted to use up was the traditional country style type...with a chewy exterior and not that suitable for desserts i thought...and due to the sheer volume, i wanted to find a recipe which will use up the whole loaf easily....

and guess what i found???

Poor man's food from Protugal...BREADSTEW!!!!

It's very simple, really....pan fry onions in olive oil, add bread, enough water to make a mush and top with eggs. Finito!!!
It tastes very much like chinese rice congee if you let it simmer long enough!!!
Cos i had the audacity to invite friends over, i tot i had to make it more special.......so i rendered some bacon instead of using olive oil...and used fish stock and added mixed vegetables, campignons and spinach to make it more robust....
very comforting food and i guess, it would be great for small children?? Hardly requires any chewing... :) and people did like it by the way...

bitter gourd carrot red date soup

got the recipe from Ellena's cuisine paradise, a very down-to-earth food blog filled with Asian home-style recipes..
(modifications to recipe: Subsituted chicken bones for pork ribs cos not a pork fan...and after scalding the chicken bones, i rinsed it out and added all the ingredients plus 2 slices of huai shan to the slow cooker and left it on high for 4 hours.)

think bitter gourds r in season now....saw alot of them in chinatown recently... :)

the Chinese have a saying,"liang yao ku kuo", literally "good medicine bitter mouth"...so i guess it's with this (reverse) assumptiont that i eat them!! wahahaha!! But....if you do the salt treatment, it really does help to reduce the bitterness...cos i cooked another soup the other day without the salt treatment and boy, did that taste like medication....

in case you r wondering, this soup is not that bitter...slightly sweet even..thanks to the carrot and red dates...back to the topic of bittergourd being good for you....it seems that there have been successful trials using insulin derived from bittergourd...but it only works if it's injected, not injested...but eating bitter gourd is still apparently beneficial for managing diabetes..wonder if there are any caucasians who have eaten and actually like bitter gourd? Hmm...

curried carrot soup

from Allrecipes.

INGREDIENTS
2 tbs vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
2 tbsp curry powder
900 g carrots, chopped
4 cups vegetable broth
2 cups water, or as needed

DIRECTIONS
1 Heat oil in a large pot over medium heat. Saute onion until tender and translucent. Stir in the curry powder. Add the chopped carrots, and stir until the carrots are coated. Pour in the vegetable broth, and simmer until the carrots are soft, about 20 minutes.
2 Transfer the carrots and broth to a blender, and puree until smooth. Pour back into the pot, and thin with water to your preferred consistency.

comments: i omitted the water altogether...and cos the curry powder was extremely spicy, the final concoction tasted like a very fiery curry!!! This is excellent to make in a hurry for Indian food cravings. Serve with nann/ baguettes!! Yum! Oh...and the carrot flavour wasn't that strong, surprisely... :)

white fungus chicken soup - quick and easy!!

ingredients:
1 white fungus
4 drumsticks
24 red dates
2 tbs wolf berries (gou qi zi)
salt and pepper to taste

method:
1. soak the white fungus til soft (ard 30 minutes will do). Trim the yellow bits and cut into bite sized chunks.
2. Scald the chicken in boiling water and discard the water. (this is to remove the raw chicken taste)
3. Put all the ingredients into a slow cooker with 2 liters of boiling water. Cook on low for 4 hours (or on high for 2).
4. Season with salt and pepper.

comments: white fungus is supposed to nourish the lungs, wolf berries good for the eyes and dates...good for the blood?? Traditional chinese folklore is interesting..anything red..they will say it's good for the blood. ;P
oh yeah...and the secret to a 'sweet' / tasty broth is not too much water relative to bones....errmmm...say a chicken drumstick to 500ml or one kg of chicken bones to 2 liters of water. If you do not have a slow cooker, just use a normal pot and allow the soup to simmer for an hour or so. I think the time/ heat facilitates protein breakdown in the bones n flesh, releasing glutamates and impart the 'sweet' taste that is so charactistic of good chinese soups. The correct term would be 'umami' and it's exactly what mono sodium glutatmate (msg) tastes like..it enhances the flavours of the other ingredients and leaves you wanting more...glutamates also occur naturally in cheese, milk and mushrooms..and soy sauce...learnt something new today?? :)