Winter Melon and Pork Ribs Soup

This is another soup Ms J wanted to drink. Mr P was walking around the supermarket and saw some winter melon. Remembered that Ms J wanted to drink it. 


Preparation Time: 18 mins
Cooking Time: 10 mins
Waiting Time: 2-3 hours


Ingredients:
1 kg of wintermelon
12 dried red dates
2 tablespoons of Chinese Wolfberries (Gou Ji Zi)
1 small bit of young ginger
400 grams Pork Ribs
400 grams Soft Bone Pork


Preparation:
1. Prepare the ginger. Just like in the previous soup.
2. Cut up the wintermelon.

This is how it looks when you buy it from the supermarket.



You can cut them into chunks like this first.



Then get rid of the seeds in the middle and end up in pieces like this.



3. Rinse the wolfberries and also the red dates. I buy the pitted version of red dates which makes my life easier.



4. Ms J wants to eat meat while drinking soup. We also tend to make it a meal, so we usually put in more meat. This is the soft bones meat. (Yes its written on the price sticker as soft bone meat.)



5. We also add in pork ribs. Get rid of all the fats if you are particular like I am.



6. Dump all of the ingredients into around 1 to 1.5 litres of water.
7. Boil it for around 8 minutes then transfer it to the thermal pot.

(We like using thermal pots as it saves electricity / gas and we can go out and do other things while it is cooking from the residual heat.)

8. After 2 or 3 hours, when you are ready to serve it, add salt to your taste and bring it to a boil.
9. Serve it hot just like in the picture below.

Enjoy the soup. This has so few ingredients and so tasty.
This version still has the wintermelon skin a bit greenish. If you boil it for a longer time, it will turn brown just like the ones served in restaurants.





For those interested:
Domestic Pig: Sus scrofa domestica
Ginger: Zingiber officinale
Winter Melon: Benincasa hispida
Chinese Wolfberry: Fructus Lycii (Gou Ji Zi) 枸杞子
Red Dates (Chinese Jujube)Melon: Zizyphi Fructus hispida (Da Zao) 大棗


Red Dates is good for energy boosting and blood circulation.
Wolfberry is known to improve vision and protect the liver.

Corn and Pork Ribs Soup

We grew up drinking lots of soup made by mummy. Asian mum loves to make soups. Soups are nutritious and they really warms your heart. Hope this Corn and Pork Rib Soup will warm yours too!

Preparation Time: 8 mins
Cooking Time: 10 mins
Waiting Time: 2-3 hours

Ingredients:
1 Carrot
1 Tomato
2 Sweet Corns
1 small bit of young ginger
1/2 kg Pork Ribs


Preparation:
1. Cut the tomato into wedges. (4 or 6 wedges, up to you)
2. Break the corns into 3 pieces.
3. Cut the carrots into little chunks.
4. Clean the ginger by getting rid of the skin and cut them in big pieces.




5. Prepare the pork by boiling a pot of water and boil the pork for 5 mins then drain.



6. Pour all the ingredients into the pot with 1.5 litres of water.



7. If you are like us, we like using Thermal Pots. This is an OEM brand which is cheaper. You can get Tiger or Le Gourmet brands which cost 3 or 4 times more, and yet work the same.

We boil the above for 5 mins and then turn it off and transfer the pot into the Thermal Pot. Wait for 2 or 3 hours.



8. When we are ready to serve, we take out the pot, boil it again for a few minutes and then serve. Add salt to your taste.



We usually prepare the soups on Saturday mornings around 9 AM. We will drink the soup at noon. We like using Thermal pots because we do not need to care about the fire.

If you realise, we use an induction cooker too! Induction cooker converts 80-90% of energy to heat, compare to other types of cooking methods (eg gas flame, hot plates) that usually only use 45% of the energy and the rest wasted.



For those interested:
Carrot: Daucus carota subsp. sativus
Domestic Pig: Sus scrofa domestica
Ginger: Zingiber officinale
Sweet Corn: Zea mays var. rugosa
Tomato: Solanum lycopersicum

Sambal Lady's Fingers (Okra)

This is one of our many favourite vegetable dishes.

Lady's Fingers with Sambal. Some people call this Okra. (Depends on where you live.)
Our Sambal paste is prepared by mummy, and we have it stored in our fridge and use it when we need it.

Preparation Time: 8 mins
Cooking Time: 8 mins

Ingredients:
1 packet of Ladies Fingers (usually around 300 gm)
As much garlic as you like (usually half a clove for us)
Sambal


Preparation:
1. We usually cut off both the head and the tail of the ladies fingers.

2. Slice it into thin pieces, just like in this photo. Cutting it slanted makes it look nicer.

3. Prepare your garlic, we love garlic, so we put this much. You can use less.

4. Heat up some extra virgin olive oil, and then stir fry the garlic.

5. When garlic is turning brown, add in the sambal. We use 2 teaspoons of it. It will smell very pungent!

6. Pour in the ladies fingers. You will notice it will get very mushy. It's all right, stir and cook it for 5 mins.

7. If you like it soft, cook it longer. If you like it crunchy, maybe less time will do.

Serve it with freshly steamed rice.


For those interested:
Okra / Lady's Finger: Abelmoschus esculentus
Garlic: Allium sativum L.

Welcome!

You Cook I Eat.


What is this blog all about?

This blog started because Ms J wants to eat 'something' and Mr P has to cook that 'something'. Ms J insist that Mr P cooks food that taste like how their mummy cooks it when they were growing up. Mr P fails most of the time!

To do so, Ms J and Mr P always make long distance calls back to mummy to ask for her recipe.

We modify or tweak the recipe so that it becomes simpler for us to replicate when we want to eat it again. We hope that you find our version of the recipe easy to follow.



So, how is this blog different from other food blogs?

Most food blogs have recipes that is just full of words. We know that many people get confused and want to see photos of things. Maybe you are like us. We like to see exactly how things look, the raw ingredients, the cooking method and not only the end product.

We hope these photos posted will help you. It also actually helps us. Mummy check if we are using the same kind of ingredients when our experiments fail. (hey, don't laugh at us!)



Where do you get your ingredients? Can I get it from where I live?

We live in Singapore and we get our ingredients from mainly the 'wet markets', hypermarkets or supermarkets. They are readily available and they are fresh and cheap. We are lazy bums as mummy says, so we don't usually get up early to roam the 'wet markets'. We usually prefer the comfort and air-con of hypermarkets and supermarkets.

If you live in Asia, you can get the ingredients very easily. If you live in other countries, you might get them at Chinatown or where there is an Asian Grocer.



What does Ms J and Mr P do?

We know blog surfers are a bunch of busybodies. So are we! We will try to be faithful to our family and friends by not to disclosing too much.

A simple introduction:
Ms J is a 'Right Brain' person. She is an English and Music teacher.
Mr P is a 'Left Brain' person. He is a IT guy.
How can this pair of bro and sis survive? You go figure out!