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.
