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