Sweet corn chicken soup

This soup spells comfort food for me right from the Eddie's Kitchen days. Eddie's Kitchen was one of the first Chinese restaurants in my hometown of Pune where I used to go with my family as a kid. This week I've been sick with a cold and was longing for this very soup. There is a big Chinese community around where I live now and several authentic Chinese restaurants. I love my salted fish chicken fried rice and still remember my first time trying Sichuan-style fish which gave all of us tingly tongues! All the same it was great to make this soup at home and enjoy it for three days straight.

Serves 4 as a starter (generous cup serving). 

You will need

chicken breast, boneless skinless 1 
cream-style corn                           1 15 oz can

shaoxing rice wine                        2 tbsp

soy sauce                                      1/2 tbsp                         

chicken stock                                1 carton

egg                                                1 large

sesame oil                                     1 tsp

cornflour                                       4 tbsp

salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Chop up the chicken breast into small pieces and let marinate in ~2 tbsp shoaxing wine (optional) and 1/2 tbsp soy sauce.
2. Beat the egg in a bowl and set aside.
3. Heat the cream-style corn and the chicken stock in a medium-sized saucepan.
4. While that gets heated through, make a slurry of the cornflour in a bit of water.
5. When the chicken stock and corn mixture is hot, add the diced chicken.
6. Once the chicken is cooked through (probably 7-10 mins), add salt and pepper to taste. Also give a good stir to the cornflour slurry as it may have settled, and pour it into the saucepan while stirring the mixture.
7. Once the mixture has thickened a bit (can take 3-4 mins), drizzle the beaten egg into the soup in a thin stream while continuously stirring. Add a teaspoon of sesame oil. Turn the heat off after the egg has cooked which will be fast.
8. Serve the soup hot as a starter or with some Chinese fried rice.

The soup in the photo has two eggs but it was too eggy for my liking so I reduced it to one in the recipe. If you prefer more egg in yours, feel free to add one more. That soup also has partially pureed corn, that's why it looks more yellow, as I couldn't find cream-style corn in the store.

Hearty Veggie Soup

I like soup for dinner on foggy cold week nights – like this week. And hearty vegetable soups can especially be comforting on busy weeknights.  My mom made all sorts of soups when I was growing up and I have grown to love them.

I liked this soup because it took me only 30 minutes to make it from start to finish, the recipe consisted of cooking veggies by steaming them - a healthier way to eat them, and plus it made an awesome leftover.

Here goes the recipe –

Ingredients:

• 2 carrots cut into cubes
• 2 ripe tomatoes cut into cubes
• 1 onion cut into cubes
• 1 medium sized potato, peeled, cut into cubes
• 1 tsp butter
• Salt, pepper, red chili powder, sugar per taste
• 1/4^th cup 1% fat milk (optional)
• Cilantro, minced

Direction:

Pressure cook all veggies till tender. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, you can also cook all the veggies in a pan by adding water till they’re just covered. Puree cooked veggies. Heat butter in a stockpot and add pureed veggies. Add milk, salt, pepper, red chili powder, sugar per taste. Mix well. Garnish with cilantro and serve hot.

A and I like our soup with toasted bread with light ghee spread. I added red chilli powder as a garnish for some extra heat.

I am going to try this recipe with ghee instead of butter. Ghee doesn’t burn as fast as butter as it has a higher smoke point than butter.