Chinese Recipes | Cooking Tips | Good Eats

Soto Ayam is a classic Spicy Chicken Soup, commonly found in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia (”Soto” means “soup” and “Ayam” means “chicken”). The soup is yellow in color due to the use of turmeric as one of its ingredients.

Add yellow noodles to this Soto Ayam and turn it into Mee Soto (Noodle Soup), a great light lunch and participate in Presto Pasta Nights. (*Phew!* Ruth accepts any noodle dish from any culture as entries.)

I was eating chicken salad for a few meals, and every time I boiled the bone-in chicken breast meat, I kept the chicken bones and the broth as a reserve for making this Soto Ayam.

The recipe is fairly simple. Turmeric, ginger, lemon grass, shallots, cloves, cardamons and star anise are all aromatics, contributing to the fragrance of the Soto Ayam. Oh and by the way I was shopping for whole cloves the other day and just FYI, Mccormick cloves sold in Safeway are at an exorbitant price of about US$5 for a small 0.62 oz bottle. If possible, get them from an Asian supermarket. That cost me only US$0.99 for a packet of approximately the same volume.

The Soto Ayam / Mee Soto Recipe below is based on approximated amounts because the amount of various ingredients to add depends on individual taste.

Ingredients (Serves 2):

- 1 handful of fresh / dry yellow noodles
- 6 cups chicken broth
- 1 chicken breast, bone in
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 lb bean sprouts, pluck off roots and blanched

Garnish:

- 1 small shallot, sliced
- 2 stalks spring onion, chopped
- 2 stalks cilantro, chopped

Soup Ingredients:

- 4-5 slices ginger
- 1 stalk lemon grass (the white part only)
- 1 small shallot
- 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
- 5 whole cloves
- 3 cardamons
- 1 star anise
- 1/2 tsp pepper (or more if you like a very peppery tasting soup)

Cooking Method:

1. Cook yellow noodles and set aside. Deep fry sliced shallot (from Garnish) until fragrant. Set aside. Grind the ginger, lemon grass and shallot (from Soup Ingredients) together using a mini food processor. Set aside.

2. Bring chicken broth to a boil, add chicken breast and salt, reduce heat setting to low and allow to simmer for about 30 minutes. Remove chicken from broth, shred chicken and set aside. Return chicken bones to the broth. Note: If you like me, have chicken broth made from leftover chicken bones, continue to simmer all the bones in the broth.

3. Heat up 2-3 tbsp cooking oil. When oil is hot enough, saute all the soup ingredients until fragrant. Pour in the chicken broth (together with all the bones) and cook under low heat (simmer, not boiling) for about half an hour till aromatic. Filter off the soup ingredients and get the soup only into serving bowls.

4. Add cooked yellow noodles, blanched bean sprouts and shredded chicken into the bowls. Garnish with chopped spring onions, cilantro and fried shallots.

Oops! The yellow noodles were all hidden under the shredded chicken bean sprouts and garnish :) but this is Mee Soto all right - yellow noodles in Spicy Chicken Soup (Soto Ayam).

Sometimes I get into a rebellious mood (and only to regret later). Remember how my gynae had warned me not to put on too much weight too rapidly during this last stage of pregnancy or the baby fat will remain with me for the rest of my life?

Sometimes statements like “DON’T eat so much” or “DON’T eat sugary and fatty stuff” or “DON’T put on weight too rapidly” do not serve their purpose. See the pattern here? The statements all begin with “DON’T…”. Now, if I say “DON’T think of a pink elephant”, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? A pink elephant right? This is becos the brain sometimes cannot process a negative statement as quickly as a positive one.

So the rationale is that if you want something to work for you, you gotta psycho your brain in a positive way, like “Remember to take your pre-natal vitamins”, rather than “DON’T forget to take your pre-natal vitamins”.

Anyhow… becos I want to blame somebody if I really do have excess “baby fats” (in this case, my gynae, cos she said DON’T put on weight too rapidly”), I made Orange Muffins. Orange Muffins with empty calories - (sinful) sugar and (blistering barnacles!) butter.

My Orange Muffins recipe was gotten from Baking Mum’s Madeleines Recipe. I have a muffin tin that can bake six muffins and I could make ten muffins out of her recipe.

I am not particularly excited about muffins, becos they (like those you get from Starbucks) are usually quite big and bleh (the middle part). I only like the top and bottom part of muffins becos those parts are the crispy bits. These Orange Muffins that I made out of a regular-sized muffin tin (same muffin tin I used to make Portuguese Egg Tarts) turned out to be a good size for me becos I had enough crispy top and bottom and just sufficient soft part of the middle of the muffin to make me happy.

Oh. I need to add some notes here. The recipe had called for cake flour. Er… what flour? Cake flour. According to the Joy Of Baking website, “Cake flour has a 6-8% protein content and is made from soft wheat flour. It is chlorinated to further break down the strength of the gluten and is smooth and velvety in texture. Good for making cakes (especially white cakes and biscuits) and cookies where a tender and delicate texture is desired. To substitute cake flour for all-purpose flour use 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour for every cup of all-purpose flour. Make your own - one cup sifted cake flour can be substituted with 3/4 cup (84 grams) sifted bleached all-purpose flour plus 2 tablespoons (15 grams) cornstarch.“

I did not have cake flour, so I used all purpose flour and cornstarch according to the instructions above. The end-result was that my Orange Muffins was of a slightly more dense texture than if I had used cake flour.

These Orange Muffins are good for breakfast, tea-time or an anytime snack. I have eaten four Orange Muffins and I am not feeling guilty yet.

Can I bake Pineapple Tarts to save my life? The answer is “Not yet”. The fingers on my two hands are enough for me to count the number of times to date I have baked whatever-that-can-be-considered-baking, so I qualify to be called a newbie baker.

I made a Pineapple Upside Down Cake when I was in Secondary 2 Home Economics Class. That was when I was 14 years old. I actually scored 8 out of 10 for that assignment, would you believe it? After that, the baking streak in me started to disappear as I get older.

I don’t know why I am suddenly interested in making Pineapple Tarts. This is a Chinese New Year goodie and we are nowhere near Chinese New Year now. Maybe it’s because my friend Angela recently took out all her baking gear and will be going full force into baking her delicious crunchy raisin cookies and trying out other new cake recipes, so I decided to follow suit and bake something. Pineapple Tarts were the first thing that came to my mind.

I bought the Pineapple Tart mould from Phoon Huat, Singapore’s leading supplier of bakery, beverage and confectionery ingredients. I had also bought a few other types of mould which I hope to be using to make other kinds of local kueh from Singapore. Wish me luck :)

I had mixed feelings about how these Pineapple Tarts turned out. For the first batch, I used the mould wrongly. What a dork! Notice how some of the tarts were “taller” than others? Also, the colour of the pastry was not what I had desired. I was looking for a light yellow pastry, not something so brown. Angela said that this could be because I had used the top tray of my oven instead of the lower trays.

Lessons learnt:

1) Get to know your oven. Apparently, at the same temperature setting, my big oven behaves differently from my small toaster oven.

2) To get a brownish tinge on the pineapple jam, you need to add cinnamon powder.

3) Baking Pineapple Tarts is a real tedious process. It took me more than half a day to make the pineapple jam, prepare the pastry and then bake 60-70 of these little golden gems. No wonder they are always sold at a premium.

Just out of the oven…

You can tell the difference between a seasoned baker versus a novice baker when you see the following signs:

The seasoned baker publishes a Chicken Pie Recipe; the novice baker follows the recipe.

The seasoned baker has a fancy “tree mould” print; the novice baker has hers plain.

The seasoned baker makes conventional round Chicken Pies; the novice baker tried to be funny in her first attempt.

Following the steps given by the seasoned baker was not in vain because the novice baker produced some really great tasting, lip smacking Chicken Pies (*pat on her back*). She made the dough from scratch too (*another pat on the back*) and that was no small feat cos it required crumbling the butter-flour mixture with a broken wrist. Ok I am kidding. The sprained wrist was forced to heal quickly becos the tummy needed food. Makes sense? Oh never mind.

Anyways… back to the novice baker’s Chicken Pie revelation. She had wondered why there was plain yoghurt as an ingredient in the seasoned baker’s recipe instead of just plain water (the novice baker had to buy a whole tub of it as Safeway did not have plain yoghurt in single servings). After tasting the great tasting, lip smacking (oh was this mentioned before?) Chicken Pies, the conclusion was the yoghurt enhanced the taste of the pastry.

The novice baker used salted butter this time round was happy with the tasty buttery pastry.

These Chicken Pies were simply awesome! The almost caramelized onions, the soft potatoes, the tender chicken breast pieces, the button mushrooms which absorbed the flavor of the chicken, the almost flaky pastry… one word to summarize: AWESOME!

Best eaten with mushroom soup and your favorite chilli sauce.

Do you want a bite now?

Hi, it’s me, the tilapia fish again. This time I am being cooked in a very fragrant ginger sauce. I think I need to be placed in a bigger plate cos my mouth is over the edge of this one. I am screwed steamed in this recipe.

Let’s see what the cook did to me for this Steamed Fish In Ginger Sauce:

Ingredients (Serves 2):

- 1 tilapia fish (about 1 lb), or any other fish good for steaming
- 1 stalk spring onion, cut on the bias, 2″ lengths
- a few slices of ginger
- 1 red chilli, seeds removed, cut into thin shreds

Seasoning for fish:

- salt, pepper, corn flour

Sauce Mix:

- 1 tbsp minced ginger
- 1/2 tsp minced garlic
- 2 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- a few dashes white pepper
- 1/3 tsp sugar
- 1/2 bowl warm water
- 1 tbsp cooking wine (cook used rice wine)

Cooking Method:

1. Rinse fish and pat dry. Sprinkle some salt, a few dashes of white pepper and a sprinkle of corn flour over the fish skin and in the stomach. Use fingers to gently rub the seasoning on the fish.

2. Cut a few slits on both sides of the fish and insert a piece of cut spring onion into each slit. Stuff a few pieces of cut spring onions and a few pieces of ginger into the fish stomach. Put fish on a plate and in a steamer and steam over high heat for 8 minutes.

3. In the meanwhile, heat up 2 tbsp oil in a saucepan. Stir fry minced ginger and garlic until fragrant, then add in the rest of the sauce mix (except the rice wine). Bring the mixture to a boil. Turn off heat then add rice wine.

4. After fish is steamed for 8 minutes, pour ginger sauce in Step (3) over the fish and steam for another 5 minutes. (If you have a flatter fish, steam for less time.)

5. Remove fish from steamer and garnish with spring onions and red chilli.

6. Serve with plain white rice. Ginger sauce tastes very fragrant when mixed with rice because of the addition of the rice wine.

Enjoy the Steamed Fish In Ginger Sauce. J liked the sauce a lot. So did the cook.