This recipe is my attempt to recreate Chinese restaurant style sweetcorn soup. I posted a photo of the finished dish on social media and was amazed to receive several requests for the recipe. I wasn’t prepared for this, so I’m sorry but I don’t have any of my more usual step-by-step photos with the instructions this time.
It may well be that some of the ingredients I’ve chosen are those used in Chinese food, but are not authentic to this dish, but I wanted a soup which wasn’t too bland given the main ingredients are sweetcorn and stock. If my recipe isn’t quite right, then I apologise. This is very much my take on this soup, made for my taste. Absolutely no disrespect was intended.
I have made this soup with chicken and egg. I have been advised you can make it more luxurious by adding crab meat.
I have used Hong brand creamed corn. Your local Chinese grocers should sell cans of creamed corn and some supermarkets sell it. If you can’t get it, then you might have to use a can of regular sweetcorn and blitz it in a blender with a small amount of milk and/or cornflour mixed with water.
I have used homemade vegetable stock to make this soup. You do not need to, and you can use either a stock pot or a stock cube. I will indicate in the instructions what to do if you are using pots or cubes.
You can find ginger paste in the supermarket, and I would have used fresh ginger had I not run out of it!
Shaosing (or Shaoxing) rice wine is a hero ingredient for Chinese food. It adds depth of flavour and complexity to your cooking. It is very useful for creating Chinese style marinades. I would advise you to try to seek it out from a Chinese grocery story (although some supermarkets sell it), but if you can’t get hold of it or don’t want to invest in it for a single recipe, just omit it. Don’t substitute for something else as it won’t be the same. Obviously, if you do not consume alcohol for any reason, miss this ingredient out.
Serves 2 people as lunch/dinner or serves 4 as a starter
Ingredients
2 chicken thigh, deskinned and deboned
1 can creamed corn
1 teaspoon ginger paste (or a half inch piece of ginger peeled and grated finely)
1 tablespoon Shaosing rice wine
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
700 millilitres of vegetable stock (or chicken stock)
1 tablespoon of cornflour, dissolved in 2 tablespoons of chicken stock, in a small bowl
2 eggs, beaten and left in a separate bowl
2 spring onions, sliced, including as much of the greens as you can manage
Method
In a small pan, cover the chicken thighs generously in water, bring to the boil and then simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the chicken and when cool enough to handle, chop into small dice. If you are not using homemade stock, you might want to save the water and use it to make up chicken or vegetable stock using either a stock cube or stock pot. Leave the chicken to one side.
Put the stock in a saucepan and heat up. Once hot, but not boiling, add the creamed sweetcorn, ginger, soy and Shaosing. The heat will drop because the sweetcorn is room temperature. You need to keep the heat on it so that it is piping hot but not boiling.
When it is hot, add the chicken and sweetcorn/stock blend. Mix thoroughly. Ensure that it gets back to a hot, but not boiling temperature. (If you are using leftover chicken from the fridge, you might want to make sure you give the chicken a few minutes to get heated up. This is necessary to avoid food poisoning.)
Get the beaten eggs ready. Swirl the soup and slowly drizzle the egg into the soup. It should form coagulated threads almost immediately. If it doesn’t do so, then the soup isn’t hot enough, so increase the heat, wait and try again. Keep the soup moving and swirling while you then slowly pour in the remaining beaten egg.
When you can see that all the egg has turned into cooked threads of protein, the soup is ready. Dish up into bowls and top with the spring onions.
Enjoy while it is hot. The cooked egg is not particularly suitable for reheating, so eat the soup now.
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