Soto Ayam Medan (Medanese Style Chicken Soup)

 

Medan Must Eat - Soto Medan

After a long day at work, all I can think of is going home for my Mum's delicious Soto. Soto is a traditional yellow soup commonly found in Indonesia. It has a strong distinct flavour mainly from Tumeric and other spices. However, different regions have their own version of Soto. Some of the popular soto are Soto Betawi, Soto Madura, Soto Bandung and Soto Medan (All named after the geographic regions where they were originated from).

I personally think Soto Medan is the best among all, not because it's coming from my hometown, but because it has a hint of coconut milk inside which gives an extra richness to the soup, without being too heavy or fatty. The typical meat used in Soto Medan is either chicken or beef.

 My mum is a non beef eater, so the choice of meat is obvious...

Soto Medan is never complete without Perkedel (Indonesian potato croquette). Perkedel is a fried potato cake made from mashed potato, chopped celery and some other ingredients. Beef is commonly added in preparing Perkedel too. It's very simple to make and is an excellent side dish/appetiser.

 Perkedel (Potato croquette)

Even though I don't have my mum's recipe here, I managed to find the recipes of Soto Medan (here) and Perkedel (here) for you guys. Do try these delicious Soto Medan and Perkedel at home. They make the perfect lunch/dinner dish during a cold winter day.

 Soto Medan (chicken)

 

Soto can be served with vermicelli, but I still think the best way to eat Soto is to have it with plain steamed rice plus some crackers on the side.

Kimchi Soup (Kimchi Jigae)

“There is nothing like soup. It is by nature eccentric: no two are ever alike, unless of course you get your soup in a can.” Laurie Colwin, 'Home Cooking' (1988)

I hate to admit this, but winter is just around the corner. How I wish autumn can just stay a bit longer. So when the air begins to take on a chill as winter approaches, how do we keep ourselves warm? Wear thicker clothes? Tick. Wear jacket? Tick. Heater? Tick. Snug under the blanket? Tick.

How bout a bowl of steaming hot soup? BIG TICK!

There's nothing like sipping a bowl of hearty, thick and rich soup to keep us warm right down to the bones. As a fan of korean food, I keep myself warm with one of the most popular korean soups, Kimchi soup (Kimchi Jigae). This soup is reallly appetising and very easy to make as the kimchi does most of the flavouring for you. It tastes best if it's cooked along time but it's understood that some of us don't have the time as we usually cook after work. So just cook it as long as you can.

The measurement below is for a medium sized pan.

KIMCHI SOUP

Ingredients:

- 500gm packed Kimchi (can be found in Asian/Korean grocery)

- Silken tofu

- Pork Belly (sliced very thinly)

- 4 cloves garlic (minced)

- 1/2 sliced onion

- 1 tbsp cooking wine (I used Japanese Mirin)

- 1 tbsp  Korean chilli paste

- 2 tsp soya sauce

- A handful of spring onion (chop as desired size)

- 1 tbsp cooking oil

- 1 1/2-2 tbsp Korean bean paste ( I was running out of this, so I used the japanese miso, it tastes similar)

- water

- 2 Tbsp korean dried chilli flakes or chilli powder (optional)

- Fresh chinese cabbage (optional)

Method:

1) Heat up the pan until hot, add in the cooking oil , then add in the pork belly and onion. Stir and let the fat render out of the pork, add the kimchi and garlic. Saute until it fragrant. Then add in the bean paste/miso, cooking wine, Korean chilli paste, keep stirring for another 5 minutes. Then add in the water and make sure to add in all the juice from the kimchi.

2) Bring soup to boil, add the optional Korean chilli flakes/powder and cabbage. Turn down the heat and let it simmer until pork and kimchi are tender.  If you find the soup is not salty enough, you can use the bean paste/miso until you get your desired taste.

3) 10 minutes before serving the soup add in the tofu and leave it to simmer.

4) When you are ready to serve, add in the spring onions and give it a quick stir.

5) Serve along with steamed rice.

Yes, there's something magical about this hearty soup. The warmth that fills your stomach, to your house and your heart with comfort.

 

Grilled Orange Chicken + White Radish Soup

"Happy and successful cooking doesn't rely only on know-how; it comes from the heart, makes great demands on the palate and needs enthusiasm and a deep love of food to bring it to life." (Georges Blanc, Ma Cuisine des Saisons)

 

I printed this recipe online a while ago. This is a delicious and easy to follow recipe. This can be the perfect grilled chicken for your BBQ next time. The original recipe required the chicken to be grilled for 45 mins, but because I want to cook fast, I actually pan fried the chicken first, then I put in the oven to grill for 10-15 minutes. I think by pan frying the chicken first, it actually makes the chicken less dry, so it's up to you how you like your chicken to be and you can always try both ways to see which one you prefer.

Grilled Orange Chicken

Ingredients:

- 5 chicken drumsticks ( I chopped into half, you can keep the drumstick as a whole too)

- 1 clove garlic (minced)

- 2 stalks of spring onions (finely chopped)

- 1 tsp minced ginger

- 8 tbsp fresh orange juice

- 1 1/2 tsp orange zest

- chopped chillies (desired amount)

- 1 tbsp sugar ( I used brown sugar)

- 1 tbsp soya sauce

- 1 tbsp dark soya sauce (sweet soya sauce)

- 1 tsp chinese wine ( I used Shao Xing)

- 1/4 tsp salt

- 1/2 tsp sesame oil

- 1 tsp peanut oil

Note: You can always increase or decrease the ingredients and sauces according to taste when you pan fry the chicken. Make sure you don't add too much ginger, as too much ginger will overpowered the flavour of the orange.

Method:

1) In a bowl, whisk together all the ingredients and sauces. Mix well. Add the chicken and mix well. Ideally, the chicken is to be marinated in the refrigerator for 4 to 5 hours, but I didn't have that much time, I actually left it for half and hour only. And turning the chicken pieces occasionally if you can.

2) Heat up the pan with cooking oil, add in the chicken, keep stirring until the chicken is cooked.

3) While cooking, preheat the oven at 200 Celcius. Once, chicken is cooked, place the chicken on a baking tray or roasting and spead some of the marination sauce on the chicken and roast. You can add more marination sauce over chicken after 5-10 minutes. Grill for another 5 minutes until chicken turn brown.

And to complement this tasty chicken, is a plain and simple white radish soup. White radish is a quite versatile vegetable that can be cooked in many ways, such as the turnip cake and stir fried. It is known to benefit the digestive system, for diabetics, to stimulate appetite, to clear runny nose and to ease sore joints. However, it's believe to have no benefits for patients under medical treatment as it prevents the absorption of the medical values. Give this soup a try, it's so easy!

White Radish Soup

Ingredients:

- 1 white radish (cut into large chunk)

- Pork ribs/Pork bones/ Chicken drumsticks/Chicken bones 

- A Handful of red dates

- Some dried scallops (optional)

Method:

1) Bring to boil water in pot. Add Pork/Chicken part, red dates and dried scallops, cook until you get your desired soup broth.

2)Add in white radish, cook until white radish soften, add salt if desired.

3)Turn off the heat and enjoy your soup.

Spinach and Corn Soup

If we are what we eat, with all the genetically modified and imitation foods we now eat, what the heck are we?" (Anonymous)

One of my friend asked me for a nutritious soup recipe, straight away this recipe came up to my mind. An optional ingredient in the recipe is to add in fried egg, my friend was astounded when I told her that, her response was,"Can you actually add fried egg in soup?" 

I answered her,"Of course, why not, it tastes really good too".

I used English Spinach for this recipe. Spinach is full of vitamin C and high in fibre too. This soup is good for children as it's full of nutrition.

You can use chicken drumstick or chicken bone or can even exclude them in this recipe. I just used chicken bone to prepare the broth.

Prepare Fried egg:

- Ingredients: 2 eggs (beaten) and oil

- Method: Just heat up the wok, add in oil, add in the beaten egg and stir fry until colour become golden.

Spinach and Corn Soup

Ingredients:

- 2 corn on cob

- 1 or 2 bunch of english spinach

- 1 chicken bone (optional)

- Fried onions (for garnish)

- Deep Fried asian anchovies (ikan teri), you might not be able to find this in Australia, but you should be able to find the bigger one (ikan bilis) in asian groceries, or if you can't find one just opt out this ingredient.

-salt (according to taste)

Method:

-Boil water in a pan.

-Add in chicken drumstick/bone, simmer in low heat for at least half and hour. The longer you boil it the more tasty it is.

-Add in the corn, and simmer until corn soften.

-Add in the spinach and turn off the fire, the spinach should soften very fast, but if you are not going to serve the soup right away, make sure you add in the spinach just before you want to serve the soup, as we don't want to overcooked the spinach and we want to keep the nutrition of the spinach.

-Season with salt if you like.

-Serve the soup in a bowl, add the fried egg, garnish with fried onions and the fried anchovies.