I looked around for the English translation of this commonly used vegetable in the Philippines which we call “upo” and  almost identified it as winter melon.  Apparently, the winter melon is  “kundol” back home.  This vegetable pictured above is a bottle gourd.  It’s a light and delicately flavored vegetable we often use sauted with pork and shrimps or dried fish. 

A Chinese friend of mine said that a winter melon is a good vegetable to “…keep you cool when you’re heaty” and I found that description to be so accurate.  Just like the winter melon, which is actually a gourd and not a melon, ”upo” makes a great soup in the summer or the tropics and perhaps does lower your body temperature, though I have no proof of that.

This time, I thought I’d try cooking it using a Chinese-style recipe that commonly uses winter melon.  It turned out really good for something I just came up with based on what I’ve had in the past.  I will have to do more research on a written recipe and then make improvements.  Perhaps I could add more vegetables for aesthetics and improve the color and texture of the dish. 

My soup was also milky which is a big no-no in  winter melon soups.  I will have to make changes in my cooking method.  That same Chinese friend I mentioned showed me how particular they were with making sure the broth was clear by parboiling the meat (it was pork in that particular case) prior to cooking.  The froth that came up to the top was not just thrown away, all the liquid was thrown out.  So he used only a small amount of water to parboil the meat.  Accoridng to him, the blood and impurities from the meat is removed in the parboiling stage leaving you with a clear broth in the final dish.  Those impurities he said were not good for your health.  I’ve always thought it was a waste to throw out that good stock and probably tried it only once.  But yes, doing it the Chinese way does leave you with a cleaner-tasting broth that’s clear and pleasing.

For now, this is a good and easy recipe when you’re in the mood for a Chinese soup that satisfies.

Chicken and Bottle Gourd Soup

2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, sliced thin in 1-inch strips

1 small bottle gourd, peeled and sliced about 1 x 1/4 in. strips (seeded if they are more mature)

1 2-in. piece of ginger, sliced thin (more if you want the soup hotter)

6 pieces dried Chinese mushrooms. rehydrated and sliced in strips

4 c. water

about 2 tbsps. chicken bouillon

salt to taste

Put all ingredients in a stock pot and bring to a boil.  Simmer and cook until the gourd is translucent, about 20 minutes in high altitude.  Correct for seasoning.

Serve immediately.

It’s getting cooler in Colorado!  Autumn officially arrives tonight (as of this writing), the 22nd of September.  But we’ve been getting some cool days for quite a few weeks now.  Today was a particularly cold and wet one. 

A thick soup sounded perfect for lunch so I scrounged around my pantry and freezer to see what I could put together.  Luckily, I had leftover diced ham, frozen chopped spinach, some Goya chorizo links and dry lentils.  Sounds like the start of a good soup….

This soup is a no-name, no-recipe soup really.  It’s based on the Portugese Sopa de Grao and the Filipino Munggo Guisado.  What I did was throw in some chopped onion (a quarter of a cup), about a quarter cup of diced ham, half  a chorizo sausage which I also diced  and a cup and a half of dried lentils. Covered all that with some cold water, added sea salt and black pepper and let that simmer away on the stove.  I dropped in a whole pack of chopped frozen spinach when the lentils were done.  Seasoned it with salt and pepper and paprika.

Ladled the soup into individual bowls, sprinkled with more paprika and extra virgin olive oil.  Perfect to warm you up in the middle of a cold day!

I finally made a Chicken Mami that satisfied my craving for this very common Filipino dish.  The noodles were always the key, for me anyway, and it so happened that I found a good brand of noodles at the Filipino Sari-Sari Store today.

Chicken and noodles go so well together every country probably has its own version.  In Southeast Asia, the chicken noodle soup you’ll find is most certainly Chinese in origin.  Mie is the Chinese word for noodles.  So in Indonesia, Malaysia  and Singapore, this dish is called Mie Ayam or Chicken Noodle.  It’s only the Philippines where there came a slight change. 

Filipinos will forever call our chicken noodle soup “Mami” owing to an enterprising Chinese peddler and later restaurant owner who added his name to the dish.  His name was Ma Mon Luk, as were his restaurants, and the  noodle soup he offered was called Mami.

The noodles I used are from another popular Fil-Chinese chain of restaurants, Ling Nam.  The package said “DO NOT FREEZE” but I found it in the freezer section and I think that didn’t do the noodles any good.  I had to poach it in  hot water to heat.  Frankly, it got too soft for my taste.  I prefer my mami noodles to have some structure and bite. 

This recipe I used is based on Rosario Fabian’s recipe in her cookbook, “Aling Charing Filipino & Foreign Recipes.”  It’s very simple and the resulting dish is light.  I made a few changes and made sure I started with my own chicken broth that was  flavorful but free of grease.

Chicken Mami

14 oz. egg noodles

4 skinless/boneless chicken thighs

1.5  quarts homemade chicken broth

1 small white onion, minced

1 medium carrot, sliced thin on the diagonal

1/4 head savoy cabbage, cut in thin strips

3 green onion, sliced thinly on the diagonal

2-3 cloves garlic, mashed and fried till golden brown.

1 boiled egg

Start by boiling the chicken in about 1 c. salted water until all pinkness is gone.  Don’t overboil.  Stringy and dry chicken meat is not what you want.  Take the chicken out of the cooking liquid. Add the broth to the same pot at this point.  Cool the chicken enough to handle then shred. Set aside.

Bring your stock to a simmer and then add the onions.  Check for seasoning.  Keep it simmering while you boil your egg in  salted water in a medium stockpot.  Set the egg aside to cool. Peel and slice. 

In the same pot you boiled your egg, poach the carrots then the cabbage.  Poach the carrots about 3-5 minutes and the cabbage just until it turns a bright green.

Prepare your noodles according to package instructions.  Transfer to individual bowls.  Around the noodles, distribute the shredded chicken, poached vegetables and spring onions.  Top with a slice of hard-boiled egg.  Ladle the hot, simmering chicken broth over this.  Top with some fried garlic and serve immediately.

Serves 4.

This is a third of the brown stock I made for the onion soup I posted about the other day.  I’ve bottled it up like the precious liquid it is and is now sitting in the freezer waiting for the next dish.  I haven’t decided what that’s going to be just yet.

This is the first time I made this brown stock.  I usually just boil whatever leftovers I have for a simple meat stock or use a bouillon.

There’s only one step that differentiates brown stock from ordinary meat stock and that’s  the roasting process.But what a big difference it made, not only in the color but in the flavor as well.

Brown Stock:

3 lbs. beef shank meat

3 to 4 lbs. cracked beef bones/soup bones

2 onions, halved

2 scrubbed quartered carrots

2 tsp. salt

2 celery stalks

boquet garni: 1/4 tsp. thyme, 1 bay leaf, 6 parsley sprigs, 2 unpeeled garlic cloves, 2 whole cloves

Optional:  2 washed leeks

Heat oven to 450F.  Arrange the meat, bones and vegetables in a roasting pan and place in the middle portion of the oven.  Turn the ingredients occassionally so they will brown evenly, in 30 to 40 minutes.

Remove from the oven and drain fat out of roasting pan.  Transfer into an 8 or 10 quart soup kettle.  Pour a cup or two of the water to the pan, set over heat (or back in the still hot oven). Scrape up all the brown bits at the bottom.  Pour all that into the kettle.

Cover the ingredients in the kettle with water.  Bring to a simmer, skim and add the salt, celery and bouquet garni.  Simmer the stock for 4 to 5 hours.  More than that and it won’t make any difference in the outcome of your broth, unless it’s to reduce the volume.  Strain the stock out of the kettle into a bowl.

TIPS:

Do not let the broth boil, this will make the fat and scum incorporate into the broth and make it cloudy.

Don’t cover the kettle airtight unless the ingredients have cooked completely or the broth will turn sour.

From the first time I had this soup years ago at the old Bistro Burgos in Makati, I fell for it.  The last time I had it was at Johnnys Cafe in Omaha which was sometime last year when Spouse and I were on a business trip there. Steak houses should have the best onion soups since they have all the ingredients to make the perfect beef stock.  Johnny’s is an institution in Omaha, having been around since 1922 – that’s a lot of experience churning out steaks and onion soups.  They are located right in the middle of where the old stockyards used to be and have this 1950′s, stepping back in time feel about the place.  If you watched Jack Nicholson’s “About Schmidt”, you might remember the restaurant where Schmidt’s retirement party was held – that was Johnny’s Cafe.  They serve fantastic, perfectly aged steaks and the best onion soup I’ve ever had – before this one of course.

I based this recipe on one from Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” cookbook.  There were a couple of changes to her original recipe though.  Like using gruyere cheese instead of Swiss or parmesan and using red wine instead of white.  However, I heard somewhere that a good onion soup has to start with a good beef stock, preferably made from scratch, so I started with that.  This soup was actually cooking the day before with that rich brown stock, a recipe from the same cookbook.

Ohhhh, but it was so worth it.   Humility aside, this really was the best onion soup I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting.  It has to be attributed to the fact that the recipe from Julia Child was very well written and explained.  It couldn’t have been my kitchen skills. There were actually times during the cooking when I mentally chided myself for thinking I could pull it off but I prodded on like a dutiful student.

Let me clarify, I hate to brag….but this is one dish I never even considered making myself before I started this blog. It was so good, it was all I had for dinner because I didn’t want any other flavors in my mouth.  And what more could anyone ask for?  Imagine – a perfectly broiled gruyere crust hiding all the goodness underneath:  the croutons now softened with the rich broth,  then the sweet and soft, browned onions in that rich, dark brown brew with just the hint of red wine….oooh la la….I’m turning French as I write this!

It does take a lot of time as you’ll see in the recipe, which is why it won’t be a regular in our household.  The fact is, I can now say I have made it, using no shortcuts and no canned broths and it turned out darned good.  And that, my dears, makes me feel like a very accomplished unofficial cook.

French Onion Soup:

5 cups thinly cliced onions

3 tbsp. butter

1 tb. oil

Cook the onions slowly with the butter and oil in a covered, heavy-bottomed 4-quart saucepan for 15 minutes.

Uncover, raise heat to medium and stir in a teaspoon of salt and 1/4 tsp. sugar. Cook for 30-40 minutes stirring frequently until the onions have turned an even, deep golden brown.

Sprinkle in 3 tbsps. of flour and stir for 3 minutes.  At this point, don’t panic.  The bottom of your pot will look like a mess but it’s okay, it will get better – really.

Off the heat, blend in 2 quarts of boiling, brown stock.  Add half a cup of dry, red wine (I Used Merlot cause it was all I had, but it worked really well) and season to taste with salt and pepper.  The taste won’t be great at this point, it’s alright, it’ll be fine.  Simmer partially covered for 30-40 minutes or more, skimming occasionally.  Correct seasoning.

Garnishings:

Place 12 to 16 slices of French bread cut 1 inch thick, in one layer in a cookie sheet and and bake in a preheated 325F oven for about 30 minutes, until it is thoroughly dried and lightly browned.

Halfway through the baking, brush each side with olive oil and rub with a piece of garlic.

Assembly:

Ladle your hot soup into individual oven-proof bowls or ramekins.  Cover the top with a piece of the toasted French bread.  Then top with grated gruyere cheese – as much or as little as you want.  Place all your bowls on a jelly roll pan and bake for 20 minutes in a 325F oven.

Take the bowls out.  Set your oven to broil and put back your bowls of soup to lightly brown the cheese topping.  This will only take a few seconds so watch those tops. Serve immediately.

I’ve always been a soup person, and it’s a real surprise for me to find that not everyone is. Soups can be a whole, heavy meal in itself or a light lunch or in-between snack.  This soup of Portugese origins is a meal all by itself, light enough but substantial depending on how you make it.  Best of all, I think it’s pretty healthy.

The soup is called Sopa de Grao which translates to Cork-Stripper’s Pottage.  As you know, Portugal produces most of the world’s cork.  Cork is produced by first stripping the bark from the cork trees and hence the need for Cork-Strippers.  I can just imagine cork-strippers working under  the glare of the Portugese sun, while a big pot of Sopa cooks by a wood fire nearby.  Or do they have them delivered to the workplace these days?  You know…like that Soup Peddler on a bicycle from Austin, Texas…

Here’s the recipe for Sopa de Grao:

2 1/2 c Dried garbanzos, washed and sorted
2 qt .Cold water
4 med. Garlic cloves,  peeled and minced
4 lg Yellow onions, peeled and chopped
3 tbsp. vegetable  oil
3 med. red-skin potatoes, unpeeled & coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp. Crumbled leaf thyme
1/2 tsp. Ground coriander seeds
1 lg Bay leaf
1 qt Beef or chicken broth, preferably homemade
1/2 lb Pepperoni or Chorizo, if available: Portuguese chourico or  linguica, diced
1 c Finely chopped fresh spinach
1 1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 ts Freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp Olive oil for topping

Soak the garbanzos overnight in 6 cups of the water in a large heavy kettle. Next day, add the remaining 2 cups water, bring to a gentle boil, cover, and cook 4-to-5 hours or until the garbanzos are very tender.

Meanwhile, stir-fry the garlic and onions in the peanut oil in a second large, heavy kettle over moderate heat for 12-to-15 minutes until lightly browned. Add the potatoes and stir-fry 2-to-3 minutes; add the thyme, coriander, and bay leaf, turn the heat down low, and allow to mellow about 10 minutes. Pour in the broth, bring all to a gentle simmer, cover and cook slowly. As soon as you’ve set the 2 kettles to simmer, stir-fry the chorizo in a large heavy skillet 3-5 minutes, just until lightly browned and most of the drippings have cooked out. Drain the chorizo well, reserving 1 tablespoon of the drippings. Set aside.

Return 1 tablespoon drippings to the skillet, add the spinach and stir-fry 2-3
minutes over moderate heat just until glazed and intensely green; reserve. When the garbanzos are tender, puree 1/2 of them by buzzing 60 seconds in a food processor, adding only enough kettle liquid to puree them easily. Return the pureed garbanzos to the
kettle in which they cooked. Now puree the potato mixture in 2 batches, buzzing each 30 to 40 seconds in a food processor. Blend the potato mixture into the garbanzo mixture, add the reserved chorizo and spinach, cover, and simmer 30-to-40 minutes, just long
enough to mellow the flavors.

Season to taste with salt and pepper, remove the bay leaf, then smooth in the olive oil. Makes 6 to 8 Servings.