what a wonderful world: December 2009

Suzhou

see! the trees are all so well-protected during winter. The people will paint the bark with cement to prevent worms or insects from building homes in there.

i took this pic! nice rite?

my mum is so cute! she is the only one who wear 3/4 pants! haha

this is their custom! cool building rite?

shopping!!!! this is like their orchard road.

Looks pretty rite? Wait till you see what we had for dinner. By the way, this is only 6plus in the evening and it looked like 10pm le.

Braised chicken

seafood tofu

Spinach

DongPo Pork! The fats just melts in your mouth!

Some soup with silver bait fish

The total bill? Ard S$60 with tips included! Cheap right??? We were all so satisfied with the food that we went straight to taking pics instead of shopping.

This post is going to be all about cooking chicken porrridge and I am going to show you how easy it can be. Mum had a stomach flu so she can only eat something simple and light. That's why I decided to cook chicken porridge using the methods she once showed me.

Sally's Chicken Porridge

Ingredients (serves 2-3)

1 cup of rice
2 chicken drumsticks, skin removed
1 rectangular fishcake
Coriander (chinese parsley) (optional)
Fried Shallots (optional)
Sesame oil
Salt
Light soy sauce
Ajinomoto (abit) (optional for the health-concerned fellows)

As you can see, the ingredients are so easy to get.

Instructions

Boil water. Amount of water used depends on the portion you are cooking.
When the water starts boiling, put in the chicken drumsticks. The reason why we are using skinless chicken drumsticks is because we want it to be less oily. So the broth you cooked will be light and clear.
While leaving the drumsticks to be cooked, you can start preparing the ingredients.
Pan fry the fish cakes. You do not have to add in oil since all fishcakes are precooked and all you need is to get rid of all the germs on it. So slightly pan fry will do.
Cut the fishcakes into thin slices. Not too thin though.
Check on your chicken. Do not over cooked.
Then chop the coriander. This is for garnishing purposes. But I love how coriander tastes so I also add them in whatever I cook. Fried shallots is too much work so I am not using them in this case.
Use a knife to poke the chicken drumsticks. Make sure that no blood flows out means that the inner layers are cooked too.
Shred the drumsticks.
Do not pour away the water you used to cook the chicken cos that is your chicken broth. After removing all the flesh, put the bones back to boil.
After washing the rice, you can pour them in to cook with the broth. Your porridge will smell of chicken and flavourful than usual white porridge.
If you want to achieve congee, then you have to add in more water and keep stirring till your rice becomes soft.But for me, I like the usual thick one.
Now, you have to marinate the shredded chicken. Add in a few drops of sesame oil, some salt and pepper. It is all up toyour preference. If you like sesame oil then you add more.
Mix them using your hands. (faster what)
Stir the porridge every now and then to make sure that they don't stick to the base of the pot.
Serve the porridge when it's ready. The porridge can be quite bland so please add in soy sauce to taste. Or you can add ajinomoto and salt to your porridge while it's cooking.