designer . dreamer . lover . daughter . friend

Hahahaha… OMG it has been 3 months since I last posted? Honestly I thought this blog is dead for good. But life has been picking up and I’m back to my usual self. You know, the crappy, joking and happy person that I am.

If not for Terence asking me for the recipe of the lotus soup I cooked via Twitter (BTW I’m very active on Twitter! Follow me there la… Same username), I don’t think I would be writing.

Anyhoo, I was actually very lazy to cook and take pics. I’ve long past the era of taking pics everywhere I go and post on my beloved (and used to be loved by others) blog. It’s so dead, I feel sad. Even my camera is an old Casio 3.2MP laopok cam that I had bought 5yrs ago when I first enrolled in NYP. It was bought with my own money and till this day it is still functioning! Long live you Dinosaur! The boyfriend has since upgraded to a dont-know-how-many-MP Lumix and got himself a new Mac Desktop.

I looked through my SD card and found so many forgotten memories it is madness. Maybe I’ll post random pictures here.

Ok, stop the crap, let’s get started with Cooking your very own Delicious Lotus Soup!

Before I start, I would like to add that my grandmother (who lives in Malaysia) cooks very tasty soups. I’ve never been someone who needs to cook so I always stare at her in admiration each time she brews the most tasty soup on Earth. When I asked her how to cook, she always tells me “Like that lor..” -_-

Like what?! It was rocket science to me. I felt I would never achieve the same taste, and I felt I’m destined to be so since my 3rd aunt always tells me that she follows the steps and ingredients my grandma does but has never quite achieved the same taste. I can secretly attest to that cos well, I tasted the food la.

Why I never learn from my mom? My mom is the worst cook in the world, but I always eat what she cooked cos I was so lazy to buy food so no matter how bad I would still eat. Her lotus soup tastes nothing like a lotus soup, I think it is out of love, she would add extra ingredients like red dates and alot alot of things. In the end the soup tastes like some weird hybrid instead of its pure original goodness. Whatever she cooks it always end up this way because she adds too many things that aren’t supposed to be there. I gave up trying to tell her long ago. Just eat.

I had not set off to cook lotus soup. Ever since I started living on my own (bad things with it – loneliness, no one to wash my clothes etc etc but peace comes with it too), I started with simple potato soup. Not that I know how to cook. But i got so sick of eating outside food that one day I stomped to the supermarket and bought my own ingredients and came back to experiment.

I mean, how wrong could it get right? I basically just recalled what I saw in a soup and dumped everything in. All those childhood years of watching Fang Tai, Yan Can Cook and Jamie Oliver paid off. Not that Jamie Oliver has any credit in this Chinese soup. I’m just saying.

I never look back since and got more and more adventurous with cooking. I’m naturally a curious person and anything to do with art (yes I feel that food is art!) always got me very interested. Just that I was too dependent and lazy when I was living with my parents. Now no choice liao lor…

One day I was at NTUC Hougang Mall trying to get ingredients for Tom Yam soup but wth, the ingredients like damn hard to find! The NTUC so big and so many kinds of vegetables also don’t have the ones I need to get. Just as I was bored I saw peanuts. All tightly packed in a yellow drawstring bag. I suddenly got the inspiration to attempt at Lotus Soup. But wth??? No lotus around. SO BIG don’t have something so basic??? I always see it in the NTUC at SingPost (near my place) and that NTUC is considered small one lor….

I didn’t abandon the idea and one day at SingPost, I bought it.

WTH? I still haven’t started on the recipe.

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Ok! What you need:

1) Pork Ribs (cannot don’t have man)
2) 2 Large Onions
3) Peanuts
4) Lotus Root

That’s it! The ingredients are damn simple, did you expect more?

First, soak the pork ribs in salted water. Don’t ask me why. I think I develop this habit of doing so cos my mom always tells me to soak things in salted water before cooking to fend off whatever germs that comes with it. Not sure how true is that or rather it works but better to play safe right? hahahaha later die. I always plan to do this first so that by the time I’m done with peeling, chopping and whatnot the pork ribs can be removed to cook!

Next, cut the ends of the Lotus Roots, peel and cut it across the width. So they look like this:

Then, deshell the peanuts. Yes lao niang actually did that one by one. So sian! Wth. I was so bored repeating this process. Btw I wasn’t sure if it was the correct peanuts to use when I first bought them. (after soup was cooked I found out it’s right la) First time I deshell them I actually put one in my mouth and WTH! So plain and nothing like those Camel brand peanuts that are so tasty. I don’t know why the difference here and could only rely on faith that it would turn out ok (which thankfully it did so I’m writing this entry).

Bring the pot of water to the boiling point and just briefly toss your pork ribs inside. I think I always remember this step when I watched Fang Tai and I did it without knowing why I did that the first time. After I put in then I know why. Omg the water was so dirty, you wouldn’t want it in your mouth. So just let them take a quick bath in the hot water. Fish them out and put one side.

Boil the water again, after it has reached a boiling point, put all the ingredients in!

Brew it for some hours (up to you). How I gauge that it’s ready to be served is when the lotus roots and pork ribs take the colour of the skin of the peanuts (reddish brown). That’s how I know. Also found out that the colour came from the peanuts after the first time I cooked it.

Add salt to taste. Viola!

I must say, it tasted like granny’s… Not being biased! :)

I WILL SKIN THIS BLOG SOON. WTH DO so many designs for clients and yet when it comes to my own it’s damn CUI. I cannot stand looking at this monster.