Chinese Watercress Soup

Watercress soup
A healthy cooling soup for the hot weather.
Watercress is good for its cooling properties, while wolfberries (goji berries) is well know for its immunity benefits.

Ingredients required (I am cooking for 10 persons)
Ingredients A
Chicken/pork of your preference (I use frozen 5 frozen drumsticks)
Watercress - 3 bunches (3 times of the above picture)

Ingredients B
Chinese Ham (Optional) - 4 slices (I used the Jing Huo Tui from Taiwan)
Garlic (4 big ones)
Red dates (24 pcs)
Honey Dates (4 pcs)
Water - Enough for 10 persons (About 12 rice bowls)

Ingredients C 
Wolfberries / goji berries -1 tablespoon(added only at the last 5 minutes)
Salt to taste

There are no scientific way of cooking soup compared with baking. 

If you like your soup to taste meaty, you add more meat. For me, we do not like meat. So I just add enough for family members who wants meat and just enough for soup to taste sweet.

Chinese Ham - If you are able to get those dark coloured ones, you can put in 3 slices and it will taste as good. The chinese ham is added to give you the restaurant standard kind of soup. The aroma.

Watercress - I bought from Minimart Hong Mao/Ang Mo. 1 bunch cost me only 85cents. At Shengsiong, it cost you $1.20 per bunch. I used 3 bunches cause we love to eat the veges.

Blanch your meat - This is very important when boiling soup. Without this process, the soup will have an awful smell.  

I usually start cooking my soup in this order

Step 1

Place ingredients B in a soup pot. Start at the slowest fire to let it warm up. By doing so, we are allowing some time for the dried ingredients to soften up and release the sweetness into the water. We are also cutting short the boiling time when we need the soup.

Step 2

Prepare and clean the meat. I will remove the fats and skin to reduce oil in soup.

Wash the watercress. Though these watercress looked clean when purchased, they are actually quite dirty. When you wash them and look at the water after wash, you will understand. (I normally wash 2 times)

After Step 2 is done, I will proceed with Step 3.

Step 3 - blanch the meat
Use another pot, big enough to blanch the meat. Put in enough water for the meat. Add 2 teaspoon of salt.
Put in to boil under high fire.
Once the water boil, put all the meat in the boiling water.
Cover if the water stop boiling.
Once the heat is high enough and water start boiling, remove the lid and let it boil at very high temperature for at least 4 minutes. You will see there are particles floating on top of the water and all oil if your meat has a lot of fats. High temperature will help to remove the blood residue as well. So we will minimise the "dirt" floating on top of our soup and smell. Some people call it the "refrigerator" smell.

Step 4 - Transfer the meat to the main soup after Blanching
While you are doing the blanching of meat, check on your soup pot (from Step 1) if the main soup is boiling. It is time to turn on high fire to allow it to boil.
Transfer the meat to the main soup pot (from Step 1) after blanching.

Step 5

When the water boil after step 4, add in all the watercress.

It is all right if the vege looks a lot when you first place them into the pot.

It will shrink after boiling. I usually ensure water will submerge the vegetables and ingredients.

Once the soup come to a boil, turn to the lowest heat possible and leave it to simmer for another 60 to 45 mins. Add salt, taste to your liking and turn off the fire.

I will leave the soup aside (to settle) for 1 hour.

Step 6

Place soup to boil, add wolfberries and boil for another 5 minutes. Let it settle for another 30 minutes. 

Before serve

Heat it up again for the piping hot feel. Before I serve, I will add in hot water if I feel the soup is not enough for the people drinking them (some cheating hints). Serve.

Hints - Soup needs to rest awhile before you are able tot taste its richness. Thus I normally boil the soup 4 hours before my dinner time.

For eg. I will prepare my soup at 3pm. My soup at Step 5 will be ready by 4.30pm (So if you are slow you need to start earlier)

I will do Step 6 at 6pm so that my soup can have more time to rest. 

My family have dinner at 8pm, so I will do the before serve at 7.30pm. As my soup is a big pot, I need more time to get the soup boiling again.

If you are preparing a smaller portion of soup, more boiling time is required. Normally 45 minutes is required to ensure the taste reach to its max. Unlike bigger pot soup, small pot soup will not be able to maintain its heat for a longer period.

Do ensure you maintain your soup at above 60 degrees Celsius. If cool, not more than 2 hours to ensure your soup is not subject to bacteria attack.