Chicken and sweetcorn soup
Serves 4 (or 2 very hungry people!)
1 tin creamed corn
Canola oil
2 spring onions
20 cent size chunk of ginger
2 chicken breasts cut into chunks
1 tablespoon mirin (Asian food shop)
1 teaspoon salt
500ml chicken stock or water
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
1 tablespoon cornflour mixed with 2 tablespoons water and 2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 egg
1 tablespoon black vinegar (Asian food shop)
Blitz spring onion and ginger on 6, scrape down
Add 1 tablespoon Canola oil and cook on speed 2 at 100 C for 3 minutes
Add chicken and blitz on 6-7 until minced
Add mirin and salt and chicken stock
Cook for 15 minutes on 100 speed 1 or 2 (enough to keep it circulating slowly)
Tip out some hot soup into a cup and add the cornflour mixture, stir, then tip this back into TMX
Reduced temperature to 90 C and mix for 1 minute on speed 1 or 2. Turn off heat
Mix egg with a pinch of salt and some oil, and pour on top of soup. Mix on 3-4 for about 30 seconds
Test for seasoning before serving, I like to put some sesame droplets on top
I love chicken and sweetcorn soup. Once when I was 19, I had glandular fever and this was the only thing I could eat. My poor Mum and Dad had to drive daily to a distant restaurant to get it for me - the local one had a yukky version which I did not crave! This is much nicer than those bright highlighter-yellow fluorescent versions you get in cheap Chinese restaurants. This recipe is derived from a crab soup recipe of Stephanie Alexander, who in turn has tweaked it from Irene Kuo. I hate crab, hence the chicken. Stephanie uses fresh sweetcorn, you can but I find the texture is wrong for this soup. Irene uses tinned corn (not creamed corn) but again I think creamed corn gives the right consistency. It would be easy to adapt the recipe and use fresh corn though, maybe cook it a bit longer. I think this has to be my favourite soup.