I like Mondays and Wednesdays a lot because they are my days free from tuitions so I have more time to look into my house matters like cooking and washing laundry and getting the house into a bit of order.
Especially Wednesdays
I have very long days on Tuesdays because I have 3 classes every Tuesday. By the time I got home, I am usually drained. On Wednesdays, I get to slowly think of what to cook as a form of destressing.
Today everything was unplanned except for one dish which was requested by my eldest son. He asks for his favorite potato dish with meat every week and has specially requested for it today because he asked me if I have no tuition, can I cook that for him? More than happy to fulfill his wishes.
Won't be talking about that dish today because I have shared it some time ago. Today is focused mainly on a dish that was unintentionally cooked the first time in my kitchen....
The West Lake Beef Soup 西湖牛肉羹
West Lake is a place in China. This dish originated from there. I haven't been to this part of China but this is a recipe I randomly googled and clicked into online when I was looking for a soup recipe for minced beef. It was my "accidental" discovery from China Sichuan Food.
However I improvised a bit from that original recipe because I was running a bit late to fetch my eldest son from school so I needed to do a quick one after some of the ingredients I ordered had arrived later.
Ingredients needed:
- Minced beef 300g
- White tofu
- Shiitake mushrooms
- Minced ginger
- Rice Wine
- Beef Cube Stock
- 3 egg whites
- Scallions
- Corn Starch
I firstly marinated the minced beef with some salt and a bit of rice wine. I leave it to be marinated for 20 minutes.
While waiting for the beef to be marinated, I prepared my corn starch mixed with water. I did 5 teaspoons of corn starch with 5 teaspoons of water. This way, the corn starch will not clump up compared to if we add it directly to the boiling soup.
Then, I chopped up the other ingredients like scallions and mushrooms.
I prepared the egg white. Egg white only is preferred in order to not cloud the soup up later.
I thinly sliced the tofu.
When all ingredients are prepled up, it is time to boil some water with a beef stock cube.
When the beef stock cube has incorporated with the water, add in the marinated minced beef.
Next ingredient to go into the soup is the sliced shiitake mushrooms.
Oopps maybe a bit too much shiitake mushrooms hahah! But I love mushrooms! Add in some minced ginger too.
When everything started to boil, lower down the heat to a simmer. This is when I slowly added in the egg whites.
After the egg whites were added and before they solidify, quickly use a chopstick to stir it to create an egg drop into the soup. It will form beautiful small strips of white.
Finally I added in the tofu and by now we need to avoid stirring so the tofu may not break up further.
When it is cooked up, garnish with some green scallions!
And it is done!!!
While preparing this dish, my speaker in my kitchen was playing a very nice melodic instrumental song by some gu zheng 古筝, which is a string instrument by the China Chinese culture. This came perfectly and caused me to be immersed in it, as if I really were in China hahaha.
When I tasted the soup, I was immediately WOW-ed by it because it tasted like the La-mian soup I like from the China cuisine. The flavour is just so rich! I felt like i have replicated something that I have never intended to cook and discovered a secret recipe! Absolutely love this soup!
I was really diligent today. Aside from this soup, I cooked a shabu sliced pork with potatoes, an egg with ladies fingers and my mum-in-law gifted us with some super delicious braised beef with tripes!!! Today was really a very very happy tummy day!
I made myself a little "dessert" too which was red dates drink with gojiberries and rose, with some peach gum.