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Hot and Sour Chicken Broth

Hot and Sour Chicken Broth

Open a book, any book. Ready? Is it a cookery book? Is it a book with soup recipes? Is it The Soup Book? Now, open it and find a recipe, one you haven't made before and one that won't require too much effort to find the ingredients. It's getting trickier, isn't it? Let's look in the Poulty, Game and Meat section. Aah! There's one and it's by Roopa Gulati, so there's a good chance we'll all enjoy the finished product. I looked at the ingredients: ginger or galangal, lime leaves, garlic, coriander (the stems!!!), lemon grass, chicken breasts, bird's eye chillies, shallots, lime juice, fish sauce, sweet chilli sauce, pak choi and bean sprouts. Yes, I could get anything I didn't already have at home. Off to the shops and then home.

I spent yesterday afternoon (20th October) baking for a cake sale: apple and fig cake, lemon and ginger cake, banana, coconut and walnut cake, and fudge. Phew! I was exhausted. An hour's rest and I was back in the kitchen. Roopa's introduction to the recipe contained the alluring words "made in minutes", but I wasn't fooled. There was a lot of peelings, shredding, chopping, slicing and squeezing to do before I could turn on the gas. At last I was ready to go. I poured stock into a large pan, then tipped in the sliced ginger, shredded lime leaves, chopped garlic and coriander stems, and the bruised lemon grass. As the mix heated up a deliciously tangy aroma arose. I had to strain this stock into a clean pan before adding the chicken, chillies, sugar, shallots, lime juice, fish sauce and chilli sauce. Once the chicken was cooked in went the pak choi, followed a few minutes later by the bean sprouts. It was ready to go.

I ladled the broth into the warmed bowls and we sat down. Wow! We all liked it. Think of a taste. Spicy, sour, sweet? All of them! A soup to make again? Yes. Definitely.

Any Buzz?

In answer to the question above, no, not really. I'm reading The Rage by Gene Kerrigan at present. It's not bad. I can manage a few paragraphs before I conk out at night. So far the only bee-related reference is to a block of flats called The Hive where a character called Snead lives with his grandfather.

And the Dublin Honey Show is coming up on Saturday 3rd November at Christ Church Hall in Rathgar. I'll see you there!



Minnie
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