I wanna start my blog, “Flowery Chinese Cooking” ,with my lovely chicken soup. Okay, have to admit, normally we Chinese chop everything to pieces or slices, to make it convenient for us to use chopsticks! This time, the chicken is as small as a pigeon, so i decided to leave it as it is. Here comes the Chicken soup:
Ingredients:
- main ingredients: chicken(500g), bean curd leaves(250g), mushrooms( 250g),celery(100g)
- spices: 5 pieces of ginger, one aniseed,one small pieces of Chinese cinnamon,10 peppers of Sichuan, several garlic cloves
- others:cooking wine(10g).
and here comes more details:
- Hot wok, put oil in the wok until the oil is 80% hot, turn down the flame, put 5 pieces of ginger,one star aniseed, one small piece of Chinese cinnamon, 10 peppers of Sichuan in to the wok, waite until you can smell the nice scent of all the spices.
- Turn up the flame to medium flame, fry the whole chicken. Because this chicken is not fat at all, so i only wanna get rid of the water on and in the chicken. When the color of the chicken meat turns to be white, turn up the flame to make the wok extremely hot, add cooking wine to the wok, you will hear a nice sound, turn over the chicken a little bit, then put hot water into the wok, nearly half bury the chicken.
- when it starts to boil, turn down the flame to smallest flame, leave the wok on fire for 15-30 minutes, depending on how big and how old the chicken is, go back to check if the chicken meat is cooked or not in 15 minutes. my chicken is more or less cooked in 20 minutes.
- put mushrooms into the wok,cook them together with chicken for 10 minutes with smallest flame. Then put bean curd leaves in to the wok, another 10 minutes. At last,put celery into the chicken soup, another 5 minute, the soup is ready.
Attentions:
- 1. put the bean curd leaves in water after you bought them home ,to keep them soft;
- 2.take the peppers of Sichuan out after you fry them in the oil, in case you bite them, which probably will cause stomachache to non-Chinese;
- If you like, you still can add sausages,garlic or other proper things you like. I put my favorite sausage and my husband’s favorite garlic and chili into the soup:-)