How to make Chinese soup – 青红萝汤

When I moved to Canada, I was lucky that my mom in law taught me to cook some dishes. One of them being a soup – Pork shank with carrot and green radish soup, I know it as 青红萝汤 in Cantonese.

I find this particular soup quite easy to make, just need some time to prepare, and a “space pot” – 太空锅 , I mean a “Thermal Magic Cooker”. XD

I documented most of what I did when I prepared the soup this afternoon, must mention tsunamidelta for poking me for it in the first place — I hope this will help you out if/when you do try to make the soup! ^^

Ingredients
– Pork shank one piece (no bones, no skin, kinda look like this http://www.featurepics.com/online/Raw-Pork-Shank-Photo-376261.aspx)
– 1 red carrot
– 1 green radish (how big of a carrot you use depend on how big the pot you have)

(items  below are found in those chinese herbal shops or dry goods shop)
– 3-4 candid dates (sorry I thought these were figs, turns out they were dates too :P)

– about 8-10 dry red dates

– approximately 20 pieces – northern apricot kernels

– approximately 10 pieces – southern apricot kernels (reason why you need only about half amount of this compare to the northern variety as too much of this one can result in trips to the washroom apparently)

Instructions:

1) First, put the pork shank in a bowl, sprinkle salt all over, especially on parts with fat on, set aside on the counter for about half an hour (we use the time to prepare other stuff)

2) Wash and then peel carrot and green radish and cut into approximately half inch thick slices, place them in the pot (for slow cooking)

3) Put Figs, dates, kernels into a bowl large enough to fit, fill with water, mix it around a bit, strain off the water (this is to just remove any dust or whatnot), then add enough water to cover all the items (this 2nd round of water is to be included and is use to soak the items a bit).

Use a small knife to remove the seeds from the dates.

Set aside for them to soak.

4) When half an hour’s up (I use a timer), rinse off the salt from the pork shank by running cold water from the tap, trim off extra fatty bits (if any), the salt will make some of the fat melt off.

Put the pork shank into the pot, and pour the figs/dates/kernels into the pot as well, add enough water to about 1 inch below the rim of the pot, cover and bring to a boil.

As the soup is boiling (do not let it overboil if you can help it!), you’ll see that scum has formed. At this point in time, turn the fire to medium, and then I use a fine wire sieve to carefully scoop out the scum, this will result in a clearer soup at the end ^^ doing this also removes some fat  from the soup at the same time.

When you’re done skimming the scum let the soup boil for about an hour, and put it in the themal container. The soup will continue to cook in the thermal container for about half a day or overnight. (ie. if you prepare it at night, you get a yummy soup the next day ^^) By the time the soup is boiling you’ll smell it lol! (it reminds me of fart ^^;)

Before serving I’ll bring the soup to a boil again, skim off any remaining fat, and serve the soup in bowls for each person. You can taste the soup before hand and add a pinch of salt to taste if you wish. ^^ The pork shank by now is very tender, you can take some of it out, pull it to bite size pieces, and eat with a simple light soy sauce + sesame oil dip with steamed rice. You can eat the carrots too if you like. ^^

If there’s only a couple people having the soup (like me and husband) you can reboil the left over soup with the pork shank (if you haven’t already taken everything out) and put it in the thermal container to continue cooking. After another serving you can just chill the soup for future consumption ^^

I will try to talk about the other pan fried dish you can make with the cooked pork shank next time! :)