#ewew cooks Chinese Spinach Soup 2.0

Just like choiyen.com who blogs many recipes of soups, I'm also a soup lover myself.  I'm good to go with just a nutritious bowl of soup as my one-dish meal with a bit of rice.....must have a little rice...hee..hee! ;)  For boiled soups (and I prefer the taste of double-boiled soups), we need a bit of time to extract all the flavours from the meat and vegetables.

But when we're pressed for time, we can make a super quick guan tong which takes little to no time at all to serve up...and I was reminded of one such soup with Yen's Quick Spinach Soup.  Though she made it with spinach (you know that vegetable made famous by Popeye the Sailor Man, we know it as poh choy), I'm making mine with Chinese spinach (otherwise known as amaranth greens or bayam hijau).  

I've cooked this Chinese Spinach Soup before but I feel this one tastes better, so I thought I'll share my upgraded Chinese Spinach Soup 2.0.....lol.  I've been referring to spinach as yin choy in Cantonese (as it's commonly translated/spelt/pronounced as such online) but have regularly gotten akward glances from restaurants/market vendors when they ask me if it's hin choy I wanted.  Have I been mispronouncing it all along? >.<

Compared to boiled soups which can take up to 4 hours or double-boiled soups which take even longer, this is a super fast style of making soup simply referred to in Cantonese as guan tong, literally also translated as boiled soup, but the guan (or boiling) here is a super quick boil which literally takes just 10 - 15 minutes to be ready.

Chinese spinach soup is nutritious and delicious but we don't make it often enough coz many of us are put off by the tedious preparation and washing of the vegetable.  You have to pluck the stalks backwards to discard the fibrous strands followed by countless washing and rinsing of the vegetable to get rid of the abundant sand trapped between the leaves.  Well, if you don't want to deal with all that, you can get the baby Chinese spinach (hin/yin choy mew) instead which is much easier to clean and prep.

But I made the soup this time with regular (not baby) Chinese spinach this time.  Well, if you want to drink a good soup, you need to put in the effort lah.  I also feel the regular Chinese spinach holds better than baby Chinese spinach in soups.  I'll tell you why later.

This is a soup that does not need a recipe as it'll still turn out great even if you don't adhere to measured ingredients.  To make this soup (I'm making for one person), you start by frying up an egg (lightly seasoned with salt) in some oil.  Break them into pieces with your spatula and set it aside.  This was my first change in making this 2.0 version.  Previously, I cracked an egg into the soup (when the soup was almost done) which made the soup cloudy (and more like an egg drop soup).

Next, you get a simple broth going by frying a handful of ikan bilis (dried anchovies) with two chunks of lightly flattened ginger (which is easier to remove than pieces of sliced ginger) in some oil.  I decided to omit chopped garlic this time as it can easily burn if we're not careful (+ I don't wish to taste burnt nor bite into almost raw garlic in my soup).

Once the ikan bilis has nicely browned, add in a (big) bowl of water.  I just use the bowl size where I'd be happy with the portion I'm going to eat and that will be the amount of water I need...hah..hah.  Simmer the ikan bilis stock for 10 minutes to extract the flavours.  Season to taste.  You can then strain the soup and discard the ikan bilis (and ginger) but I leave them in as it's still edible (I just remove the chunks of ginger).

Then add in the Chinese spinach and cook till soft (around 3 minutes) or longer if you like your greens softer.

When the vegetables are at its desired softness, add the already fried egg pieces back into the mix......

....followed immediately by the chopped salted egg (ham dan that needs to be cooked first like hard-boiled eggs) and preserved century egg (pei dan that doesn't need any cooking).  I used half an egg each for soup meant for one person.  You don't need to cook this at all but to just mix it into the soup....and my Chinese Spinach Soup 2.0 with 3 types of egg is ready.

A salted duck egg cured in a thick crust of salted clay mix or charcoal paste might seem off-putting (to non-Asians) but it's perplexing how something so vile looking hides something so good inside.  I used to dislike cleaning the mess of ash/clay off the salted egg but just had to do it coz something delicious comes out of it.

Cleaning the century egg wrapped in a clay/ash mix and rice hulls is even worse as, after removing the outer layer of rice hulls, the ash paste feels like damp mud...yucks!  Westerners might think why we'd want to eat something that vile smelling (stinks to high heavens to haters!) but wonderfully pungent smelling and tasting to those who love them...lol.

That aside, it's a super quick soup to make....and a light soup to drink with lots of good for you greens. Sprinkle over some crispy fried tiny anchovies for that added crunch.  These tiny anchovies go by many names...blue-eyed anchovies, ikan bilis mata biru, ngan yu chai, whitebait or silver fish (not the pesky pest kind!).  I like to eat them (I even add my own into nasi lemak) as they are super crunchy and extra fragrant (and more expensive than the regular kind too).

One of the first changes I made to this Chinese Spinach Soup 2.0 is the use of regular Chinese spinach instead of baby ones (yin/hin choy mew).  I thought the larger leaves and thicker stems held better when boiled to retain a good bite instead of being too soft if baby spinach was used.  I think the baby spinach works better in a quick stir-fry with garlic as it tends to soften much faster.  I know it's a lot more work to clean regular spinach but you just got to do it....no pain, no gain, right?

The second difference was to fry the egg separately instead of cracking it into the soup.  That way the soup will not be so cloudy + fried eggs also tastes better, won't you agree?  I also omitted wolfberries (doesn't do anything to quick-boiled soup to impart any additional flavour) and garlic (as biting into softened chopped garlic isn't all that pleasant unless the garlic spooned over the soup is fried, crispy and browned).

The third change was the addition of century eggs which I feel is really necessary as it brings a more unique flavour to the soup overall when eaten with the Chinese spinach.  The century eggs we buy outside are not quite in the same league as those we get at restaurants that serve them (the yolks of those are more custardy, gooey and soft...and absolutely decadent eaten with vinegared ginger).  So, the lower quality century eggs with firmer yolks work great in a soup like this.

I felt that the few changes I made to my Chinese Spinach Soup 2.0 made it better.  That's what cooking is all about.....we improve as we go along and begin to understand each ingredient better and how to use them in the best possible way.  The more we cook, the more we practise, the better our food becomes.....and that's a fact! 

Guan tong is a super quick way of getting a soup on the dinner table when we don't have the time.  You can make it with just about any type of vegetables in a simple ikan bilis stock like Chinese green spinach (as I've done here), Chinese red spinach (if you don't mind your soup having a red hue), spinach (poh choy), Chinese flowering cabbage (choy sum), lettuce (sang choy), cabbage, bok choy, Chinese cabbage (pak choy) or any leafy vegetable you fancy (green or otherwise).  I'd be totally happy with a simple, quick to make soup like this.....and a bit of rice for dinner. ^_~