Bean curd and seaweed soup

Like a fellow Perth blogger, I spent the afternoon steeping a chicken with the intention of making Chicken rice and soup. Though I had David Thompson's Street Food as a source of reference and inspiration, it was not an entirely successful meal, my stock seemed and little thin, unsalted and insipid and consequently the rice seemed to lack some punch. Still I'll record what I did with the soup and rice for my own future reference. . .

Soup.

• 6 cups of chicken stock (I used the liquid left over from steeping a chicken)
• 2 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 1 large square of fresh, soft tofu. Approx 200g - cut into 1 inch cubes
• 1 disk of dried seaweed - approx 25g - broken up and rinsed to remove sand and grit
• Spring onion and coriander leaves to dress

Dumplings.

• 150g minced pork
• 2 tablespoons of soy sauce
• White pepper and a pinch of sugar

How?

Make the meatballs first by combining the pork, soy sauce, pepper and sugar in a bowl. Mix well by hand and the set aside.

Heat the stock and when boiling break up the meat mixture into small balls and add to the stock. Then add the beancurd, seaweed and additional soy sauce. Let simmer for a few minutes and then remove from the heat. Taste and correct flavours if needed and then add the spring onion and coriander before serving.

The unpictured chicken rice.

First prepare the rice. A lack of sufficient quantities of the correct grain meant I used 2 cups of Jasmine, 1 of Basmati (not as bad as it sounds) and 2 tablespoons of Glutinous. Thrice the rice was rinsed.

In a mortar grind two coriander roots, two cloves of garlic and a small knob of ginger with a large pinch of salt. Now fry this in a medium saucepan, with rendered chicken fat or two tablespoons of peanut oil. Then add the rice and stir well, before adding enough stock to cover the rice by 1 distal phalanx (approx 1 inch). Turn the heat down and bring to the boil, periodically testing the rice and adding more stock if needed. It should take about 20 minutes.