sharkfin melon

There's a Chinese saying "making a pot of good soup can tie a man's heart".

I grew up with Chinese soup at the dining table. It has a special place at the center of our round table, never missed a meal and a special place in my heart. Weekends were for the herbal soup like pak ting duck or ginseng chicken, taken with the longevity noodle (flour vermicelli or mee suah) which we kids so looked forward. Indeed, some tradition is hard to die. Of late, I have herbal soups almost every weekend and thankfully MH doesn't shunt it yet. If he does, I just need to cajole him that the tonic is good to boast his stamina for running and I bet he'll drown it in no time. It is practically the simplest meal to prepare. Just let the black bird (that's what I called it for its size, MH calls it “crow”) swim with the packet of herbs you get over the counter at Eu Yan Sang. Ta-da... a satisfying meal!

Weekday soup are the typical Chinese soup, where a decent pot can be produce by throwing in the stock (either pork ribs/bones or chicken carcass), the main ingredient (winter melon, old cucumber, white radish, lotus root, salted vege....and yesterday i discovered the sharkfin melon!) and the optional garnishing and flavoring (red dates, wolfberries, honey dates, dried squids/scallops/oyster, peanuts or bulb of garlic). Talking about the sharkin melon, had I not confirm upfront with the vegetable seller in the market that donno-what-name-melon is for soup, I could had freak out to find that it turned into sharkfin. I jokingly christened the melon "sharkfin melon" and to my utmost surprise when I did a Google this morning, it's indeed called a sharkfin melon. Ha! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbita_ficifolia.

Some other soup ingredients that I know off are anchovies, dried beancurd, carrot, cabbage, tofu, corn, tom yam paste with seafood, fishball and perhaps seawead. Still experimenting with the rest and I'll really appreciate if the soup lovers out there can share some of your mum's or grandma's recipe with me. ;>