Nothing beats a warm chicken soup with rice on a typical day 普通の日にはやはりチキンスープがいいですね





Chicken soup, fish sauce, rice and fried lotus roots with sliced tomatoes     2012310

  

A warm chicken soup we call it "nilaga" in our native tongue is an all-time favorite.  It is easy to prepare; one only needs thigh part or leg part of chicken meat, onions, a clove or two of garlic, potatoes, peppercorns, carrots and cabbage or Chinese cabbage and fish sauce to taste. (The breast part of the chicken meat can substitute for the thigh or leg part but texture is not as good after cooking.) This dish tastes even better if one cooks it in a slow cooker.  I sometimes prepare this dish using  chicken meat from cageless chicken.  It tastes even better but takes time to tenderize it that is why I cook it in an electric slow cooker for 12 hours. The juices from the chicken meat ooze through the soup and this makes for a lovely flavor.  I remove the skin part of the chicken so the soup is not greasy.  Additional amount of fish sauce during eating makes one's eating experience a real treat.  How to prepare this dish:  One needs water to put the chicken meat into.  The chicken meat is added with garlic cloves, onions (cut in quarter), chunks of carrots and peppercorns.  I add a piece of sea kelp to make the soup better-tasting. That's all.  Let the whole mixture boil, afterwhich, the sea kelp is removed.  Then, after the meat becomes tender, big slices of potatoes are added.  After boiling for a few minutes when the potatoes get soft, big slices of cabbage or Chinese cabbage are added and again the dish is boiled shortly or the cover of the casserole is placed to cook the vegetables without additional heat.  Fish sauce is added last.  Fish sauce is drizzled during mealtime as one likes it.

The side dish here is fried lotus root with cheese.  As featured in my earlier blog, lotus roots are made into sandwiches with melty cheese as filling. Red tomatoes subdue the oily after-feel of the fried dish.