Black Chicken (Silkie), Mushrooms & Coconut Soup

When I was browsing through my photo folder to see which food gets flaunted shown off shared today...I suddenly realised that...I still owe you a soup recipe from my junk food fest birthday bash!

The feeling of owing a lot of people (and by "a lot of people" I meant...like two of them ^_^) is not good.
- It's like there's a heavy stone that needs to be lifted off my heart (I was told that this is a result of eating too much unhealthy food and burping will easily solve this)
- It's like there's a heavy person sitting on my shoulders (I was told that this is only natural for a person who spends almost her whole waking hour in front of a computer)
- It's like there's something that clouds my mind, demanding solutions (I was probably only thinking about dinner right after lunch)

I guess all of my "not good" feelings aren't caused by my owing people recipes after all :p

Anyway, here's another super simple recipe.

You love super simple recipes, don't you?

Recipe
- 5 cups of mushrooms of your choice (but straw mushroom and its earthy scent is a must for me), cleaned, sliced
- A pack of coconut meat that's chopped into pieces, rinsed
- 1 silkie chicken (black chicken), rinsed, pat dry
- olive oil, water (or stock), salt, pepper, sugar

Heat up a pot, saute mushrooms with olive oil, add the rest of the ingredients, add water (or stock), bring to boil, lower down heat and simmer for min 2 hours, remember to skim the floaty fatty bits. Season with salt and pepper, add a bit of sugar if you want to have the tasty effect of MSG (without adding MSG), serve hot.

Subtle chicken flavor, earthy mushrooms, sweet 'n smooth coconut...nuff said.

Why did I use black chicken (silkie)?
- I haven't tried it before
- Black is so "in" this winter
- My Chinese friends told me that it has more health benefits (lower calories, lower fat content, more antioxidant) than our good ol' regular chicken
- I was told that it is more mildly flavored than regular chicken (sc hates chicken that smells too "chickeny")
- Have you seen a silkie before? They're so mighty cute I started to feel bad cooking them~

Would it work with regular chicken? I think it would, try it and let me know?

Young Coconut and Pork Soup

I hardly use coconut (other than coconut milk, which I adore) in my cooking. I don't know why, but I am just not a big fan of shredded coconut meat...it tickles my throat, and not in a good way ;)...but I wanted to do something new (by not using coconut milk), and I've decided to go for the young coconut and meat soup. I sounded great in my head, let's see how it turns out.

But, there's a tiny little detail I failed to consider, I just realised that I haven't tried cracking a whole coconut open before in my life! I saw a Thai chef doing it, seemingly effortless, fluently, easily, seamlessly, on TV and I remember that I saw my nanny did it many times back home in Indonesia. So, thinking that "if others can do it, so can I", I gathered enough courage to grab a whole young coconut from a supermarket near my place....glances of disbelief were shot at me while I loaded the coconut into my basket (not many people buy whole coconut, especially my people my age - yeah baby, in supermarkets and wet markets, I AM considered young!!!) and I shot them a super smug glance conveying this message: "Uh-huh! I am so doing it, I am going to crack this bad boy effortlessly, just like what they do on TV"

Apparently, surprise, surprise! Seeing stuff being done easily on TV is not equal to a sufficient training. Welcome to coconut cracking hell. On TV, I saw the chef cracking the coconut shell open by whacking it using the back of her cleaver. So I took my shiny and new cleaver (it's a gift and I hardly use it haha!), and started whacking my coconut with all my might.

Well well...after a whole lot of whacking, the coconut remained unscatched...staring back at me with mocking eyes, as if to say "Easy, eh? You've sooo underestimated me, baby!". Pieces of coconut husk were splattered everywhere, and there were only a few dents on the shell. I whacked and whacked and whacked...and finally I got a bit of an opening. The whacking continued and I've sent more coconut husk pieces in than getting anything out, I started to worry that I might not have anything to submit for Wandering Chopstick's Weekend Wokking - Coconut event. Finally, after I pretty much whacked my azz off, I had enough opening to pour the coconut juice out and spooned a bit of the silky smooth coconut meat.


Young Coconut and Pork Soup
Recipe
- 0.5 lb lean pork (Cut into chunky pieces. You can replace with chicken)
- juice (coconut juice/water (not coconut milk) and meat of 1 coconut)
- white pepper, salt
- hot water

Bring coconut juice and meat to boil, add pork chunks, add hot water, cook until the meat is tender. Season with white pepper and salt, serve hot.

This soup is clear yet super fragrant and sweet, the meat is richly flavored by the sweetness of the coconut juice. Sharing this recipe with the folks at Weekend Wokking, created by my blogger pal Wandering Chopsticks, hosted this week by Precious Pea.

I think I got a bit of bicep (although buried beneath a million layers of fat) from whacking that coconut. Yay!