Chinese Food Recipes

Chicken and conch soup with honey dew melon, is a famous dish of the Cantonese cuisine that is good for your kidneys and skin.Also known as Chicken Soup with Honeydew Melon and Trumpet Shell .Serves 3-4.

Ingredients for Chicken and conch soup with honey dew melon :

• Fresh conch feet — 600g
• Chicken feet — one pair
• pork shank — 600g
• Honey dew melon — one
• Chicken — half
• Chinese ham — 40g
• Ginger — a few slices
• Water — 12 bowls

Instructions:

• Clean the conch feet.
• Cut the melon in halves, discard the seeds and cut cubes from it.
• Blanch the pork, the chicken, the conch feet and the chicken feet for about 3-4 minutes to wipe out scum like blood and grease.
• Boil the water, add all ingredients except the melon cubes and cook to boil in high heat.
• Simmer gently for another 2 hours.
• Skim fat from the soup, add the melon cubes, cook in low heat for another 45 minutes.

 Tips for cooking this chinese soup:

1. Unlike the dried conch feet I once did here, which ready for use right away, we need to swab the swarthy and squishy dirt away from the fresh conch feet. A good way to do this, as told by my beloved fishmonger, is to rub it with your damnedest effort with sea salt on the cutting board — one by one.

2. Remember to skim fat from the soup before you dunk in the melon cubes. An easy way to do this that I learnt lately is to toss a handful of ice cubes and skim them out with the fat that congeals around them.

3. Get an old chicken — they have much more flavor. An old ‘stewing’ hen is excellent for this soup. The young supermarket hens, though less greasy, have no flavor at all.