Sticks…

I blogged about cooking it here in 2011 using a chunk of pork bone for the stock and in 2013, I used chicken.

Well, there was a little left of one pack of those bean curd sticks (tauhu kee) after my missus used most of it to cook I-can’t-remember-what-now and blame it on my OCD – I simply cannot stand seeing something sitting there idle, day in and day out, so I took it and soaked it till soft in hot water…

…before draining it, ready for use.

To this day, my girl still would not eat it as she thinks it tastes like plastic but she loves the soup so this time around, I used some different ingredients and even though she would not eat the sticks, there would something else she could enjoy.

I defrosted some minced meat from the freezer, added a sprinkling of salt and chopped spring onions and mixed them well. There were two slices of pre-fried tofu in the fridge – I can’t remember what my missus bought them for, whatever she was cooking so I took those and cut them into quarters and stuffed them with a bit of the minced meat. My girl would love eating those!

I used the rest to make meat balls, something that she would enjoy too and I peeled three cloves of garlic and got ready a bit of tang chai (preserved vegetable)…

I did not add too much of the latter as we aren’t exactly all that fond of it so we would not like the taste to be so strong that it would overpower that of all the other ingredients.

I filled a pot with water, threw in the garlic and the tang chai and brought it to boil. When it started boiling vigorously, I threw in the meat balls and I let it simmer so as to get the taste of the meat out into the soup since I was not using any bone stock or anything like that. Then I threw in the stuffed tofu and once the meat was cooked, I added the bean curd sticks. I guess most people would add salt and msg according to taste but I used a bit of fish sauce instead.

Come lunch time that day, I dished some of it out onto a bowl, sprinkled a bit of chopped spring onion from my garden and served…

Yes, it was very nice and yes, my girl enjoyed it but no, she did not touch the bean curd sticks!