Chicken and sweetcorn soup with ribbons of egg
Cantonese restaurant sweetcorn soup: chicken broth thickened with blended sweetcorn, creamy without milk, with tender, velvety chicken strips, fine ribbons of egg and a touch of white pepper.
Method
- Drain the sweetcorn. Crack the egg into a measuring jug with a spout and beat with a fork. Finely slice the spring onions, keeping whites and greens separate; peel the ginger and cut into 3 thick slices. Check that the butcher's chicken strips are thin and halve the thicker ones, then mix with 5 g soya sauce, 3 g cornflour and 10 g water. Refrigerate for 10 minutes while continuing the recipe. Do not salt the already-salted koshered chicken.
- Put 190 g sweetcorn and 150 g water in the saucepan and blend directly in it with a hand blender at full power for 1 minute, tilting the pan, until smooth and creamy with only small fragments of skin remaining. Add the 95 g whole kernels, which provide some bite, the remaining 300 g water, crumbled stock cube, ginger slices and spring onion whites. Bring to a simmer and cook over a medium heat for 5 minutes, stirring often, as the blended sweetcorn catches quickly on the bottom.
- Remove the ginger slices and reduce to a gentle simmer. Add the chicken strips in small handfuls and immediately separate them with a fork; their cornflour coating will make them stick together if added all at once. Cook for 1 minute 30 seconds, until white and opaque all the way through, with no pink when a strip is cut open. Mix the remaining 7 g cornflour with the 40 g cold water, pour in while stirring and simmer for 1 minute, until the soup lightly coats a spoon.
- Keep the soup barely simmering, stir it once in a circular motion and pour the beaten egg in a thin stream from the jug's spout. Wait 20 seconds without touching it, stir gently twice and turn off the heat: the ribbons should be set, yellow and silky.
- Off the heat, adjust the texture first: the soup should stay fluid. If too thick, add 30–50 g hot water. Then taste: it should be well seasoned. Add the pinch of salt (1 g) if needed, but no more if the koshered chicken is already quite salty. Add the white pepper and sesame oil, divide between two warm bowls and scatter over the spring onion greens.
On your plate
Recipe
304 kcal · protein 22 g · carbs 32 g · fat 9 g
Quantities per person
- 142.5 g Tinned sweetcorn
- 55 g Skinless chicken breast escalopes (150 g each)
- 27.5 g Eggs
- 3 g Fresh ginger
- 12.5 g Spring onions
- 2.5 g Soya sauce
- 5 g Chicken stock cubes
- 5 g Cornflour
- 2 g Toasted sesame oil
- 0.25 g Ground white pepper
- 0.5 g Fine salt
- 250 g Water
Cooking tips
Do not add soya sauce to the soup: it should stay pale yellow and glossy, seasoned with salt and white pepper; the soya sauce is only for the chicken marinade. If you are making marka or a slow-cooked chicken dish during the week, reserve 300 g of its broth to replace the water added to the saucepan and omit the stock cube, for much greater depth of flavour. Choose a chicken stock cube and soya sauce certified kosher. This is a generous starter, about 450 g per bowl; follow it with a fairly light meat main course. Refrigerate leftovers promptly and reheat only once, until the soup is steaming hot.
Chinese home and restaurant cooking; proportions and kosher adaptation by Menutov.
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