Bamboo Shoot and Chicken Soup

You may have noticed after Chinese New Year, my recipes tend to be much lighter. It’s spring now and there are more and more fresh vegetable in season. Among all, one of my favourite is spring bamboo shoot. Fresh spring bamboo shoot is sweet and tender, but won’t be in season for a long period. Luckily, it’s easier to obtain boiled bamboo shoot in supermarket all year round. In this recipe, I will be using packaged boiled bamboo shoot.

Choy Sum stalk is another ingredient in this soup. I mentioned before that Choy Sum is most Cantonese’s favourite vegetable. Usually it would be fried with ginger or garlic. When we prepare the Choy Sum, we would remove the tough part of its stalk. But our ancestors are so frugal that they figured out how not to waste any food – slice the tough stalk, fry with rice, or make soup. If you can’t obtain Choy Sum in your local Asian grocery stores, use asparagus or frozen peas instead.

Serve 4

Ingredients –

Boiled bamboo shoot, 1, 250g. If you have fresh bamboo shoot, you remove the tough part and boil the bamboo shoot in water for 10 minutes. Have a taste to see if the bitterness removed. See more details in my previous bamboo shoot recipe;
Chicken breast, 1, about 200g;
Choy Sum stalk, 150g;
Frozen or fresh sweet corn, half cup;
Egg, 1;
Ginger, 20g;
Cornstarch, Chinese cooking wine, salt, sugar, light soy sauce.

How to do –
1. Chicken breast sliced thinly, marinated with 1tbsp of light soy sauce, cooking wine, corn starch, oil, and 1tsp of salt and sugar, mixed well, set aside for 20 minutes;

2. Bamboo shoot sliced thinly;
3. Choy Sum stalk sliced;

4. In a soup pot, put in ginger slices, bamboo shoot slices, and 4 cups of water, lid on and bring to boil in high heat, then simmer in low heat for 10 minutes;

5. Lid off, turn to high heat, put in the chicken slices and separate them with chopsticks immediately in case they stick together. Chicken is easily cooked so keep high heat, lid off;

6. When the soup is boiling again, put in the sweet corn and Choy Sum slices, keep high heat and lid off. Both of them can be cooked quickly;

7. You could remove the floating bits on the surface;

8. I would like to thicken the soup with cornstarch. Dissolve 2tbsp of cornstarch in a little water and mix into the soup. Keep high heat and mix well. You could have a taste now and adjust the seasoning. I am fine with it so I don’t need any more sugar or salt;

9. Whisk an egg, turn down the heat, put it in the soup in clock direction, and then turn off the heat;

10. Serve right away in small bowl.