Agnes, my friend has become grandmother now. Although she has confinement lady for her daughter-in-law, she will also prepare some special soup for the young mother. When I visited them yesterday she served me with chicken soup with glutinous rice. I like the soup, something special that I never tasted before. Agnes explained that this is a very nourishing soup for the young mother. She shared the recipe with me and I am sharing it here.
This recipe serve 3. You got to adjust the ingredients if there is more then 3 members in the family.
The ingredients are,
1 free range chicken (about 1.5Kg)
3 to 4 dried scallops,
2 pieces of Korean ginseng(optional)
4 to 6 red dates,
8 to 10 goose berries,
2 to 3 tbs cooking wine,
1 cup of glutinous rice,
2 cups of water,
1/2 tsp of salt..
Clean the chicken and remove the extra fats . Par-boil the chicken and drain. Soak the dried scallops, red dates and goose berries and set aside.
Wash the glutinous rice, add in the salt and water into a small sauce pan and cook in medium fire . Keep stirring to prevent the rice stick onto the pan. Cook for about 5 minutes. Drain the rice and let cool. The rice water to be poured into the inner pot for double boiling.
Use a spoon to scoop the sticky rice into the cavity of the chicken, push as far in as possible until all the rice are inside the cavity. do not worry that the rice will flow out while cooking, sticky rice will stick together inside the cavity by itself.
Prepare the double boil pot, pour in the rice water, at this junction,( I add1 more cup of water for extra soup), put in the well stuffed chicken and the rest of the ingredients.
Cover and double boil for 3 hours.
When its time for dinner, I open up the cover of the pot, mmm..smell good.
Remove the chicken from the inner pot onto a plate. You can add in salt to taste into the soup, but I prefer the plain taste of the ingredients. At the same time i scoop out the sticky rice .
I prefer to eat the rice, chicken and drink the soup separately. The rice is so soft and tender, and the soup, though is a little oily but is nourishing and taste good.
Serve hot .
