Seet's Kitchen: Soupcapades!

Suddenly, I've been having much of a cooking frenzy and decided to try my hand at cooking soup! No recipes whatsoever. Just pure instinct and experience. Ngek ngek ngek!

First attempt: Cabbage soup with chicken pieces and enoki mushrooms.
A childhood favourite! Can be cooked with pork ribs too. Even better in fact. Add some fish maw too and all that good stuff. Anyway, this is my version because I lacked some ingredients.

Boiling the soup with chicken pieces in it already. Remember to add oil and garlic cloves!

Chinese cabbage all nicely sliced. Enoki mushrooms aka golden mushrooms by the side.

Throw everything in once the soup has boiled and boil somemore on low heat!

Let it boil, let it boil, let it boil... (to the tune of "Let It Snow".)

I made an orange jelly while waiting. Rather bored you see and told you I was in a cooking mood.

Add some chopped spring onions and voila! There you have it! The soup.

It was pretty good but Mum said I was wasting gas when I cooked it for more than 1 hour. Haha, not my gas anyway. Oh, told you it was my first time. I didn't know lah. Remember to keep your water level proportionate to your meat pieces as well otherwise it will be slightly tasteless like mine. Add salt and pepper to taste! Also, never underestimate the power of a little fish sauce.

Second attempt: Chicken soup with onions, carrots and potatoes like Mum's.
Another favourite of mine. Mum used to do it really well and I was kind of missing it suddenly. Soups are good for the cold weather too and since I had everything, I thought why not try it! So...

Chopped onions, cubed carrots and potatoes all in a bowl. The potatoes were freaking me out at first. I bought washed potatoes and for some reason, I realised they had a sort of greenish tinge to it. Then when I was chopping them up, some weird foamish liquid oozed out. It was disgusting! Had to wash it twice to get rid of it. I was thinking... Oh well, just try my luck and eat it and see what happens. Haha. After all, my previous soup got contaminated by handle pieces that dropped into it (THANKS TO THE MALFUNCTIONING HANDLE) and I'm still alive. Haha. Never know if you don't try.

My chicken pieces thawing in the container. C'mon, drummets. THAW!

Squashed garlic cloves. Nice shot, eh? =D

Cooking the soup. Still in its early ages. Very clear as you can see. When I finished cooking it, I thought it tasted kind of funny (Maybe it was the onions.) and not at all like Mum's. A FAILURE! Ahh! Then my landlady saw it. Took a sip and brought me along the path to rightness by adding more salt, some sugar and JENG JENG JENG.... OYSTER SAUCE! I SERIOUSLY NEVER KNEW YOU COULD ADD OYSTER SAUCE TO SOUPS.
Fish sauce and soya sauce I know lah. Wow! Something new learnt once again.

End result...

Pretty good soup! Thanks to the saviour in the form of my landlady.

One slight problem, it tastes different from my Mum's. I must seriously ask her how to do it. =D

I WANT MY OWN KITCHEN!