Soup and Pasta

I enjoy eating and certainly I enjoy cooking. Sometimes it will drift your stress away and I treat it as my alternate way of releasing my pressure from work. Some may feel tired to cook after a day of stress. Somehow I don't find it the same. I would rather treat it as another way of going to the gym - yes, especially your need to chop the garlic as tiny as possible (try not getting spoiled with those fancy kitchen machine - just a knife and cutting board is good enough for me.). Also chop the pork and beef with your own hand instead of asking the butcher to grind the meat for you, unless you don't have enough time.

1. HK style Borsch soup. When we go to the HK style local tea restaurant for a dinner A, B or C, you would be normally asked "red soup" or "white soup". Red soup means this kind of HK style Borsch soup. White soup means another HK style cream soup (mushroom or corn). Another interesting named soup is 金必多湯 - I have no idea which English word it comes from but it's no longer popular anymore except those Queen's or Tai Ping restaurant may still serve this one. It tastes like a bit like less thickening Cream Chowder with some frozen mixed veggie). OK, back to this one of my soup. I chose some pork with 5-10% fat, tomato, potato. onion, carrot. First boil some water. Then dice the pork in a 1/3 inch length. Pan fry it with a little oil, until it's a bit burnt. While letting it be pan fried, diced the carrot in 1/3 or 1/2 inch. Then put the pork into the pot. Put some oil and pan fry the diced carrot. While pan frying the carrot, dice the potato in 1/2 or 3/4 inch. Then put the carrot into the pot. Put some oil in the pan and pan fry the diced potato. Whilst pan frying, slice the onion. Pan fry the potato a bit longer so that the outside is a bit burnt - this way the potato won't be easily mashed when you stir your soup after an hour of boiling. Then cut the tomato in quarters and cut in adjacent angle in half of the each quarter. I usually keep the skin and everything (even the seed of the tomato) as I don't mind the skin at all - remember it's something fiber. Pan fry the sliced onion and put it in the soup. Finally it's the tomato. After you put it in, don't stir it too much. Let it be burnt a bit. This way the tomato will be more aromatic. Then put the tomato in the soup. Final step - put some water into that frying pan, and let the water boil and it will bring out the aroma of the leavings on the pan. Then put 2-3 bay leaves and boil the soup for 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how thick you like the soup to be. When it's done, put some sea salt, some tomato paste, 1 to 2 table spoons of vinegar. That's it.

2. Hamburg steak and spaghetti in onion sauce. I used 1/2 portion of ground beef and 1/2 portion of ground pork (with some fat) and stir it until it's sticky enough. Also put some sugar, some corn starch, very little salt, pepper during stiring. Then heat the pan. Put some oil, flatten the meat patty on the pan. After it's done, take it out. Then put the sliced onion with some chopped garlic in the pan with some oil. Brown it and put some beef stock in it. If you don't have beef stock, use oyster sauce instead. Then make it to your taste. Finish it with some corn starch to thicken it. Remember not to make it too thick. Put some black pepper in it.

Then for the spaghetti, just boil it with some sea salt in the boiling water. Drain it well and put it right away on the plate. Then pour the onion sauce on it and the Hamburg steak.