This is a bowl of spinach (bayam) with century egg which we had at a restaurant. I think this bowl costs us at least RM15. They fried the century egg (for what reason, I don’t know) and it is a nice soup. In fact, many of the local restaurants here keep recommending this dish. They must make a killer profit because one century egg is only 60 cents and a bunch of the spinach is not more than RM1.50. LOL, imagine the profit they get!
Spinach has a very strong ‘earthy’ flavour so making soup is ideal as it lends it ‘earth’ taste to the dish. So, without spending a bomb at restaurants, I tried recreating my own.
I have two versions.
Version one with Chinese Shaoxiang wine and herb – yoke chok.
1 tiny bunch of young spinach, clean thoroughly. They tend to have lots of sands, so clean it well.
Big bowl of water (just get the quantity which you can finish)
A few pieces of yok chok. Yoke chok is some Chinese bark.
A few pips of garlic
Century egg (and some add one salted duck egg too)
1 small fistful of whitebaits (the tiny, little, white ikan bilis?)
Flavourings – salt, pepper and two tablespoon of Chinese cooking wine
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Boil the water. Add the garlic, yoke chok and white bait to simmer through till the soup is tasty. Add the egg and spinach and the flavourings. Simmer for a while until the spinach is soft. Usually, spinach takes a longer time to cook than regular vegetables as it is more fibrous. However, if the spinach is really young, then, it cooks faster.
VERSION TWO – kei chee
I omitted the yoke chok and the wine. Instead, I add goji berries or kei chee. The rest of the method is the same. In the photo above, I also added some inoki mushrooms.
sis,
what is century egg. do u how to make it?
zana – It is sold at supermarkets, where they sell egg. Usually, it is covered in a layer of wax and wrapped with paper. The egg is chicken egg treated with amonia (I think lah) and it turned into jelly like.
Simple soup:)
I love your blog’s layout…so Christmassy….I can’t wait for Christmas again….:D