Homestyle, simple meals are things that require no effort. No recipe and no fuss.

In fact, I hadn’t planned to write about this because in my mind, it’s nothing to write home about! However after a request, I thought I’d share. This means that I only took camera phone photos though!

This soup is packed full of iron and protein and lots of vitamins. It’s something that my mum used to make because it’s “good for us”. This is my version which tastes pretty close to my mum’s except I add bean curd and Asian mushrooms to make it a meal on it’s own.

En choy is also known as Chinese red or purple spinach. Note that the leaves are a mix of colours on each leaf.

I love enoki mushrooms and they’re perfect for soups. I also used shiitake mushrooms. These are available dry/dehydrated for convenience and means I can just keep these in the cupboard. I nearly always have these meaty mushrooms on hand.

Also dried are the bean curd sticks. I briefly wrote about these last time when I made another Chinese soup. Again, proving their compatibility in soups.

I didn’t use a knife for this whole recipe. I used scissors to snip everything. Easy shortcuts make preparing dinner so much better!

En choy and pork meatball soup with bean curd and Asian mushrooms

Serves: 3-4

Ingredients:

Meatballs: 500g pork mince 1 tbs plain flour (cornflour would be ideal) 1 tbs light soy sauce White pepper

Soup: 1 bunch of Chinese red spinach (en choy), cut into 5cm lengths 100g (about a handful) enoki mushrooms, ends trimmed and stalks separated 8 shiitake mushrooms, soaked in hot water and halved (see notes) 4 whole sticks of bean curd, soaked in hot water and cut into 3cm lengths (see notes) 2L water or stock 3 tbs fish sauce 2 tbs light soy sauce, to taste



Method:

Mix all the meatball ingredients together and roll into small bite-sized meatballs, about 2cm in diameter. The smaller you make these, the quicker they cook but by all means make them bigger if you like bigger balls 😛 Boil water/stock in a large pot. Once boiling add meatballs and bring to the boil again. Add in fish sauce and light soy sauce. Turn heat down to medium-high and add in spinach, mushrooms and bean curd. The spinach will turn the soup a pinky red! Cook for about 10 minutes until spinach and enoki are softened. The bean curd should be silky once cooked. Serve!

Notes:

When preparing the mushrooms and bean curd, give yourself a bit of time if you’re making the soup straight away. They don’t take long to soak but they need at least 15-20 minutes to soften. I let mine sit for about an hour until I was ready to make dinner. In the meantime, I made the meatballs, put them in the fridge and went and did other things.

You can definitely soak these in the same bowl. Make sure you push the sticks down as they soften, like you would do when cooking pasta.

I used scissors to snip these in the bowl of water, I didn’t bother to drain these. I just added them straight from the bowl of water to the pot when I needed them.

I also used scissors to chop off the ends of the enoki and to cut the en choy into lengths. To save on water, I also rinsed the spinach in the water that I used to soak the shiitake and bean curd sticks in. Any dirt would sink to the bottom.

I’m all about time saving and being lazy!