Winter Melon Soup: 冬瓜汤

I'm not Cantonese but I love my soup. One of my biggest "worry" about moving out is not having my daily homecook yummies from my awesome mum, especially my favourite soup. So I began to learn to cook my own soup. Since I'm working and usually reach home around 8+ (if I'm lucky), I do not have the luxury of slowly boiling my soup since it will only mean my soup will be ready around 10+ 11!

I saw this Philips Pressure Cooker that was selling on Qoo10, read the reviews, and decide this could be something I need, so I took the plunge and got one. It's really cool and easy to use for a noob like me. Basically, there's buttons to cook rice, cook soup, keep warm etc, so all you have to do is decide what you want to cook, get the ingredient, throw everything into the pot, press the button and wait! and just like magic, within an hour, your food is done. Pretty awesome if you asked me, or perhaps, I have not seen enough of such appliances so it's really easy to impress me.

so 1 of the first things I cooked using pressure cooker is winter melon soup. I goggled for the ingredients (told ya Google is my best friend), and here's what I used:

Ingredients:

• pork ribs (I got a pack from NTUC)
• 1 piece of winter melon (NTUC got the kind that they cut into pieces instead of the whole fruit)
• 5 pieces of red dates

Steps:

1. wash the pork ribs and rub it with some salt (my mum taught me this and said it will remove the frozen smell/blood/whatever i cannot remember. so basically, I'm just doing as she says. :p)
2. boil a small pot water, when it boil, put in the pork ribs and let it cook for 2-3 mins and take it out. this will remove the fats or whatever (again, I'm just following what my mum says. hahaha)
3. cut the winter melon into pieces (I removed the skin, and save them in a zip-lock bag to make vegetable broth in future)
4. wash the dates and remove the seed (the seeds will make the soup "heaty")
5. put the pork ribs from point 2, the cut winter melon and the dates into the pressure cooker, put enough water to cover the ingredients (or slightly over), close the lid, and click on the "soup" button.
6. then you wait and about 20 mins later, the soup is cooked. let it cool down so the pressure will be released itself (the whole process, including waiting for the pressure to be released will take around 30-40 mins).
7. After the pressure is released, you can open the lid and taste the soup to see if you need to add seasoning. For me, I'm a bland eater, so I just added about 1 tsp of sea salt. preferred the natural sweetness from the ingredient. so add accordingly to your personal likes.
8. when serves, I'll usually sprinkle some pepper and add some fried shallots as well.

note: this is a personal review and not sponsored post. philips did not pay me, and I got the cooker myself from qoo10.