Another walk into memory lane, another most humble way to cooked, most humble way to enjoy food with most simple ingredients. I used to enjoy this soup during heat season in Indonesia. We in Indonesia only have two season as a tropical country, rainy wet season and dry hot season, but always humid regardless the season.

I remember being home after school, my mother always waiting for me with fresh cooked lunch, usually consist of veggies, some of protein but what must have in our house are tempe and tofu also rice crackers or any kind of Indonesian cracker. With this dishes, my mother usually going to serve it with fried tempe and tofu, fried corn cake (bakwan Jagung if you want to tried google it), fresh tomatoes sambal and of course hot steam rice.

The broth are clean, because it only season with salt, sugar and paper, but one thing that make this soup Unique are, the used of fingerroot, it is rhizome herb that almost similar to ginger or curcuma but really different plant. The herb infused make the broth very light that create clean palate, I don’t know any better way how to describe it. But If you have difficulty to find it, it is okay, because for this soup you also only need shallot, garlic and for some another edge you can add bayleaf.

Would you go to walk with me into my memory lane?

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SAYUR BENING (INDONESIAN CLEAR SOUP)

INGREDIENT

• 1 chayote, peel the skin (if you don’t want to get the sap all over your hand, you can milking the chayote, by cutting the top edge where it got the stalk, cut for 1cm or so then move it in circular way, then you will get all the sap out, you will get white sticky thing, then leave it for 2-3minute before peel the skin), then cut in small cube or do what you preferred.
• 1 carrot, peel and slice it.
• 1 scallion, slice it.
• 1 shallot, slice it
• 2 garlic, crush it
• 1 finger root, if you have it, crushed it.
• Sea salt, pepper and sugar to balance.
• 1000ml water or vegetable stock

HOW TO

1. In medium size pot and medium heat, put all the water in, shallot, garlic and finger root. Cooking until it boiled.
2. When the water are boiling put inside all the veggies, bring in all the seasoning, and give it a taste , corrected accordingly then put all the veggies in. Continue to cooked until the veggies are soft.
3. After the veggies are soft, give it a taste one more time, usually the flavouring are absorbed by the veggies, so better to give a taste one more time.
4. Lastly sprinkle the scallion in, and take off from them heat.
5. Ready to serve as it is or with warm steam rice and sprinkle of fried onion.

Note: If you have a difficulties to find chayote, you can replace it with courgette but the cooking sequence will be slightly change, by putting the carrot in first as for carrot need sometime to get it tender, then courgette, you want to taste the crunchiness and fresh veggies, so the only effort needed is keep an eye while it cooked, to avoid overcooked.