I was born and raised in Hong Kong. After getting married, I moved to Canada with my husband. Spending time in the kitchen cooking for my husband and my son is a type of happiness to me. Mimicking my childhood flavour in this foreign land brings me comfort. My priority of life is to stay healthy - think healthy, eat healthy, and live healthy. I am also a foraging enthusiast and the author of this blog.
1. Rinse the chicken feet and cut off the shape crawls.
2. Peel the papaya. Cut it in half and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Cut the papaya into big pieces.
3. Rinse the peanuts.
4. In a big pot, add chicken feet and peanuts. Add water that double the volume of the ingredients. Bring it to a boil, and then reduce the the heat to medium-high. With the lid on, continuously cook it for about 35 minutes.
5. Add papaya. Cook the soup for another 20 minutes. Season the soup to taste.
1. Soak the black beans for an hour prior to cooking; discard the soaking water.
2. Remove the tips of each chicken feet (it is optional).
3. Peel the lotus root and cut it into chunks. Rinse well.
4. In a soup pot, add all ingredients except salt. Fill the pot with water that is enough to cover the ingredients.
5. Bring it to a boil over high heat. Then, continue to boil over medium heat for another 1.5 hours. Add more water in the middle of cooking when it is needed. Season the soup with salt to taste.
A pot of good soup is very essential on our dining table in winter. It helps nourish our dry skin while it warms up our body, as my mom often said. Usually after lantern festival in late September, when the lotus plants have faded, there are an abundance of lotus roots available in the local markets. Mom loved to buy them because they were not only nutritious but also inexpensive.
This recipe was one of the lotus soups she would frequently make. The collagen from the chicken feet and the starch in lotus root gelatinized the soup, that gave the soup a thick, hearty consistency. As a child, my brother and I would fight over the peanuts in the soup, or had a chicken feet-eating competition. Those were very good memories of this wonderful soup.
The photo above is the traditional way my mom and many other people in Hong Kong ritually serve this soup. It is a light broth served with some rustic cuts of lotus root, a handful of peanuts, and one or two chicken feet. People prefer to enjoy the soup served with all these ingredients, although they may not plan to eat them. This is a common way to enhance the perception of flavour through sight.
However, light broth isn't very popular in my own family. My husband and my son like soup with a thicker body. Wanting them to try some "Chinese flavour", I adapted this recipe using a common Western technique: PUREE! Excluding the chicken feet, I blended the soup with all the ingredients and then boiled the mixture down to the thickness they liked. It turned out to be another winter favourite.
This soup gets a strong nutty flavour from the peanuts, which goes amazingly well with the chicken feet. Lotus root itself has a very mild flavour, but you can still taste the sweetness in the soup.
If you can't find any raw peanuts, raw walnuts will be a very good substitute. Or, you can replace the chicken feet with bones, or even pig knuckles.
