My ABC Runneth Over

It was a Sunday and I had all the time in the world to boil my soup. Actually I was already craving for ABC soup on Saturday but I couldn't possibly be using ABC soup as the soup base for the steamboat! Anyways, let's backtrack a bit. The soup on Saturday was good. I had used a lot of pork ribs for the soup and also an extra secret ingredient. It's not MSG or Ajinomoto ok? The ingredient is one of the secret in making good soups as told to me by my grandma since she used to be a hawker in the Pasar Besar Ipoh 2 decades ago.

In fact, I grew up in Ipoh town (now it's a city) with frequent visits to my grandma's stall in the wet market. She was famous then selling the fishball noodle with crispy "fu pei". We were quite arrogant then because it was selling like hot cakes and we always run out of fishballs. I grew up watching how my aunts and uncles helping my grandma scraping the meat off the fish and then making it into fishballs. Damn, I missed those fishballs. It was the best! Everyone (the older generation la) knew my grandma in town back then. I had some friends there whose mother is selling vegetables and another friend whose mother was selling nyoya kuih.

Maybe that's why I grew up not hating the wet market but in fact loving to go there. When I was in my primary school age, I used to follow my grandma to the market where she meets up with her friends there for breakfast and a chat till noon. After that, we'll head home and get ready for school. That has been my daily routine for a couple of years until I went to the morning session. During those times, I would pester my grandma to buy me marbles, balloons and toys from the market. There was once that I got so curious watching people ordering the soya milk mixed with cincau and I demanded I wanted the same thing. So she bought a cup for me. I triumphantly finished the whole cup and not more than five minutes later, I vomited all of it at the drain behind the stall. After that I had a phobia drinking it until I went to high school.

When I was 3. They said I was good looking! As a boy or girl?!!

I still have the same stare till today. I'm a natural!

Well, after two paragraphs of my childhood days, I'm still ain't telling you what the secret ingredient is just in case I want to revive my grandma's legacy. Hmm.. maybe I should call it Grandma Fishball Noodles - best in Ipoh & KL and some say JB. LOL.

*

Getting back to the ABC soup, I fell asleep in the afternoon and when i got up at 5.30pm, I realised I'm running out of time to boil the soup as I wanted to have a Japanese dinner at Sushi Zanmai in Sunway Pyramid at 8pm. So I quickly went and boil the soup.

Diced potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and onions

Fresh chicken from the market

After I had boiled the chicken and pour away the bloody (no pun intended) water, I fill up the pressure cooker with water. Actually I think I am supposed to follow the guide line but I was a bit greedy and I filled a little more. Then I close the lid and started boiling the soup. It was fine and I had it boiling for almost 2 hours. When I had let go all the pressure from the pot, I lifted the lid up and then the soup kept oozing out like a shaken bottle of champagne! I don't know how to stop it but to allow it to keep flowing out from the pot till it stopped. It was a mess! It's like the soup had exploded from the pressure cooker. I had to clean up the stove and the counter. I managed to squeeze a bowl full of soup from the cloth!

Tomatoes & Onions blown out from the pot!

I had more than enough of ABC soup so much so that it had runneth over!