Old Cucumber Soup (Lao Wang Kwa)

Old Cucumber Soup is a popularly available soup in Malaysia and Singapore - whether in Chinese homes or at eateries. Being an old cucumber, it is sold with a slightly thick and brown-coloured skin. Usually it is fatter than the young green coloured cucumbers which you get from the market. So, don’t go and buy some fresh cucumbers and leave it at home thinking that it will grow old that way. It doesn’t work that way.

Just like most other soup recipes on this site, Old Cucumber Soup is VERY easy to cook and tastes great when paired with other great tasting ingredients like dried cuttlefish, dried scallops and red dates. Just prepare the ingredients and put them into the pot. Give it a simmer over 2 to 3 hours and you’ll get a hearty soup to drink. You can eat the cucumber flesh, which will usually be very soft to the pulp but I usually only go for the soup.

This is my recipe for Old Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

• 1 old cucumber (slice half lengthwise, remove seeds, then cut across into chunks)
• 300 grammes bony pork
• 2 pieces dried cuttlefish (cut into half or quartered)
• 5 to 10 pieces dried scallops
• 8 red dates
• 1 litre water

Method

Bring water to boil. Add bony pork and remove scum from surface of water till no more scum appears.

Add the rest of the ingredients, allow to rapid boil for 3 minutes before covering and lowering flame to simmer the soup for 2 to 3 hours.

Add salt to taste before serving.

If you wish to double boil, first boil the bony pork in a separate pork using separate portion of water. Thereafter, drain and place bony pork together with the other ingredients in a double boiler. Add 1 1/2 bowls of boiling hot water into the ingredients. Double boil for 3 hours.