RECIPE: Sweetcorn and beaten egg soup.

Last weekend we had a roast chicken. Not a supermarket chicken - a really fine one delivered to our door by our lovely local butcher, who has started a delivery service. It cost a lot more than we usually pay for a chicken - but oh, the succulent, juicy meat and the crisp, flavourful skin! And it's kept us well fed for several days. As well as the roast, we had a chicken and mushroom risotto and a dish of chicken baked in cheese sauce, before making the carcass into stock and using it in two soups - here is the first. Home made chicken stock makes it really special but you could use bottled stock and it can be chicken or vegetable stock. If you use bought stock, though, don't add any salt because with the salt in the stock and the soy sauce the soup will end up too salty.

It's a good thing it tastes nicer than it looks! 

This quantity makes two main course size portions or 4 portions as part of a Chinese meal. If serving it with other dishes,  you may wish to only use one egg to make it less filling. 

1 can cream-style sweetcorn

400 ml chicken stock

2 eggs, beaten

1 tablespoon light soy sauce plus extra for drizzling

½ teaspoon salt

1 rounded teaspoon cornflour, blended with a little water

Garnish: a few finely chopped chives, spring onion tops or garlic chives - or you could use wild garlic. 

Put the sweetcorn, stock, soy sauce and salt into a pan, mix and bring to the boil. Add the cornflour paste and stir until thickened. With the mixture boiling quite hard, pour the beaten egg in over the prongs of a fork to make threads, stirring the pan with a whisk at the same time. The egg will immediately cook into thin threads. 

Garnish with the chopped onions/chives and a drizzle of soy sauce. 

If you can't get hold of creamed sweetcorn, I'm told that blitzing normal tinned corn in the blender for a few seconds will do the job. I would use water-packed corn, or vacuum packed with a few splashes of water added, not  the type with sugar and salt or your soup will be too salty.