The art of the Cantonese soup

Black-eyed peas and catfish soup

100 g black-eyed peas, soaked

1 local catfish, gutted and cleaned

50 g finely shredded ginger

Small piece rock sugar, about 20 g

Salt and pepper

Soak the black-eyed peas overnight so they cook more easily. Heat up a generous amount of oil in a frying pan and gently saute shredded ginger until golden. Remove the ginger crisps and set aside. Pour off some oil and then sear the cleaned, gutted catfish, browning the skin.

Pour boiling water into the pan and keep at a rapid boil until the fish stock turns milky. Pour the stock and fish into a clay pot and top up with more water if necessary. Add the black-eyed peas. Bring to boil and then turn down to a simmer for an hour. Season to taste, adding the rock sugar. Ladle the soup through a sieve into a serving bowl. Garnish with the ginger crisps.

This is an extremely nutritious but easily digested soup fed to recuperating patients. It is also a very typically Shunde soup.

Shunde is situated on the Pearl River Delta, and is built on reclaimed wetlands that were turned into a patchwork of fish ponds. Catfish, or tong sut, is a common enough fish but not a cash crop like the carp reared in the ponds. So it was used whole to make soup.