Fresh Clam Soup

We had another cooking session with my Tuesday group at my kitchen last week. It is quite fun to mix cooking, eating, chatting, bonding, with Bible study. Of course we try to start early. Since it is a Tuesday, each one of us came from work. Cooking and eating together is a fun way to relax and unwind from the work day's stress. By the time for Bible study, we are already open, relaxed, and ready to do some serious work. :)

The menu for that night was Fish with Miso Glaze, store-bought grilled chicken (courtesy of V), Pandan-flavored rice, Sweet Corn Muffins and this yummy, flavorful soup.

Remember the statement "Too many cooks spoil the broth?" Well, the opposite is true in this soup dish! This soup is the testament and proof that when a dish is cooked together in good camaraderie and friendship, the resulting dish will also be wonderfully, truly exceptionally good!!!


2 kilos live clams, cleaned
1 large knob fresh ginger, sliced
5 T minced garlic
1 onion, chopped
3 T canola oil
1 small napa cabbage (Chinese pechay), cut
4 T Chinese cooking wine
3 pcs jalapeno peppers or finger chillies (Siling haba), or long green peppers, sliced
salt and pepper to taste
5 C water


1. In a cooking pan or wok, saute ginger slices in oil until fragrant. Add in the onions and garlic. Saute until fragrant but not burnt.

2. Add in the clams. Cover for a minute. Then add in the Chinese cooking wine. Cover for another minute.

3. Add in the jalapeno peppers and stir for a while. Add in the water. Cover and let boil.

4. When the shells of the clams are fully opened, then the soup is ready. Drop in the napa cabbages. Let cook for a while, add salt and pepper according to taste. Ladle up and serve as soon as possible. The clam meat will shrink if cooked for a long time. Discard shells that did not open.






These are the long green peppers that I used for this soup. I would usually call these jalapeno peppers before because this is what I use when I would make jalapeno poppers. But I think it is another variety of hot peppers. This pepper is mildly hot. But it is an excellent source of calcium, iron and phosphorus.

This is also the pepper widely used in Philippine cooking. All our gata (coconut milk) dishes has this. There is even a dish called Bicol Express that uses long chillies as it's main ingredient! We also often add this pepper to our seafood dishes as we believe it can remove most of the "fishy" taste.



Sharing this hot pepper spiced flavorful and fresh clam soup with the Weekend Herb Blogging community created and hosted this week by the original WHB chief herself Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen. I chose this dish to celebrate with the WHB community because it contains three long peppers to celebrate three years of hot, spiced (popular) blogging. And this dish is cooked together by good friends, which symbolizes what the WHB community is like: fun, food and learning interesting herbs and dishes and cooking styles from each other. Please check out Kalyn's blog for three give-aways celebrating three years of successful blogging event.