Timor-Leste | Sup Bakso Ayam (Chicken Meatball Soup)

CLICK HERE FOR THE RECIPE I USED

I have to confess, I’d never heard of Timor-Leste until now. It’s a small country that shares the same island mass as Indonesia which means it also shares pretty much the same cuisine. I couldn’t find any single recipe that was completely unique to Timor-Leste that I could also get the ingredients to make.

Chicken meatballs and chicken meatball soup kept popping up for both Indonesia and Timor-Leste and I could find all of the ingredients locally, yay!

There’s a lot of prep involved in making this meal, it isn’t something you can throw together quickly.

The meatballs must be made separately and, because the ground chicken mixture is very soft, it needs to be chilled in the fridge for awhile before cooking them. (Being cold helps them maintain their shape.) They aren’t difficult to make; you just need ample time for them to chill. (I let them chill for 2 hours.)

The soup itself needs Bok choy, tofu, scallions (or green onions), cilantro, shallot flakes, and fried minced garlic, and a few seasonings. So, you need to clean and chop the Bok choy, scallions, and cilantro at some point before the soup is ready. I do not enjoy cleaning Bok choy, I think I might hate cleaning it more than I hate cleaning leeks. Maybe we just get especially dirty and limp Bok choy? Cleaning scallions and cilantro isn’t difficult, just a little time-consuming. Pressing the tofu was easy. I put it on towels and then laid a cutting board over it and put my cast iron Dutch Oven on top of the cutting board and gave it some time. I changed the towels a few times but it really didn’t need much help.

The shallot and minced garlic need to be fried as they’re used as a crispy topping sprinkled over the soup. Over the course of this project, I have learned how to fry them for this use so that was relatively easy, but was another step in getting to the final product that required chopping, frying, and dirtying more dishes.

Once you have everything cleaned, chopped, and prepped, you throw it all in a pot and let it simmer for a bit. And then top your bowl of soup with scallions, cilantro, fried shallot bits, and fried minced garlic.

The linked recipe suggests eating it with steamed rice or adding in some noodles. I was in the mood for rice so I cooked up some jasmine rice to go with it.

I had a few issues with this meal but, primarily, it was texturally unappealing to me. I found the meatballs and tofu too soft and mushy. I like meatballs in soup to still have a bit of firmness to them and, when they don’t, I don’t enjoy them. I have texture issues with tofu and soup is not the right place for me to overcome those issues.

The broth was bland even though I spiced it up beyond what the recipe called for and, of course, upped the garlic. The accompaniments (shallots, garlic, etc.) helped but not enough. I finished a bowl and that was it for me.

I will not finish the leftovers and I will not make this again. I don’t think it is a bad recipe, I think it just doesn’t work with my pickiness regarding food textures.