Peppermint Patootie > wrote:
: ***** Begin quoted recipe
: From _How to Cook and Eat in Chinese_ by Buwei Yang Chao.
: (This is the edition I grew up with:
:
http://www.amazon.com/cook-Chinese-B...I6VDU/ref=sr_1
:
: _9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336531462&sr=1-9 )
: Sour-Hot Soup
: This is also a very famous soup that sometimes will help you get rid of
: leftovers. But sometimes we also purposely make it with fresh
: materials. Whichever its origin, it is a most appetizing soup, if
: properly made, and is very helpful when one is not hungry but has to
: eat.
: The eggs and characteristic seasoning exist in all kinds of Sour-Hot
: soup. As to the other things you can ad lib; they can be fish, meat,
: shrimps, bean curd, etc. Even the water itself can be replaced by
: chicken soup, meat soup, made from boiling meat bones, etc.
: 3 eggs
: 7 cups water or any soup
: 1 teaspoon salt
: 2 Tablespoons soy sauce
: 1/2 teaspoon taste powder (omit if you use soup instead of water)
: 2 Tablespoons cornstarch
: 3 Tablespoons vinegar
: 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
: 1/2 lb of any other materials chopped in small pieces
: Mix salt, soy sauce, taste powder, and cornstarch with 1 cup cold water
: or soup. Then put it in 6 cups of boiling water or soup. Keep a low
: fire while doing the following:
: Beat 3 eggs and pour very slowly into the soup. Keep stirring the soup
: while pouring the eggs. Then add in the vinegar and pepper and any
: other materials. If you have meat slices, prepare them as in meat-slice
: recipes before adding into the soup.
: ***** End quoted recipe
: I usually put in Chinese "long" cabbage (aka celery cabbage -- what I
: grew up knowing as "Chinese cabbage") sliced thin, cubes of firm tofu,
: sliced or chunked mushrooms, lily buds (from the Asian market), and
: sliced pork that I've marinated in soy sauce. (If I consumed alcohol
: I'd add some dry sherry to the marinade.) I use the dark, flavorful,
: more fatty pork which is sold in the Asian market as "pork shoulder
: butt." That dry white stuff that Anglos eat isn't really food, to my
: taste. It's more like a construction product. ;-)
: I prefer the flavor of tofu which I buy in Asian markets -- preferably
: taken out of a big plastic bucket and dropped into a plastic baggie,
: which is then tied, but that's hard to find anymore. ;-) Nowadays most
: of it is sold in plastic tubs with lids or those square plastic boxes
: with clear plastic top. The kind one finds in Whole Foods and the like
: doesn't have the good sour edge to the flavor, and the texture is often
: too grainy. I like to age mine a bit to get a little more of the good
: flavor.
: "Taste powder" is MSG (aji no moto). I grew up with a tin of it in the
: cupboard. My father used it in Chinese cooking, and I never developed a
: reaction to it until I was an adult. Nowadays it gives me migraines, so
: I never use it.
: For "soy sauce" I use "light soy" from the Asian market. There's a
: brand I like which is less than $2 per liter. "Dark soy" and "mushroom
: soy" and many other kinds of soy are different, and you don't want them
: in this recipe.
: I always use a meat stock, for a fuller flavor. For me, pork.
: This is about the right spiciness for me. I don't like really spicy
: food, but this is good. Black pepper is a different kind of hot (to my
: tongue) than all those chillies.
: I find sour-hot soup is wonderful in cold weather, particularly if one
: has a cold. :-)
: Eat it in good health!
: Priscilla
thanks Priscilla,
have you ever tried it without the cornsarch? It would seem to me that
with the eggs it might not need so much thickening. In the restaurant
where I have had this soup there generally are no eggs, hence my thought.
I may well be used to it rather thinner than this recipe sounds.
Of sourse, I am eating New York Hot and Sour soup, which may well vary
from the Chinese version, as do so many dishes, includign all those
chicken dishes which we get with bneleses chicken, while , from what I
gahter, teh chinese prefer bone-in hacked chicken and like to
suck onthe bones for flavor.
Wendy